Vocalist.org archive


From:  Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Date:  Wed Jan 17, 2001  12:30 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Recital repetoire question


SMSchneider wrote:

> Yes, years ago I planned on auditioning for Manhattan School of Music
> Graduate School with Faure's Fleures Jetees, but several days before the
> audition, the pianist I hired, whom I had never met but came highly
> recommended, informed me he refused to play it in public. Needless to say I
> was furious. I fired him and used the staff accompanist at MSM, who played
> just fine. (I was accepted to the school but didn't go.)

That is one HARD accompaniment! The pianist needs to be a virtuoso to bring it
off - you
can't fake that one or simplify it. When I apologized to my regular
accompanist for its
difficulty (very fast repeated octaves in the left hand, in the manner of the
Schubert
Erlkonig), she reassured me that she enjoys having her pianistic abilities
tested. And
she played it wonderfully--I didn't have to slow the tempo at all! But another
accompanist (a singer/choir director who plays accompaniments rather than a
virtuoso
pianist) loves the song but said frankly that the accompaniment was beyond his
ability -
so we did Les Roses d'Ispahan instead.

--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...

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