Parish-Alvars' Serenade for Harp – Opus 83

[Alison]

Could you check your copy for me as the first line has lower octave B then 10ths in the left hand, and I do not have an original version (I am working with DW’s version in his 4th volume) but coincidentally I came across the excerpt in Tournier’s LA HARPE method book on page 54 and they are written as straight octaves. Think it sounds better in 10ths but is easier to memorize and play the octave with the harmonic, ah well nothing’s particularly easy is it….. Carl will know….!

[Alison]

Having found the original on imslp I think the answer is that it varies and is different again (or perhaps the same) on the last page in the reprise, but I will have to study it.
http://imslp.org/wiki/S%C3%A9r%C3%A9nade,_Op.83_%28Parish-Alvars,_Elias%29

[carl-swanson]

Alison- I have played and performed the David Watkins version for years. I don’t have my copy in front of me. But I believe I just play the low B flat first(before the beat) and then play the upper notes. It sounds nice like that. David didn’t include the key-slide measures at the end. I have those measures. Geraldine Ruegg who studied with Renie before and after the war and who translated Renie’s Methode into English, gave them to me and said that she really liked them in there. If I ever play the Serenade again I’m going to try the key slide measures.

[Alison]

I don’t understand what you mean by slide measures, is there a key or a transposition down a tone, and if so, where ? I must have a recording on LP or cassette somewhere but can’t locate that now and all I can find is one recording on CD since 1995. My brain knows the flow of the piece to listen to, it’s a lovely piece.

[carl-swanson]

Alison- There are about 8 or 10 measures missing from the David Watkins edition of the Serenade. They occur just before the final page. They lead up to, and include, a tuning key slide cadenza, in which the player holds a metal tuning key against the string fairly close to the soundboard and plucks the string(between the tuning key and the soundboard), then slides the tuning key up a little bit and plucks the string again, doing this over and over again to produce a descending cascade of pitches until the player is playing the full length of string without the tuning key, playing that very low right handed trill. I think if it is done right, it must be quite effective. Did you not know about this?

[carl-swanson]

Alison- I just went on youtube. There are 3 harpists that do some version of the key slide.

The first one is Dorotea Pedini and although she doesn’t play the slide, you can see the music throughout the piece and see what is written at the key slide(although she doesn’t play it). Go to 6:18 or a little earlier on her video to see the missing music.

Carol Kihm plays the whole Serenade, including the key slide. I’m not crazy about how she chooses to play it, but it’s there to see. Go to 6:46 on her video.

Hdemia Palmanova also plays the whole Serenade, including the key slide. Again, I’m not crazy about her way of playing it. You can see it at 6:40 on her video.

[Gretchen Cover]

What a beautiful and incredibly difficult piece. If you go to youtube and watch Dorotea Pedini (be sure to type Serenata Alvars Pedini – I still don’t know how to put links on HC) you can follow the actual score.

[carl-swanson]

Alison- Parish-Alvars is the only composer I can think of where players have occasionally changed a measure here or there, because something that he wrote just didn’t seem to work musically. I think that must be the reason that there are different versions of his music. David Watkins made his own version, and as I said earlier, left out the key slide. But even when I played Davids version, I made some slight changes, not to make it easier, but because I felt that what Parish-Alvars had written didn’t fit as well into the piece. Even Zabaleta, when he recorded the Introduction, Cadenza, and Rondo, made some changes(for the better). So don’t go nuts looking for the ‘original’ version. I’m not sure that it works all that well.

When I was learning both the Serenade and the Introduction, Cadenza, and Rondo, I got the sense that Parish-Alvars probably wrote and published these pieces before he had really performed them, and probably made changes himself later which never got published. In a couple of the performances I found on Youtube, the players had used an alternate version of one or more of the little cadenzas, the alternate being much easier. I never did that. The changes I’m talking about involve making a measure, most often in one of those cadenzas, sound better, but didn’t make them easier.

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