I hope I am not posting too much too fast, but I also redid Grieg's Arietta (Lyric Pieces) op.12/1.

Sorry, Richard, but this one cannot go up on the site. There are some real nice places where you play very nice and lyrical (haha - it's a Lyric piece), but your rhythm is off in a couple places. Specifically:

Bar 10 - you didn't hold the second quarter note long enough, so there is not the required two beats in the measure.

3rd bar from the end - same thing as above.

Also, I feel there is too long a pause between bars 4 and 5.

Back to square one!

Try again...

In some ways your previous version was better.

It's almost as if you had misread Monica's comment about the gap between bars 4 and 5, and you thought she meant you should increase it. But she said it was too big, and I agree (which is saying something, because we don't always agree about gaps!). As it happens, I didn't really notice it at first, but listening more carefully, there was a slight gap, and there should be none.

But in your newer recording you have increased this gap, and also inserted similar gaps between bars 6 and 7, 8 and 9, and 16 and 17. This could be a result of your playing the whole thing a bit faster now, which is otherwise a good thing, it helps the piece flow more. But it's more important for the gaps to disappear than to have this flow. Ideally I'd like both, but if I can only have one, then give me gap-free.

In bar 10, where Monica pointed out the second note was not long enough, this is a little better but still not quite in time. Where it comes again 4 bars before the end, this is OK now.

There is also something wrong with bar 12. The second note comes a little early (that is to say before the 4th beat if we think of the piece as being in 4/8 rather than 2/4), and you also seem to be creating a 5th beat in which to play those two grace notes which lead to the next bar. This should not happen, they should be tucked in somehow without disturbing the rhythm. Same problem in the second last bar of the piece. Your inner clock is letting you down, perhaps you should reconsider your ban on metronomes.

Also in bar 12, the two grace notes should flow smoothly to their target, but the effect is marred by the second grace note (the lower G) being closer in time to the first grace note (E) than it is to the target high G. This is much better into the last bar of the piece, perhaps because you relax more when you see the rit coming.

I think this is much more flowing than previous versions. I did not hear anything really wrong but I have to agree your timings are a bit funny.
I'm all for leaving some breathing space between phrases, but you overdo them making them into pauses/hesitations. Apart from that I think it is a big improvement.

Again, I think practicing with a metronome would help you, Richard. You say you don't like to do that, but tell me how you are able to keep a pulse here? It's impossible. In many bars you hold out the last note far too long. Please, try using your metronome for a few times before you poo-poo the idea. You know the notes, and most of your rhythm is okay, but your pulse is off. This can be easily corrected via your metronome. It's helped me many times!

While agreeing with Monica and Rainer, I do feel it to flow better now. I shall have to digest Rainer's suggestions and work on them.

I think part of the problem might be that for so many years I was my sole public and critic and this was part of my repertoire, in a way Chenov, Camilleri and Bortkiewicz were not. Not having a discerning public meant I became sloppy.

Richard, this is precisely why I praised my metronome in my post at viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4690

I do not get you, Eddy. Are you saying it flows better because of a metronome I do not have or are you saying I became sloppy because I have no metronome?

I has another go at it yesterday. I am not sure I like it all that much, but anyway, I seem to be winning the battle against recorder fright: I hear no knees knocking against each other!

Hi Richard,
I was just responding to your having stated that you've gone so long without critical ears listening to you, and was making the point that the metronome is intolerable to tempo fluctuations, and therefore has served me well while maturing a work for presentation. It would serve you in the same way.

You will be saying the metronome helps your musicality next.

Well, we shall not quarrel over that; you just go on keeping time with your metronome and I go on keeping time with my heart!

This is much better in terms of getting rid of the inter-phrase gaps.

Bar 12 is still broken (and the same comments apply to bar 22). I think you manage to make it roughly the right length overall, so that you arrive at the beginning of bar 13 at the correct moment in time, but you are playing the second chord (G and Bb) much too early. It should come on the 4th beat but you've shifted it forward to almost the 3rd beat, presumably to make room for the two grace notes. You almost seem to be trying to play the grace notes as timed semiquavers, but that would be wrong. Play them independently of the other notes. Make them as fast or slow as feels right to you, subject to the constraints that all the non-grace notes should be played without (or with only the merest hint of) rubato, that the E grace note should come after the 4th beat chord, and that the G grace note should come as far as possible halfway between the E and the G main note. It's perhaps too mathematical, but a starting point might be to play the grace notes as the 2nd and 3rd notes of a triplet which starts with the 4th beat chord.

Towards this end it may help to play both notes of the 4th beat chord with the left hand, leaving the right hand free to concentrate on the grace notes, and to play them in whichever way is most comfortable. I would suggest playing the E with 2nd finger and the G with the 1st, so that you have 1-5 for the G-G octave. But before you decide how to play the grace notes, make sure the 4th beat chord really does come on the 4th beat, by playing bars 11-13 a few times while omitting the grace notes.

You took our encouragement of the previous recording "flowing better" too much to heart, I think, because it is now (for my taste at least) too fast, losing much of the lyric quality this piece should have. If that is what you meant when you said "I am not sure I like it all that much", that's wonderful. But increasing the speed to this extent was not wasted effort. It proves that you are capable of it at well above target speed without making those ugly gaps; you have built up a "reserve" of technical ability and now no longer have any need to worry about notes. Now you can drop the speed back a bit again, and relax enjoy it more, and think a little bit more about general musicality and phrasing.

In that department I found that there is too much focus on each bar, too much accenting the 1st and 3rd beats. This is particularly evident in bars 1 and 3, slightly less so in 2 and 4. Think in longer phrases. During all of bar 1 you want to build towards the beginning of bar 2, then slope away again, and so on.

Do you think of bars 7 and 8 as being an echo of bars 5 and 6? You have made a big reduction in volume here, which seems too much.

But every time I play, I play only with my heart.

Ah, but do you ever play?