Mastering Tricky Passages and answering your questions!

MORE ON THE MIDDLE PEDAL!

Hello everyone, including Noel Nguyen , Doug Dominic Cheli  

To all those interested in the “Middle Pedal” discussion during the Apil 22 “Tricky Passages” LiveStream, I have posted an audio-only recording of myself using the Middle Pedal in the Rachmaninoff E Major Prelude, as performed in a student recital given on May 19, 2000 as part of a Continuing Ed “Piano Performance Seminar” at New England Conservatory. I’ve re-uploaded the score so you can follow along...(page 2 of the PDF.)

The section featuring the Middle Pedal starts at 2:20.  There you will hear a complete descending E Major Scale, played legato, starting with the E above Middle C, right in the middle of the piano, while both hands are also flying around to other registers, making it impossible to hold the E major scale notes and play the others at the same time.  . I addressed this by grabbing the scale notes with the Middle Pedal as soon as I could without interference from the surrounding notes. I thereby managed to play the scale legato and the surrounding notes staccato (on purpose, I might add!).

The scale begins on the first measure of the next to the last staff. Some of the notes I could hold, but others I needed the pedal for, and those are circled in red

I dug this out of an old box of tapes in my basement, and was surprised to hear that I seemed to have pulled it off. There is a generous allotment of mistakes elsewhere but not in that section. So you will be able to hear why I was so interested in cultivating this technique.

The recording is made on a CASSETTE, copying off a Digital Audio Tape (DAT), using a quickly cobbled together inexpensive stereo microphone set up.  No video of course. (pocket size movie cameras weren’t invented in those days!)

I took this seminar 8 times during a 4 year span from 1997-2000, and managed to stagger through all 24 Rachmaninoff Preludes, generally 4 per semester, in recitals like this.  Somewhere I have cobbled together  a single cassette featuring all of the Preludes, which I may post some day if I have sufficient temerity.

My present day goal is to re-do and polish all of these pieces, now that I have a nice piano of my own and advanced recording technology, all in my own home!

I have taken the liberty of cc’ing:  Noel, Doug and Dominic himself, as they all offered thoughts and suggestions, I hope that others will find it interesting also.

Hope you enjoy it! 

Peter Golemme