Dear friends,
Today I want to share with you my organ recital videos from Torun Poland where I performed an organ recital on May 4, 2019 for ProBaltica festival which was dedicated to the musical legacy of Stanislaw Moniuszko, a Polish composer who for some time was an organist at our Vilnius University St John's church in Vilnius. In the 1st part of the program I played on the 1688 organ at the Cathedral of Torun, Poland. 7 Dances from the Braunsberg Keyboard Tablature (17th c., East Prussia): Dance I-Galliard-Dance II-Chorea-Dance III-Alia-Saltarella
The 2nd half of the program was played on 1886 organ at the Cathedral of Torun, Poland.
Program: Juozas Naujalis (1869-1934) Prelude in G Major (ca. 3 min) Prayer in C# Minor (ca. 7 min) Reverie (arrangement for organ), original for string quartet (ca. 4 min) Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911) Fugue in C# minor (ca. 4 min) Fugue "Kyrie eleyson" (ca. 3 min) Stanislaw Moniuszko (1819-1872) Prelude in D Minor (ca. 2 min) Prelude in F Major (ca. 2 min) Vidas Pinkevicius (b. 1976) Veni Creator Spiritus, Op. 3 (2010) (ca. 7 min) Improvisation (ca. 8 min) M.K. Ciurlionis Canon in Ab Major (ca. 2 min) Pastorale in Db Major (ca. 2 min) V. Pinkevicius Toccata on the Themes by M.K. Ciurlionis, Op. 5 (2011) (ca. 6 min)
Let me know what you think...
By the time you hear this, I will be playing in Co-Cathedral of St John's of Valletta, Malta... Exciting week... PS If you want to find out more about my experiences in Torun and to see some pictures, check out these posts: My 1st day in Torun My 2nd day in Torun My 3rd day in Torun DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
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Thank you everyone for participating! You all made us very happy with your entries.@laputis and I selected the following winners. You can congratulate them here:
https://steemit.com/@organduo/winners-of-secrets-of-organ-playing-contest-week-18 DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
Have you ever wanted to start to practice on the organ but found yourself sidetracked after a few days? Apparently your inner motivation wasn't enough.
I know how you feel. I also was stuck many times. What helped me was to find some external motivation as well. In order for you to advance your organ playing skills and help you motivate to practice, my wife Ausra - @laputis and I invite you to join in a contest to submit your organ music and win some Steem. Are you an experienced organist? You can participate easily. Are you a beginner? No problem. This contest is open to every organ music loving Steemian. Here are the rules DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
Would you like to master Three Part Sinfonia No. 4 in D Minor, BWV 790 by J.S. Bach?
I have created this score with the hope that it will help my students who love early music to recreate articulate legato style automatically, almost without thinking. Thanks to Jan Pennell for her meticulous transcription of fingering from the slow motion video. Basic level. PDF score. 1 page. Check it out here This score is free for Total Organist students. DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL
Vidas: Hi guys, this is Vidas!
Ausra: And Ausra! V: Let’s start episode 435 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Gena, and she answers my question for Total Organist students on Basecamp, where I ask, “What are they struggling with this week.” So she writes: “Slow practice for accuracy” “Isolating tricky sections to practice them repeatedly”, and, “Faster more accurate manual changes” So basically, those three things were the most challenging for her, Ausra. Slow practice—let’s start with slow practice. Do you find yourself, Ausra, that you tend to play faster than it would be safer when you practice, or not? Can you control yourself? A: Well, I could not control myself when I was young. Now, the older I get, the slower I practice. V: Why was that, when you were younger you tended to speed up a little bit? A: Because I wanted to have a fast result! V: Did it help? A: No, it did not. V: And what made you to slow down? A: Well, because the slower I’ve practiced, the better the results are. And actually, the faster you get with the results. V: Didn’t you understand this when you were younger? A: Well, no. Of course, my teachers would tell me that, but I couldn’t listen. I had to experience it with my own…. V: ….mistakes A: Yes. What about you? Do you like slow practice? Do you find it beneficial? V: Actually, I do. Every day, I sit down on the organ bench, I practice something very slowly—maybe sightread a piece or two in a really slow tempo, maybe half speed. This gives me accuracy, just like Gena writes—slow practice for accuracy. It really helps. But, it wasn’t always that way with me, either. Like you, at the Academy of Music in Lithuania, I wasn’t very conscious about how I would practice, probably, so I would just run through the pieces in a comfortable manner, and mostly that would have been too fast, I would assume. It’s hard to remember now, because a lot of time has passed. A: Too much cholesterol in your blood, yes? Memory doesn’t work as well as you wish. V: Too much Easter eggs! The second point for Gena that she’s struggling with is isolating tricky sections—to practice them repeatedly. Well, this is really common for people, right? You play over and over again this piece from the beginning until the end, and you hope for the best results. Is this a good method? A: No, it’s not a good method, because you’re just wasting your time, because I don’t know any piece of music that would be equally hard from the first page until the last one. I think all music that is written, that is composed, has easier spots and harder spots, and you always have to determine which spots are harder, and which are easier, and you don’t have to practice them all the time in the same manner and play the piece through. Because, if you will do that this way, there will always be harder spots for you, where you will not feel as secure and as comfortable as you could. V: The only instance that I would probably approve of playing pieces repeatedly without stopping in shorter fragments is if you are really slow. If you’re taking an extremely slow tempo sight-reading a piece, and want to just get a good feeling of the piece. A: Or, if you are fluent with it, and you are ready to perform it. V: So basically, if you are not making mistakes, you can practice without stopping. A: Of course! V: That means you have to either slow down, or you have to reduce the texture, so that it is easy for you. Maybe take just one voice at a time, and then you can practice without stopping. But most people don’t do that, I guess. Right, Ausra? A: I’m not sure about other people, but for example, if I practice trio texture, then I find it more beneficial to practice maybe in a faster tempo, but to do it in two voices. V: Or even one voice, sometimes. A: Well, yes. Maybe at the beginning even one voice. V: So the third challenge Gena is struggling with is faster, more accurate manual changes. Hmm. What does she mean in your opinion, Ausra? A: That probably, it is hard for her to change manuals. V: Accurately. A: And, you know, in a very fast tempo, because very often, you don’t have much time to change manuals. V: And then if she changes manuals, then she makes a mistake or two. Right? She touches the wrong note, probably. A: I think it’s just a matter of more experience, maybe. V: And even, I would recommend, practicing those changes the other way around. If you have to jump from the lower manual to the upper, maybe do the other way around, from the upper to the lower as well, so that your muscle memory wouldn’t be just one way. A: Yes, and I would suggest even when you start to learn a new piece, and maybe you’re practicing on a one manual instrument, or you are practicing on a two manual instrument, but you are not making manual changes, because you are just learning text, start to think about manual changes right away, that you would know exactly where you will be switching off and changing it—that you could be mentally prepared right away. That will help. V: And also, you don’t know what kind of instrument you will be playing in the future, in public for example. Maybe you have to jump from the lower manual to the upper manual, or from the upper to the lower. Therefore, it’s good to practice both ways. Or even, sometimes, from the first manual to the third manual, and vice versa, if you have three manuals available. Do all kinds of possibilities. A: Plus, I’m also thinking about the compositional structure of the piece, because you rarely change the manual in between the phrase—in the middle of the phrase. Usually, it happens at the end of a phrase, after, let’s say, some sort of cadence. And it also gives you a little bit more of extra time, because we might slow down just a little bit at the end of the phrase, and take a breath before the next phrase. V: This reminds me. Sometimes, maybe fast manual changes are over exaggerated, maybe. Maybe sometimes we need, as you say, to take a breath, especially if you change the manual from the loud registration to the soft registration, you need to give a space for the echo to sound. A: Yes, especially if you are playing in large acoustics. Because, in a larger acoustics is the most space you need to give. V: Don’t rush, then. Drag. Ok, guys, please send us more of your questions; we love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice, A: Miracles happen. DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
Would you like to master Three Part Sinfonia No. 8 in F Major, BWV 794 by J.S. Bach?
I have created this score with the hope that it will help my students who love early music to recreate articulate legato style automatically, almost without thinking. Thanks to Gerrit Jordaan for his meticulous transcription of fingering from the slow motion video. Basic level. PDF score. 1 page. Check it out here This score is free for Total Organist students
DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
Vidas: Hi, guys, this is Vidas.
Ausra: And Ausra. V: Let’s start episode 432, of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast. This question was sent by Irineo, and he writes: Now that WAS an interesting post. I recall when I started to think of pedal exercises in order to achieve as close a legato as possible. I took a long look at the pedalboard and imagined which pedals would turn out to be most comfortable for each foot while playing scales upwards. Then downwards. It became clear rather soon that the bottom C would be perfect most of the time for your left foot while the upper C for your right. But when I started playing pieces a bit more demanding, I realized that not all the time that would be the case. For instance, when I played my own arrangement to Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", there's a measure where you should interchange your left and right feet at bottom C [while playing C(left)-F(right)-G(left)-C(right)-F(left)-G(right)-C(left)]. Afterwards I thought about what would happen if I turned things around while playing the "regular" or "standard" order while rehearsing scales/arpeggios. What I'm getting at is that maybe inverting the apparent "standard order" of playing could help Terry with his problem, because I'm of the opinion that NOTHING should warrant undergoing surgery (especially regarding your feet) only to solve a purely mechanical challenge, because you might actually create a bigger problem. Hope this helps him. Irineo. V: Remember, Ausra, we talked about Terry writing that certain passages on the pedal, would require surgery of his feet. Probably he was joking, obviously, but now, Irineo has his own experience to share. A: Well, if you will do something really stupid, while playing pedalboard too much—you might really need surgery. Because I’m trying to picture how would I play my right foot with the lowest C note in the pedal keyboard, and I cannot imagine that. I would probably really need surgery if I would to that regularly, or I would simply just fall down on the pedalboard. V: I guess you need to have long legs, first of all, and then you have to shift your lower body to the extreme right. And then, maybe, maybe, it’s possible, I don’t recommend it. A: I don’t think any composition is worth hurting yourself too much. So what I would do, I would rearrange that transcription, since it’s not original piece for organ—it’s piano piece. So you could easily arrange things your own way. Anyway, it’s not original so why not to do some more, take some more liberty… V: Mmm-hmm. A: and do things more suitable for yourself, and not torture yourself. That’s what I would do, because anyway, maybe it’s not a case with the men so much, but for women, usually women clothes are sort, of made of slippery fabric. V: Mmm-hmm. A: And then you are on the wooden bench, you would simply slide down on the pedal if you would move to extreme… V: Uh-huh. A: sides of the organ bench, or try to reach the extreme, with your left or right feet. V: Mmm-hmm. So guys, always try to maybe use the things that you have at hand creatively, and not to torture yourself, not to think that you have to take the score to the letter and play everything that is written, in the way it is written—especially if it’s an arrangement; especially if it’s a hymn; especially if it’s a choir piece; especially if it’s an accompaniment of some sort. Sometimes composers don’t have good grasp of organ capabilities and tend to write things that are simply not playable. So we as organists have the responsibility to adjust things. And never, ever, do something that is hurtful to your body. A: True! Plus when you are playing arrangements or transcriptions, always think that organ has so many stops, and you can manipulate a lot by just changing them. Because, let’s say if you are playing pedal, you might, and you need to know that, let’s say lower note, you could substitute something by just adding or changing stops. V: Right. A: Or manipulate in different octaves. V: Correct. Excellent! We hope this was useful to you guys. Please send us more of your questions. And we love helping you grow. And remember, when you practice… V: Miracles happen! DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
Would you like to master Three Part Sinfonia No. 7 in E Minor, BWV 793 by J.S. Bach?
I have created this score with the hope that it will help my students who love early music to recreate articulate legato style automatically, almost without thinking. Thanks to Jeremy Owens for his meticulous transcription of fingering from the slow motion video. Basic level. PDF score. 1 page. Check it out here This score is free for Total Organist students.
DON'T MISS A THING! FREE UPDATES BY EMAIL.
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Drs. Vidas Pinkevicius and Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene Organists of Vilnius University , creators of Secrets of Organ Playing. Our Hauptwerk Setup:
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