Hey, how's it going?
Welcome back to another episode of TwoSet Violin!
Yee!
We did a video before where we were like,
"Here are five pieces that sound impressive,
- but they're not actually not that hard." - Yep.
Good value!
Now, today's the opposite, alright?
So we're gonna present five pieces that are
way, way, way harder than they sound.
That means if you play it to someone
that's not like, a violinist,
they might just be like, "Uhhh..."
But if you play these pieces well to any serious violinist,
they will be like, "Respect."
So it's still good value!
You just need to know, and hopefully with this video,
more people will know.
- So, alright, we got five pieces here. - Oh.
Number one: Bach Andante-
Well, actually, to be honest,
pretty much all of Bach's six sonatas and partitas.
- I think Brett- - Very hard!
I spent too much of my life on it!
- Yeah, Brett played this piece for... inter- uhh... nation- - A Bach competition.
- No, you played it for Kendall! - Oh, nation- oh, I did! I did! It got me in!
- Hahaha! - (Eddy) He played it for like,
an Australian national-level competition.
Before you explain why it's harder than it sounds,
- do you wanna just... play a bit, yeah. - I'll- I'll just play it first.
Doesn't sound that impressive!
And it's meant to sound casual.
It's not meant to sound difficult,
but the reason why this is so hard
is because you're basically playing
soloist and the accompaniment at the same time, right?
- Not soloist, but the main melody. Yeah. - Yeah, you're playing the melody and the accompanist.
- Except you only have one bow and one left hand. - (Brett) Yeah.
It's easy to break the melody,
because you're worried about the accompaniment.
So an example would be like this:
That melody was like:
It's meant to sound like- do you want to play melody,
- and I'll do the accompaniment? - Yeah, so it's meant to sound like this:
But now, do that together, alright?
It's not just that. Actually, the tricky part about this is
you have to tune to the A and G string from the D as well.
So yeah, if you get it wrong- if you pick the wrong E...
- You're screwed, because... - Yeah... yeah.
- The 4th doesn't work there. - Yeah.
And there's also perfect 4ths and perfect 5ths,
which is very exposed.
That's why it's so hard, and that's for the whole piece.
Sounds like a casual stroll, but it's actually like...
- Underneath the hood. - Dude- dude, the hand, the fingers are like...
And you have to play-
Let's say we're playing on the D string, on this plane, right?
You can move around here, and you're still on...
- You're still on D string. - (Eddy) Yeah.
But for this, you literally have to lean...
as close as you can to the G string without touching it.
- The tiniest angle change will make or break in this one. - Yep, so if you go...
- "Aww, whoops. You touched it. Aww, broke it." - (Eddy) Aww, yep.
Cool! That's number 1.
- Number 2 is a piece - Wuah...
I actually learned when I was in high school,
but now that I'm more experienced,
I've realized that I never played it properly.
- Actually, both the romances are hard, but - Yeah, they're pretty hard.
I think No. 2 especially, sounds deceptively easy.
- First of all, it's in freakin' F Major! - (Eddy) Ugh...
It's a hard key to umm...
To resonate and make your violin ring.
'Cause [in] F, we have no open strings.
You know, half the struggle is
trying to make your violin resonate.
And a lot of it is...
- Like, high up on the A and D strings, - Yeah, agh!
- which are the least resonant, alright? - Ohh! Ohh!
Like, high E...
Powerful.
High G...
Also powerful, but high A and D are a bit...
And then to sustain the sound,
to have these long lines without any breaks in the sound,
and to make it sing is actually very difficult.
And you gotta balance all your vibrato for all your fingers too.
Like, you know, first, second and third fingers are stronger, right?
And normally, your pinkie is a lot weaker,
so the pinkie needs to be just as strong to make the melody sing.
Sounds easy, but not easy!
Same with his concerto too.
- The concerto just sounds like a bunch of scales, - Ahh, yeah.
- but as all musicians know, - Ahh, yeah.
to play scales musically is like, the hardest thing.
- And you're super exposed. - Yeah.
Like, Beethoven concerto is like...
There's no forgiveness on intonation.
Number 3...
[No.] 5 is definitely the most musically complex.
It was funny, because when I played it on virtual tour, alright,
you think that I would be practicing, before going on stage,
my Paganini... or my Shostakovich.
But I was actually- Brett would know...
- Backstage, I was practicing my Mozart the most. - Mo- oh, for sure!
Something about the Mozart is like... any tiny bit of tension...
- Just feels like, "Ahh!" - I feel like it's too easy to make it sound not musical and boring.
It's not even that.
Mozart needs to sound effortless.
And so, when you have the tiniest bit of like, tenseness in the sound,
it doesn't sound effortless.
Yeah, and you don't want to sound like
you're playing a Romantic concerto... on Mozart,
where it should be really elegant, playful, and joyful.
I dunno, I just found that the Shostakovich, alright,
even when you're a bit more tense,
- you can kind of dig in and still sound like Shostakovich. - Mhm.
But with Mozart, the articulation needs to be so refined,
and if you're a little bit tense, like, the phrasings...
That's already not good enough, right?
You can't just be like...
- That's not Mozart. It's like... - (Brett) Yeah.
That, I was tense already.
Yeah!
Every articulation is like...
- You have to hit the sweet spot... - Mhm.
In terms of bow, contact, sound, even the left hand vibrato.
- If it's not in the sweet spot, I feel like it breaks the whole thing. - Yeah.
So you could do everything well-
Like, Eddy was practicing a lot like...
Yeah.
If you miss that... Fuahh! You just ruined the whole phrase.
- Yeah, yeah. - It's like, one note kills everything!
And then, musically, for Mozart,
you have to bring out the characters in the music.
It's almost like an opera, right? With different characterizations,
and you have to think about how this phrase is meant to sound like
[a] sexy soprano or like, the funny tenor
- or the handsome baritone or whatever, right? - (Brett) Yeah.
- And under pressure! - Mhm.
Actually, all of them so far are under pressure.
But I feel like out of the three...
- Mozart and Bach are the ones under pressure. - You'll crack!
Because you can't hide.
See, like, Shostakovich, alright?
I can like, "I'm a bit nervous!"
I can just be expressive!
But Mozart, you can't do that! You can't go...
- That's not Mozart. It has to be... - (Brett) Yeah.
Yeah.
I think the bow speed... the mastery of the bow speed
to make it interesting, the phrasing.
Ultimate control!
Also that Mozart has one of the most infamous openings.
Like, this first note...
Orchestra plays like, 2 minutes,
you haven't touched anything yet, right?
And then, the orchestra stops...
Silence. The whole concert hall!
Yeah, it's like, "It's your turn!"
The first two notes,
you have to appear out of thin air perfectly, like...
It just needs to sound like the sunrise.
- *Whoosh* - (Brett) Yeah, and
'cause you're in a concert hall,
you need to make this sound.
You can't just...
- Get away with... - Mmm, yeah.
No sound, you need...
But then it can't sound pressed.
- It can't sound pressed. The sound needs to kind of like, go into you. - (Eddy) Yeah.
- The control you need for that opening is just like, aww, man. - (Brett) Yeah.
You know, it's such a simple melody, right?
It's just an A Major triad, and because of that,
- ironically, it becomes very hard... to do it well. - Mhm.
- Number 4, Bach at it again, is Bach. - Haha.
I had to put this one in, because I struggled learning this one a lot,
and I kind of just gave up on performing it back in uni.
I wanted to learn the whole first sonata.
And it's interesting, right?
- Because no one cares about the Siciliana! - 'Cause no one likes it!
It's not even that impressive sounding!
But it is so damn hard!
Kinda like the Andante, right? You're playing two things.
And then, out of nowhere...
So, actually, it's not melody and accompaniment,
but it's rather, there's two voices having dialogue.
Bum, bum- hehehe!
So there's these two voices,
and you have to phrase each one in a way that makes sense.
And then, on top of that, you have like, chords and double stops,
which are freakin' hard, but, again,
in this context, they don't sound flashy,
so they just sound hard.
But can I just say, on top of that though,
the one thing that really is like, the game killer for this
is it's a freaking dance!
- Oh yeah! You gotta, "Bum..." - You gotta pulse it.
So it's gotta feel like...
- Agh, it sounds so bad! - (Brett) Yeah...
I was trying to like, get the feeling,
- but you'll notice that I'm missing all my strings. - But your string...
Yeah, like, I feel like it's easy to get distracted by
either trying to do the dance
- or forget about the dance and getting the technique. - Technique.
See, if I get the technique, then it'll end up sounding like...
- But now, it doesn't sound like a dance, right? - Yeah, it's not a dance anymore.
It's too rigid.
So, yeah. Siciliana, it's a...
And last one!
[I] decided to put this in,
because I've been trying to learn this recently.
You know with concertos, right?
Second movement is usually the chill one. Usually.
But Brahms's second movement is a different beast.
It's because you're not playing the melody.
I did some research. I found out, you know
Sarasate refused to play this concerto?
- Hahahaha! Sarasate! - (Eddy) Yeah! And you know why? He said,
"I don't want to accompany the oboe
for a whole second movement!"
The second movement is actually chamber music.
The oboe starts with the melody,
and then you're ornamenting on the melody,
but you're kind of weaving in and out of
melody and accompaniment.
And so, a lot of the times,
you'll find you're playing just arpeggios and like, little figures,
and to make it sound... musically make sense
in the whole is so hard.
Look, like...
Where'd that arpeggio come from?
Well, actually... you know...
- Here the cellos start going... - (Brett) Yeah...
So, actually, you're just continuing what the cellos did.
Now you have the melody again, but not really.
You're kind of just an ornamenta-
And now here's the melody...
And then you continue...
- So you're kind of like... yeah. - Switching gears a lot, actually.
- You also need to match the sound... - (Eddy) Mmm.
- To the right instrumentation. - (Eddy) Yes.
Otherwise, it's just gonna sound weird.
And you have to phrase it to the harmony.
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.
If you play it straight, it sounds really boring.
Like, imagine if I just played...
- Sounds like a study! - Yeah!
It doesn't make musical sense.
So, I found this second movement to be a lot harder
to make it sound musically convincing
- than any other concerto second movements. - Yeah, 'cause Sibelius...
- You know what's going on. - It's just the melody.
Tchaikovsky's the same.
You have the melody! You do whatever you want!
- It doesn't matter! The orchestra follows you, alright? - Yeah, the orchestra works with you.
But Brahms is like, "Haha, no!"
- "You work with the orchestra!" - Yeah, yeah!
- It's not the other way around. - It's like, humbling for the violinist.
- Of course Sarasate...! - Of course Sarasate wouldn't!
- Sarasate's like, "I just want to play virtuosic!" - He's the most like...
"I wanna show off the violin!"
There you go!
Five pieces that are actually harder than they sound!
There's a lot more.
There's a lot of string quartet and sonatas
- and other things that are like, orchestral stuff... - Oh, yeah.
we didn't want to go into.
And of course, there's a bonus number 6:
- Carl Flesch scales. - (Brett) Ah, yeah!
Anyone that can play that whole scale book perfectly...
- Respect. - Respect.
Yeah, and it's like, look...
- Whatever! - Yeah, the 10ths!
If you want to make this sound good
and impress everyone,
the only way to do it is to PRACTICE.
Lots of practice and lots of lessons.
You need good teachers to help you.
See you guys next time!
- Accent the like button, and bye-bye! - Bye-bye!