Delius Cello Concerto

[niina]

I’ve just been given 3 weeks to learn the Delius Cello Concerto piece. On the whole it’s not difficult, until you come to bar 81 where there are about 30 pedal changes in 6 bars. Including the section before this, there are 93 pedal changes in 23 bars. Has anyone played this piece, and how on Earth did you manage the pedal changes from bar 81?! I was told by the conductor, to play anything even if they are the wrong notes, as long as I come in on time, but because it’s also going out on Classic FM, I’m not prepared to do that :/ Any advice please! Oh, and I’m the only harpist playing.
I also have the Florida Suite and Peer Gynt to do at the same concert.

Niina

P.S. The score is a bit messy because 3 or 4 people have all rubbed the previous player’s changes out and marked their own.

[catherine-rogers]

I haven’t sat down and actually tried it for this excerpt but is there any way to rewrite some of this enharmonically to eliminate some pedal changes? If this section isn’t terribly exposed, can a note here or there be omitted to simplify the pedals?

[niina]

Hi Catherine
Thanks for your reply, but guess what? That is after I rewrote it enharmonically!! You should have seen it before. In this section, the Harp can be heard quite clearly.
Niina

[kimberly-rowe]

Thanks for entering the piece in the library Niina! To tag it, just type the @ symbol before the name of the piece or composer. You’ll see a drop down menu where you can choose the piece. Then you’ll automatically link to the piece like this: @[[concerto-for-violincello-and-orchestra:Piece:Concerto for Violincello and orchestra (Delius, Frederick Theodore Albert)]]. Since we’ve tagged it now, this thread should show up whenever anyone looks at that piece in the future.

[diane-michaels]

I’m giving myself a day off from the harp, so I don’t have my harp set up to play, which hampers things a little – hopefully I don’t have you stepping on wrong pedals with the following ideas.

What precedes this passage – and does that interfere with any efforts to preset a couple of the pedals? If you started the measure with D, C, B, and F’s sharp, E, G and A’s natural, that would be ideal – you wouldn’t have to move anything during that measure. I’ve only looked at 2 mm, but maybe this can be a start for you:

Pretending that you could have a D# preset, everything else natural, move F&C to sharp beat 1, move B to sharp beat 2. On this beat, LH plays a B# instead of C natural, RH plays a D# instead of E flat. No more pedals in this measure, still use a B# for the C natural. Measure 2, beat 1, move G to sharp and back to natural before beat 2, on beat 2, move your F to natural, use F natural and an enharmonic in RH as you’ve indicated. If the conductor is open to you reducing notes, get rid of the RH F# on beat 3, and if you were already planning on dropping whatever note that is on beat 4, go with that and move your G to # and your D to natural. Without a harp handy (or footy, as it were), I’m bailing out at this point. I think once you get through the 1st 2 beats of the third measure, things calm down, relatively speaking. If you wanted to drop more notes, maybe get rid of the B flat in the LH, beat 3 of the 5th measure – that will eliminate 2 left foot changes in that measure.

[diane-michaels]

One more thing – I find that the cleaner the part, the easier it is to learn, and have found that 15 minutes or so typing out a passage in finale eliminates twice that in practice time. Thanks to those who came before you, this part already looks harder than it needs to be. Once you find your solution, if you can rewrite in and tape it in the score, you’ll save your brain from trying to decipher an gaggle of harpists’ markings.

[niina]

Thanks Diane
That worked for the first few bars. Thankfully though I now have a 2nd harpist. We will share the top and bottom notes between us.

[diane-michaels]

How about alternating beats between the two of you?

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