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It’s on page 382 of Act 3. The Dance of the Hours has various sections: The Hour of the Dawn, Dance of the Hours of Daytime, Dance of the Hours of the Evening, and Dance of the Hours of Night. It looks exactly the same as the one that we play as a stand-alone piece in symphony concerts. This is the piece made famous in the first Fantasia by Walt Disney, with the dancing hippos and crocodiles.
http://imslp.org/wiki/La_Gioconda_(Ponchielli,_Amilcare)
The whole score is here, so if you know which act in which to look, this should answer your question.
I have only played Dance of the Hours on its own, so I can’t answer your question off the top of my head.There are good method books, such as Salzedo’s Method for the Harp, and videos all over youtube, but you really need a teacher in order to get it right. Even if you can only manage every second week, it is better than nothing.
I bought myself an comfy adjustable chair with a back so that I would be able to sit through long symphonies, but if I only had a bench, then I would probably put a chair beside the harp for the long waits. Percussionists often sit down on chairs when they are not running back and forth from one instrument to another.
Brenda Dor-Groot and Sabine Meijers founded International Jazz harp Foundation and run blues courses every year. I attended one they gave at the International Harp Workshop in Italy, where I was also teaching.
http://www.jazzharp.org/pagina.php?id=133
Here is their catalogue of music:
http://www.jazzharp.org/shop.phpYou can develop your sight-reading skills by doing a little bit every day. Anna Dunwoodie has published a great series of sight-reading books just for harpists. Since our orchestra often does three different programs in a week, I don’t get enough time to completely memorize them, so I refer to the music to stay on track. However, sometimes there are jobs where you get the music when you arrive, or the day before. So it’s a good skill to be able to immediately transfer what you see on the page to how it feels in your fingers.
If I see a four-finger bisbigliando in a harp part, I break it into a two-handed trill, unless there is something else that must be played in the left hand. In orchestral music, it sounds better to split up the bisbigliando between two hands and leave out any extraneous bass chords that are already covered by the rest of the orchestra.
If you relax your hand completely, that is where the thumb joint should be. As long as you are not letting the thumb collapse into the space between it and your other fingers, it should work fine. I am curious to see what this problem is. I have had a couple of students whose thumbs were prone to collapsing into the palm, but they were able to solve the problem by relaxing between every note. Try that and let me know if it helps. I would not try to extend it beyond where it normally sits when at rest. In fact, that could possibly be injurious.
@Walter-Küne FANTAISIE ON A THEME FROM THE OPERA EUGENE ONEGIN: Ekaterina Walter-Küne used the piano version by the pianist Pabst. Performances of the piano version can be found on youtube. Example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHheSxAjB0 by Roberto Cominati, piano. You can distinctly hear the repeated bars, and the A flats mentioned.
There are two editions by Erdely and Milda Agazarian. Does anyone know where I would find the original version?I wrote to a prominent Russian harpist, who agreed that the two bars are missing and should be put back in. She also mentioned that the A should be flat in the left hand in bar 95 (back to A natural in the right hand on the third beat) and also in bar 103, returning to natural in the next bar. I listened to the waltz from the opera again, and sure enough, she is right. It makes for hairy pedalling, but it works.
We were playing this piece once with our former music director, Sergiu Comissiona. It may have been dragging a bit, so he commented, “You are playing Pavane for a Dead Princess, not Dead Pavane for a Princess.”
I just discovered another anomaly, which I noticed from some harpists’ recordings of earlier editions of this piece. The two-bar phrase from bar 67 to 68 (in the waltz section) should repeat, as in the original opera by Tchaikowsky. The repeat is omitted in the 2005 Agazarian edition. I just performed it, without the repeat, and now I am going to try to put it in for the next time I play this. Thoughts?
Help is on the way. Check your email. One of the biggest challenges of this piece is the counting. I have marked in lots of cues and split the multi-rests. The cadenza is rhythmic, and often is conducted. The harpist has to be together with the violinist, so it really helps to have a copy of the violin part and know exactly what to listen for. Ask to be as close as possible to the soloist, so that you can hear each other. Good luck!
Teachers at colleges and universities are looking for students with potential, so as long as you do a good audition and show that you have talent, you will get accepted somewhere. For universities, of course, your high school marks make a difference. Prepare your audition material well, and you should be fine. Check each college’s web site for their audition and entrance requirements.
Have you read “The Inner Game of Music” by Barry Green? There are some great books and articles about stage fright. Also, it makes a big difference if you break down your practising into VERY small chunks and repeat them at least ten times slowly each practice session, until the circuits start firing more smoothly. Be able to start at any one of these chunks. Do several “practise performances” before you have to do the real one. This can be for an audience of teddy bears, but it will stimulate the adrenalin, and help you learn how to cope with it.
