Piano sketch

Here is a sketch i am currently working on.
Any feedback is much appreciated.

Thank you.

Hi @Bjarke!

Is this a sketch for an orchestral work?  My perception is that the piece is being played too fast regardless of whether it's for piano or orchestra.  There are many features of the piece that seem like they would be more fitted and idiomatic for orchestra.  There's many fanfare-like features of the piece where the brass could imitate each other between trumpets, horns and trombones.  Besides being more idiomatic for orchestra, the piece is also much more difficult for piano.  There are many very thickly voiced chords that are played in quick succession one after another that seem impossible to play on piano.  This might be remedied a bit by playing the piece slightly slower.  That would also, I think, give the piece the space it needs to allow the listener to fully perceive everything that is going on.  Right now, the piece is going at such a breakneck speed that it is difficult for the listener to absorb all of the material.  Also, because of the fanfare-like nature of the piece, there are many quick, repeated notes that would be difficult to re-attack quickly enough for them to sound on piano, since the piano would have to have a very quick action.  That's part of the reason why I perceive the piece as being nearly impossible to play as-is.  But the musical material certainly is very interesting and would be very effective in an orchestration!  Thanks for sharing.

I share the above comments ... my first impression was a piano reduction of an orchestra score.  Lots of wonderful ideas for an orchestra work ... with some attention to tempos.

Mark

Thanks all.

Here are some refinements! 🙂

I agree with what has been said that the piece sounds like a piano transcription for orchestra: If it was written for piano here are some thoughts on the piano figuration: the doubling of the voices is excessive for a piano, in most cases you don’t need to double the voices too much on a piano, it will sound too saturated; the textures are too unstable, with this I mean that there are no clear patterns and you go from one texture to another too quickly, sometimes on the same phrase and there are almost no breaks between the different textures; the textures themselves have almost no running fast voices, in the most complex piano works texturally (rachmaninoff sonata 2, night wind sonata, sonata minacciosa) there is almost always a fast voice like this in their most dense moments; the fanfare motif sounds very difficult and slightly unpianistic, I would state just in octaves with maybe one of the voices of the chord (ideally one that repeats) being played too; the lack of pedal and quality of the midi also chastises the recording severely, so I think in a real piano it would sound much better. After writing this, I think you meant this for orchestra.

Structurally I like the way you develop the first themes (and as this is a sketch, I believe that you will also develop the g major theme) But in order to understand it correctly it took me some listenings. I think this problem could be easily solved by adding some resting moments before introducing new material (kind of like a medial caesura, but not in sonata form)

Thanks for sharing

Manuel

@Jqh73o

Thank you very much for the feedback! 

@Bjarke:  Do you have an updated PDF score for the new version?  I tried to follow along with the old score and noticed that there were so many changes that I couldn't keep up.