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HomeLearning PiecesBach, Trills & Creating a Singing Tone

Bach, Trills & Creating a Singing Tone

By Informance, 2023-03-16 Posted in: Learning Pieces, Practising

In this month’s practice clinic, Graham Fitch answers questions on fingering and executing trills, a Beethoven Sonata and creating a singing tone in Calme du soir by Moszkowski.

sinfonia in c bach trills

Practice clinic questions

Fingering for trills – In your tutorials you often recommend playing a trill using 3-2-4-3 fingering which I find difficult to get used to – I find using just 3-2-3-2 is much easier. Should I just practise the other fingering, till it gets comfortable or is it ok to use the 2-fingers-fingering? What is the benefit of the 3-fingers-fingering? I would also practise baroque ornaments in different scales, as a technique exercise. Is it a good idea? What fingerings can you recommend for playing / practising different ornaments?

JS Bach Sinfonia No. 1 in C, BWV 787 – I recently started this work having studied several of the two part inventions. I must admit to finding the trills a bit of a limiting factor with these pieces. E.g. It’s the execution particularly where the thumb is holding a note at the same time eg. bar 5 – I can only manage a triplet!

Beethoven Sonata in G, Op. 49 No. 2 (2nd mvt) – How should bars 67-71 (the one with the succession of chords with an interval of a sixth between the notes in the RH) be played? In my version, they look like they should be played kind of legato. When I play, they sound too rough, even with the suggested fingering on my edition. I listen to different versions on YouTube and many people play that passage staccato. Is it the right way to go?

Mozskowski Calme du Soir – In your recent workshop, you created a really lovely singing tone in Calme du soir by Moszkowski. Could you explain what you did to achieve this?

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Our next Practice clinic takes place on 19th April 2023 @ 12:00 BST. Please sign-up to our mailing list here for updates on future practice clinic dates.

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Online Academy subscribers can submit questions for practice clinics up to two weeks before each session. This can be done using the link provided on the Online Academy dashboard under “subscription benefits” (click here to sign-in and visit your dashboard).

Further information on how our practice clinics work is available here or please click here to find out more about the Online Academy.

Tags: bachbeethovenfingeringMoszkowskiornamentspractice clinicsinfoniassinging tonetone

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