8. Serenade

Because I had familiarised myself with a recording of Serenade beforehand and fell in love with the mood, I was very eager to get to this song. It was also the first one I hadn't already heard or somehow attempted playing in the past, so the novelty intrigued me. Plus, I'm a sucker for minor keys, and this one is in D-minor. So yeah, it's got that quavering, mournful mood I can't resist. 

The triple stave makes a comeback, as this is another one of those pieces played left hand over right, so there's a lot of hand crossing going on to keep me alert and draw the uncharacteristic "big" motions out of me. I have to practise those parts very carefully because the subtle changes from one phrase to another have the potential to confuse my hands and fingers. Note the similarity between the excerpts in the images above and below. These passages immediately follow each other. At such points, it might feel like I'm about to repeat a phrase because the beginning is identical, but suddenly there'll be a subtle change that throws a wrench in everything, and I have to pay closer attention to where I am in the score or I'll mess up and get stuck in a loop forever. (Yikes!)

I really like the cantabile motion of the right hand, and the sort of syncopated way the tempo trips over those triplets, as though the moderato pace were a leisurely stroll that transforms for an instant into a skip and then just as quickly returns to its original form. It feels like a wrinkle. In time. :o)

I'm now working on understanding and articulating those quaver-to-semiquaver beams in the first two bars shown below. This isn't difficult in principle, but I find myself wondering what the difference would be between those two beams on the one hand and, on the other, the triplet in the third bar if the middle note were left out. The difficulty is that presumably each note in the triplet is worth one-third of a crotchet, while the semiquavers are worth one-quarter of the crotchet. So their rhythms really shouldn't map directly onto each other. I'm working on it. It's a subtle distinction, but I'd like to be able to make it at least detectable, both in my mind and in my playing.

This 8^vb (below) I didn't actually even see until I was perusing the score for bloggable pics. Luckily it was an easy fix, since the notes hadn't yet become deeply enough ingrained in my memory to make playing this an octave lower too problematic... 

 

But now that I think about it... I don't even want to know how many other things I've possibly overlooked! Well... I guess I do actually, since I want to be the best I can, but I really hope it's not too many. Or any! Fingers crossed. Figuratively speaking of course, as cross-hand playing is far more practicable than cross-fingered playing. The hand-over-hand articulation required in the final section supports this theory. 

Enough kidding around. Here's Alan Chan's rendition.