I was lucky enough to see Melvyn Tan play five Mozart piano sonatas last night.
Now, I know nothing really about classical music, but I could tell this guy was good, and I really enjoyed it. The programme, however, was a complete mystery to me. In particular, this one sentence:
(in reference to Piano Sonata No. 6 in D major, K. 284)
‘The writing is unequivocally and brilliantly pianistic, full of striding octaves in the left hand, engaging syncopations, hand crossing, tremolando effects and theatrically arpeggiated chords’.
Could someone please tell me what this sentence means, in lay-person English?
Lucky! I bet the concert was fabulous. I’m just finishing up my B.Mus in piano.
Pianistic writing refers to writing that is idiomatic to the piano. Some composers are better than others at writing music that fits well under the hand and is designed to make use of the piano (not the harpsichord, organ, clavichord and so on). Mozart was a fan of the (at the time fledgling) piano and favoured it above other keyboard instruments of the time. [He was exposed to it in England by J.C. Bach, son of Johann Sebastien].
Striding octaves - “octaves” refers to when someone plays two of the same note at the same time. So, instead of choosing to play D-E-F#, Mozart wrote the same notes in octaves to make the writing more difficult and brilliant. It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds. The “striding” part may refer to broken octaves that make the hand appear to “walk” on the keys, though I didn’t look up the score at this moment.
Likewise, the other things the author refers to are virtuosic effects for the pianist. Syncopations refer to the rhythm, where an unexpected beat is accented, and can sometimes refer to a section where the beat appears (to the ear) to have “shifted,” though this is more accurately termed “hemiola.”
Hands crossing is exactly that - the left crosses over the right to play very high notes or vice versa.
Tremolando, also referred to as tremolo though this is somewhat different, refers to rapidly repeating one note.
Finally, arpeggiated chords refers to taking one three- or four-note chord and repeating the same notes up and down the piano. For instance, instead of playing D-F#-A together, you would play them successively in three different octaves (locations) in quick succession. This is considered a technical feat and hey, it sounds good.
Hope this helps.
Octaves - as Emeria describes. If you’re unsure what octaves are, it’s two of the ‘same’ note, one higher than the other. When you get a church all singing together, generally the men will be singing an octave below the women. On the piano, this typically means playing with the thumb and little finger, and a series of these can produce a heck of a lot of sound. ‘Striding’ is just a metaphor rather than a technical term, possibly referring to a certain amount of leaping around the keyboard.
Syncopation - when a note comes before the beat on which the ear would ‘expect’ it. (Hemiola is a 3-against-2 pattern, the common example being in America from West Side Story, and to quibble, doesn’t necessarily involve syncopation)
