Has anyone performed the Saint-Saens Oratorio de Noel??

[elena-k-pohl]

Any advice/suggestions/personal experience stories are welcome!!

Thanks…

[David Ice]

Do a search about this piece in the archives…..there have been past postings about this.

[barbara-brundage]

Yes, it’s the trio. Lots to do there, for sure.

[phyllis-adams]

It’s a great piece – gorgeous music. Goes like a bat out of *#ll, so you really need to have the part memorized as there is virtually no time to think. Even the chords in the duo go quite quickly! And as David mentioned, a page tuner is mandatory if you cannot make an effective cut & paste part. Good luck – it IS worth the effort!

[elena-k-pohl]

Thank you for everyone’s helpful replies!!

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

It’s very tricky rhythmically, as you don’t play the downbeats. If you can memorize it, it will help. The page turns are murder.

[eliza-morrison]

This is one of my favorite pieces to play, and I especially love the trio. It is so beautiful!! I had more difficulty with the duet, as conductors sometimes take it at a really brisk tempo and your hands have to jump so much. My best advice (and I realize the Christmas holidays and your gig are over now) would be to be prepared to play it faster than is indicated; work very hard to get it fast so that it doesn’t want to fall apart if you get one of these super-fast tempo conductors. I guess that is good policy generally, but especially in this piece because of all the jumping in the right hand chords.

[Sylvia Clark]

I played this many years ago and didn’t remember having page turn problems, so I looked to see what I did.

[Sylvia Clark]

I also enlarged it a bit because I’m not good at reading tiny notes.

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