Fingerings for Lennox Berkeley’s Score:

Concert Study in E Flat Op.48 No.2

http://www.musicroom.com/se/ID_No/018809/details.html

Rating Reviews:

Current DipABRSM diploma peice, good to get a contrast of moods for it, by far not my favourite though.

See more reviews by Scott Hesford - (Barnsley, United Kingdom)

I'm not a fan of this piece. I found it uninteresting but it is on the DipABRSM so was worth looking at as a concert piece. Personally I would not play it.

See more reviews by Simon - (Leeds, United Kingdom)

 

Written by Siwen Wong

 

My 12-year old typical small Chinese frame student wants to sit for ATCL exam on the beginning of June, she is my “part-time” student, why? Because her mum is also a qualified piano teacher with LRSM, her family would fly in with her for a few days on every two or three month’s basis, learned intensively before flying home, this has gone on since last August. During last learning session (April 1st to 4th) I realized her repertoire was not balanced as lacked of a modern piece, so I advised her to learn Lennox Berkeley’s Concert Study in E flat Op.48 No.2. I asked her to listen from YouTube and we found out there was no performer available playing this piece and there was only a CD performed by a kiwi pianist. Later my student and her mum also informed me that they couldn’t find much information about this concert study, so I told her, “Learned it well, record it and put it on YouTube to let people criticizing or flattering!”

I first started teaching this Concert Study back in 1994 (That’s almost twenty years ago!) when four of my students decided to sit for ABRSM Advanced Certificate, (Advanced Certificate somehow didn’t last long and it changed back to DipABRSM again) I remember I ordered the score all the way from England and paid something kind of unbelievable to my eyes, it was a very expensive score with a hard cover and it almost looked like a Zerox copy!

I remember the ABRSM examiner was Dr. Marc Rochester, somebody told me Dr. Rochester was very famous for “once failing all the diploma candidates in an Asian country”, but my students’ performances did survive without a “holocaust” under his scrutinized stringent ears, eyes and taste. In fact one of my students even scored an A in his performance section. When Dr. Rochester emerged from the examination hall he “hissed” to me, “He is good!” BUT he failed my student’s viva voce. I think this was my ultra bright student's only failure in all his past exams, ten years later he earned his PHDs from Cambridge University and now is a CEO working in England.

If students without strong fingers I think it is hard for them to learn this piece, also there is no fingerings given for this printed score thus discouraged many students from learning it, how many confidence and hardworking piano teachers would come to an extend spending a day or two to edit the fingerings just to let a few diploma students (or just let the students figured out fingerings by themselves) sitting for this piece? If students just simply play with any fingerings that they like, I am not that optimistic if such student can produce a smooth, even and good interpretative playing. When applying feasible fingerings, a piano teacher himself/herself has to have some ideas, learning experience and knowledge regarding compositional styles of a modern piece, how and where to express the intensities of phrases the climax of the piece and the articulation of a piece. There was no pedaling given on the score too, as always the middle lyrical contrasting section is where you can apply more pedals, but the exposition and recapitulation should be percussive, I told my students, “Imagine its bass like a electric guitar bass (Instead of like a cello or double bass).”

I learned Britten’s concerto before, so this Berkeley’s concert study didn’t sound weird to me at all when the music first reached my ears, in fact I thought it was such a nice little modern piece, the more you play it you will grow fonder of it. For those students who think this piece doesn’t sound as nice then I advise you to listen more modern music, I think modern pieces need acquiring taste and youngsters should be able to grasp it faster than old folks!

Personally I think this concert study is a well composed piece, with sufficient musical depths and balance. It also can show a student’s flawless techniques, understanding of music and artistic attained, in short what a student has he can flaunt it and this is also a good encore piece.

In order to encourage more students to learn this piece for DipABRSM, ATCL exam or to broadcast it in YouTuve, I share with you the fingerings of this Berkeley’s score. But let me clarify here: I have to change in many occasions regarding the fingerings to cater the needs of different kind of little small hands of Asian girls who may have to use ‘bracketed” fingerings or some really long fingers learner should also use “bracketed” fingerings that I specially indicated. With this minimum guild over the fingerings, hopefully some of you can come out even with some other better fingerings.