Anyone play "Asturias" on the piano?

[shniggens]

Anyone play the beautifual classical guitar piece "Asturias" (Suite Espagnole) on the piano?

 

I'm trying to learn it now (as a memorial to my brother, who used to play if beautifully on the guitar), and it can be quite the finger twister.

 

Anyone have any advice on playing this? When it moves to the Eb in the right hand, do you go over with the left? How about hitting those big chords and getting back to the rhythm?

 

Any advice would be great!

 

Thanks!

[Sven Golly]

Hey Shniggens... sorry to hear you're in a position where you have to play a memorial to a family member.

 

With that said, here's a Youtube vid I found of Asturias on the piano; not being familiar with the piece, not sure if this is a good rendition or not, but it's a good view of the fingering choices made by this player:

 

[video:youtube]

 

There seem to be a few others, you might be able to get the answers/ideas you need from those, in case nobody here has an answer for you.

[shniggens]

Thanks, that was most helpful.

 

I hope to play it at least that good someday.

 

btw, if anyone is unfamiliar with this piece, I suggest you check it out played on it's intended instrument -

 

[video:youtube]

 

Makes the piano version look kind of silly. But the piece intrigues me, and I can't play the guitar, so . . .

[VLH]

I learned this under the name "Leyenda" (legend). It's by Albeniz. It's not as difficult as it looks/sounds but does take some thinking and repetition.

 

In the opening and closing sections, where you have the large leaps, it's OK to leave a bit of a breath before the hitting the big fortissimo notes...the leap is unnatural on the keyboard and can sound rushed/forced if you try to play it exactly on the downbeat. It is better to allow enough temporal room to land accurately and with the appropriate force for the moment. In the performance posted, you can hear the player leaving a bit of space. The trick is to finesse the amount of space so that it prepares the listener's ear for the force of the attack by allowing a touch extra silence while allowing you to be sure of your note placement and controlled force. The performer in the video did not quite handle that with grace, but still this is a nice performance. It's not so much that the leaps are technically difficult as that the "slamming strum" of a guitar is not idiosyncratic to the piano, and so you have to find a way to deliver the same feeling on an instrument that is not capable of the original sound.

 

Also, there's a risk when playing the repeated notes that they will sound "hammered;" sometimes you'll hear people play those with all the delicacy of Rambo firing an Uzi at the latest group of stereotyped imaginary enemies of America. These notes actually need to be understated, and can have a bit of a shape to them--eg., think of a brook flowing steadily and rapidly rather than a ractchet cranking against a cog.

 

However, the middle section, which is to be a bit reminiscent of a flamenco vocalist, was done very tasefully by the performer. When I learned this, my teacher (a well-traveled pianist in her day) encouraged an even more rubato, lyric approach to the middle than that used here. But I like what this performer did.

 

It's a lot of fun to play. Part of your job is to not let the technical tricks control the mood--in fact, the real technical trick is shifting your own internal mood with appropriate speed to meet the needs of the music. You actually don't want people to say, "my how fast he/she plays." It doesn't have to be played at jetspeed to sound lovely. You can't and shouldn't make the piano sound like a guitar...the fingering is a technical problem, but the greater technical issue is helping the music sound natural to the piano. What's important is to allow the listener to enjoy the dramatic changes in force within the first section and it's recapitulation, and to contrast those with the the wistful mood of the middle section.