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Azigarath

Azigarath

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Sometimes, seeing as in most concertos the piano is what everyone looks at. In violin concertos, there's always a piano, too, so the attention is 50/50 when both are playing together in their solo. It's just that the piano is always there, but I suppose it's also how well the musician is too.
Another example is when an orchestra is playing the strings are basically background sound, but it does depend upon what kind of concerto is being played too. It's just that pianos seem to be more popular, as you can find them in a lot of places, from rock to death metal, but violins, well, they're a tough thing to use.
Like, when I played on stage a few years ago more than half the people were watching the young woman playing her piano AND NOT ME! How dare they.
Of course, the piano/violin combo can destroy anything. Heehee.

30-Apr-2012 18:00:29 - Last edited on 30-Apr-2012 18:01:29 by Azigarath

Englishkid62

Englishkid62

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Maybe piano gets the attention because it is this MASSIVE black box taking over 1/5 of the stage but the violinist, even if he/she is the soloist and stand in front of the piano, is merely a tiny thing that make screeching noises...
I thought violin concertos usually involve violin and orchestra. If orchestra isn't available then the piano has to play all orchestral parts.
Violins, unlike the piano, have to worry about intonation. And off-note is very obvious, but not so much on a piano ;)

02-May-2012 17:53:23

Azigarath

Azigarath

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So true. Yeah, violin concertos are like that, sometimes I forget to finish a sentence properly. Concertos are fun, though I've never had the honour to play with a full orchestra/symphony, but I've seen them in person. It's like the only way a violin soloist gets attention is when under a spotlight.
Speaking of which, I've only taken out my violin, like, three times in the past two years, it sort of dropped ever since I left high school thus unable to attend to any concert or contest.
I should have won the contest I first attended to though, way back in grade 12. I played with no pause and no mistakes, every note timed right, yet got 5th place because the top four winners just had to be overly sensitive overweight girls (young women, actually, of course). I played Beethoven's Ode to Joy (which is rather easy) and the first movement of his fifth symphony, and then Offenbach's Can-Can, and then Schubert's Marche Militaire (which was the hardest piece I ever played); just the short parts for violin, simplified so to speak, but to be able to play parts of a whole composition in grade 9, the same year I first started playing violin, and then continuing that practise up to five times a week until grade 12 is in itself a feat. I didn't see anyone else doing that in music class.
I'll remember for the rest of my life that one of the judges, an old woman, commented on her scoring sheet that I didn't play a old-time folk song or whatever that term is, and gave me 0, all because I didn't play a song that everyone else was doing. Why would I play a song that's not even a hundred years old when I can play written art that's a few hundred years' old? Stupid colonist peasant.

02-May-2012 19:10:28

Azigarath

Azigarath

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I guess no matter how well you can memorize a piece of music, you just have to impress the judges with what they want to hear in a contest, and I guess 'Skill grinding' a violin's routes didn't show much for them. Still, all the other fiddlers (I wouldn't call any of them violinists) just played those folk tunes, which certainly take skill, but really, you can't compare the composition of some colonist peasant to composers of the Classical and Romantic eras.
But oh well, I knew I wouldn't win and I never really cared considering the nature of their simplicity, but I suppose I shouldn't be so much of an elitist either.

02-May-2012 19:10:38

Englishkid62

Englishkid62

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Yeah well, and at the starting stages of the violin it is easy to make screeching noises, making the experience very unsatisfying and causing new players to quit at quite an early level. And then they switch to either piano or guitar or drums or something like that.
Azigarath: Maybe you should have checked the requirement first :P . Or choose a competition that actually suits you. Imagine me going on America's Got Talent and play Rachmaninov Piano Concerto 2... that would be an inappropriate piece in an inappropriate competition. What do you think? :)

03-May-2012 10:41:32 - Last edited on 03-May-2012 10:42:06 by Englishkid62

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