Don Juan

[r-pista]

Question about rehearsal F (starting in measure 7) of “Don Juan” by R.Strauss:
Do you all play the groupings of 5 in the right hand?
I know that many play it as 4’s as the tempo can really fly and it’s very loud at that point, but it’s for an audition so…
What say ye?
Thanks!

[Fearghal McCartan]

When playing this I found the easiest way to play the section was to split all the notes in these bars into groups of 3 – the first 3 notes LH, next 3 RH, next 3 LH etc as each bar = 2 sets of 9 notes. Hope that makes sense. This way all notes could be played without a loss of rhythm or tempo.

Best of luck with the audition.

Fearghal

[r-pista]

Thanks and yes, that does make sense, but then one will always end up starting the downbeat of the measure with a different hand, no? Jumping back to start from the left hand again would be virtually impossible…

[r-pista]

oops, i was wrong about that. I will try what you suggested. But if others have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

You don’t need nine notes when one of them is doubling. Leave out the repeated pitch and you will have 4 notes for each hand. It does go fast, too fast to reliably cross over and over again. That’s how we do it, as I was trained. Miss Lawrence would say, “speculate on the harmony”, meaning, read the chord and play the notes you can reach well, rather than read each note and try to get what is written exactly. It’s either not practical oftentimes, or badly written. As a rule, if you have the fundamental in the bass and the third above, leave out the third so you have an open fifth on the bottom. Unless you are playing third, fourth, fifth intervals chords, as in f, a, d, a.

[Harp One]

You don`t need to play all 9 notes, even in an audition.
Generally, omit one note. Play an 8 note pattern that is comfortable with you and make sense (just like Saul Davis Zlatkovski told you.).
Rehearsal F is really fast and 7 measure after F is faster. And getting faster and faster..

So here is what I do..
7 bar after F (I am omitting all the sharp marks.)
FCFA/FACE//FCFA/FACE
OR
FACF/EFAC//FACF/EFAC (If you have small hands.)

Don`t worry about not playing all 9 notes.
No problem at all!!

[r-pista]

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone. Of course, playing this in orchestra I would leave out one of the notes in the pattern of 5 for comfort and safety’s sake. But as it’s for an audition I thought that perhaps I should try and do exactly the way it is on the page. I tried Feargal’s method, but the crossing of the hands got a bit too busy for me.
When I studied this at college, Ms.Bride’s edition that we used had one of the notes in the ‘5 pattern’ crossed out- Saul correctly noted that it is the note that’s doubled anyway. Plus, it’s so loud there, nobody will miss one note!
Anyway, thanks again to all who commented. It always nice to get other input.

[Elizabeth Volpé Bligh]

I don’t have the music in front of me, but I believe that, in an audition, I would play LH 4,3,2,1,cross3, then play 4,3,2,1 in the RH.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

That’s a very good fingering to be comfortable with. A good one for playing five notes in the right hand is 43221. The second finger skips to the next string.

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