midiviz

Repertoire draft: collections 3 and 4

Draft programme. Pieces, order and timings are proposals; durations are typical performances, not our measured MIDI. Each piece runs as its own Short, and the order is the release order, planned the way a recital is.

Already complete: One-Minute Piano Discoveries and Quiet Discoveries (see README.md).

Collection 3 — Melody and Harmony

Eight songs without words, from Paris to Moscow to Brno, 1848–1914

A melody you can sing back, with harmony that turns somewhere you don’t expect. The programme starts in daylight, darkens through Schumann and late Liszt, and ends with Grieg remembering the very first tune of Quiet Discoveries.

  Piece Composer Year Key Duration
1 D’un jardin clair (Of a bright garden) Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) 1914 — ≈2:00
2 Romance sans paroles, Op. 17 No. 3 Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) c. 1863 A-flat major ≈2:30
3 Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) 1909 G major ≈2:00
4 A Blown-Away Leaf, from On an Overgrown Path, Book I Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) 1900s — ≈2:30
5 Bird as Prophet, Forest Scenes Op. 82 No. 7 Robert Schumann (1810–1856) 1849 G minor ≈3:00
6 Nuages gris (Grey clouds), S. 199 Franz Liszt (1811–1886) 1881 — ≈3:00
7 Prelude, Op. 32 No. 5 Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) 1910 G major ≈3:00
8 Remembrances, Lyric Pieces Op. 71 No. 7 Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) 1901 E-flat major ≈2:00
        Total ≈20:00

Programme notes in brief

  1. Boulanger. A bright opening from a composer who died at 24, and the first woman to win the Prix de Rome. The harmony glows rather than resolves.
  2. Fauré. A long-breathed melody while the inner voices slide by half steps underneath. A teenage piece that already sounds like Fauré.
  3. Ravel. The tune spells H-A-Y-D-N in notes, then comes back backwards and upside down, all inside a polite minuet.
  4. Janáček. A tune shaped like a folk song keeps swerving into unexpected keys, the way speech changes direction mid-sentence.
  5. Schumann. The programme’s strange centre: a hovering, chromatic bird call framing a hymn-like middle section.
  6. Liszt. Seventy years old, Liszt writes a bare melody over chords that belong to no key, and stops without an ending. The darkest point of the programme.
  7. Rachmaninoff. After Nuages gris, light returns: a still, high melody over rippling accompaniment, unusually calm for Rachmaninoff.
  8. Grieg. His last Lyric Piece quotes the Arietta he wrote 34 years earlier as a fading waltz. It closes both this collection and the arc that began with Quiet Discoveries.

Reserves: Debussy Canope · Liszt En rêve, S. 207 · Brahms Intermezzo Op. 76 No. 3 · Chopin Prelude Op. 28 No. 13 · Scriabin Prelude Op. 11 No. 13 · Rachmaninoff Étude-tableau Op. 33 No. 8 (already in the library)

Collection 4 — Bravura

Eight showpieces most audiences haven’t heard, 1829–1911

Medium-to-advanced pieces that excite without the usual encores. The order climbs: light fingerwork first, then sparkle, storm and fairy-tale menace, and finally the twentieth century arrives with Bartók and Prokofiev.

  Piece Composer Year Key Level Duration
1 Scherzo, Op. 16 No. 2 Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) 1829 E minor Medium ≈2:00
2 Étincelles (Sparks), Op. 36 No. 6 Moritz Moszkowski (1854–1925) 1880s — Advanced ≈2:30
3 Traumes Wirren (Dream’s confusions), Op. 12 No. 7 Robert Schumann 1837 F major Advanced ≈2:30
4 Prelude, Op. 28 No. 16 Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) 1839 B-flat minor Advanced ≈1:00
5 Gnomenreigen (Dance of the gnomes), S. 145 No. 2 Franz Liszt 1863 F-sharp minor Advanced ≈3:00
6 Étude-tableau, Op. 33 No. 6 Sergei Rachmaninoff 1911 E-flat minor Advanced ≈1:45
7 Allegro barbaro Béla Bartók (1881–1945) 1911 — Medium–advanced ≈2:30
8 Suggestion diabolique, Op. 4 No. 4 Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) 1908 — Advanced ≈2:30
          Total ≈17:45

Programme notes in brief

  1. Mendelssohn. Written at twenty: quick, light and transparent. An easy entry to the collection.
  2. Moszkowski. Once in every great pianist’s encores, now rarely played. Repeated notes flicker like sparks.
  3. Schumann. Feathery figuration that never settles, interrupted by a slow, hymn-like middle.
  4. Chopin. The hardest of the Preludes: six crashing chords, then one breathless minute of running notes.
  5. Liszt. Gnomes dart in staccato, then the middle section turns fierce and harmonically wild.
  6. Rachmaninoff. A storm in under two minutes. MIDI already in the library.
  7. Bartók. The piano played like a drum, with hammered chords over a driving ostinato. Its 1911 audience had heard nothing like it.
  8. Prokofiev. The finale: a seventeen-year-old’s dissonant, leaping, diabolical toccata.

Reserves: Alkan Toccatina (already built, 1:29) · Grieg Butterfly, Op. 43 No. 1 · Scriabin Étude Op. 42 No. 5 · Debussy Les collines d’Anacapri · Mendelssohn Spinning Song, Op. 67 No. 4 · Moszkowski Étude Op. 72 No. 6

Before production