Quiz: Mystery scores

[(poco) Sforzando]

Yes to both

1) the Chopin Trill piece - but it's not a waltz, it's another attempt at an E flat minor prelude for op 28, as reconstructed by Kallberg. Attached, the version one can download elsewhere online...

and

2) the Ravel song. Apparently this exquisite, refined gem was Ravel's favourite amongst his own songs....because he could play it and hold a cigarette at the same time.

It's something I've kept relatively unmentioned because my passion for Janacek always rears its head first, but my passion for Ravel lags only a short way behind. His songs are absolute treasures

How 'bout that polonaise?

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Okay: #256 Maurice Ravel - Noël des jouets

[lukeottevanger]

Johan - yes, of course! This set is pretty easy, isn't it, what with there being two by each of two famous composers, lots of texts, and me banging on about my love of Ravel songs!

Do you know these songs? I may have to upload them if not...

Sfz - Well, it is a polonaise, yes, and it is by one of the two you mention.

But what I think he really disliked were not the serious people like Jezetha who are truly trying to establish themselves - e.g., not through the Internet but through legitimate venues like literary magazines, or the young people who were truly trying to learn (he doted on Rappy) - but the self-proclaimed geniuses who litter the Internet with their "creations" or their "blogs," as if they are God's gift to mankind, finished artists who sprung like Athena from the head of Zeus invariably "self-trained," and any criticism of their work is motivated solely by malice, spite, or envy.

I can't think of an example of the sort of person he may have had in mind.....

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Johan - yes, of course! This set is pretty easy, isn't it, what with there being two by each of two famous composers, lots of texts, and me banging on about my love of Ravel songs!

Do you know these songs? I may have to upload them if not...

No. But I liked what I saw... So, if you want to upload them!

I did sing some Debussy songs, though, when I took singing-lessons more than twenty years ago, Verlaine-settings ('il pleurt dans mon coeur' et cetera).

[(poco) Sforzando]

Sfz - Well, it is a polonaise, yes, and it is by one of the two you mention.

Then it's Chobert or Schupin.

[lukeottevanger]

  Half right, I suppose!

The piece shares a feature with that Rinkel piece you posted....

[lukeottevanger]

Ravel - Ronsard a son ame 

[lukeottevanger]

Ravel - Noël des jouets 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Excellent! Thank you, Luke!

Just listened to them - the Ronsard poem is wonderful in itself, and the song is beautiful (though I don't like the rather constricted voice of the singer). The second, Christmas, song is marvellous, the voice very French (the word 'tangy' springs to mind) and the close really ringing. 'Noël' is a great word, of course, with its powerful iambic thrust.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Half right, I suppose!

The piece shares a feature with that Rinkel piece you posted....

A piece of juvenalia by Chopin.

[lukeottevanger]

Bingo! I suppose that's the full answer, then - a polonaise by Chopin, composed at the age of 7, it seems. So we can forgive him the thin texture!

[(poco) Sforzando]

Keep going:

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

#248 - Ustvolskaja: Sixth Piano Sonata

Sfz 29 - Angelo Gilardino: Variazioni sulla Follía

Sfz 28 There is a Tarantella in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker...

[lukeottevanger]

#248 - Ustvolskaja: Sixth Piano Sonata

Yep!

[(poco) Sforzando]

Sfz 29 - Angelo Gilardino: Variazioni sulla Follía

Sfz 28 There is a Tarantella in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker...

29 - Correct nationality

28 - If so, I can't place it offhand. But it's not this Tarantella.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Another guess at the Mosolov: Three Pieces for piano, op. 23a?

[lukeottevanger]

Johan guessed at Sfz 29 with such certainty I assumed he was right. but this is Berio's Sequenza XI, I think.

Johan, you are very close indeed with this guess on the Mosolov. But not quite there.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Mosolov again: Two Dances, op 23b? Or Nocturnes, op 15?

[lukeottevanger]

Yes, that's better - the score doesn't split between op 23a and 23b as you do, so you'd have been better to stick just to op 23! But, yes this is the end of the first dance and the beginning of the second.

28 - If so, I can't place it offhand. But it's not this Tarantella.

The Nutcracker Tarentella comes before the 'Sugar Plum' and after the great Intrada (an incredible piece), as part of the Pas de deux sequence. But as you say, it isn't this one.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Yes, that's better - the score doesn't split between op 23a and 23b as you do, so you'd have been better to stick just to op 23! But, yes this is the end of the first dance and the beginning of the second.

There is a dance-rhythm in that fragment alright...

Okay. Nuff guessed. I'm off! Goodnight, all!