Here she is!
In addition to helping you understand the harmony and rhythm of the accompaniment, like all my rep duets, this particular duet is great for stamina! This piece is almost 12 minutes long (depending on your tempos, of course), which feels pretty long even in the original arrangement. But in this duet version, you have to play the interludes!
Hopefully if you can get through this duet, performing the original solo feels somewhat easy 😀
Next up (already in progress) is the Cimarosa Concerto for 2 flutes, arranged for flute trio. I’m slowly arranging my entire recital program for flute ensembles. As the Hokamps are fond of saying, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”
In any case, I took my time preparing the music for this recital, and making an arrangement is very quick and easy for music I know really well. It’s not the writing of the arrangement that takes time- it’s usually pretty clear what the part should be. Sometimes I have to make a decision, but mostly there’s a lot of transcription, inputting markings, and formatting, which are very tedious.
I was reviewing my journal this morning, and had made a note on April 18 that I had this piece memorized- nearly 4 months before the above performance. Interestingly, while working on this duet, I discovered that I had memorized a few wrong notes. They were still in the right chord/scale, so hardly noticeable with the velocity of the notes, but still. I had to do a double take, and then laugh at myself.
To be fair, I was working with the flute part from the edition edited by James Galway, but created this arrangement from the original edition. So some of those errors/changes may not have been completely my fault.
Since I was planning to perform from memory, I didn’t really look at the music for most of my preparation. I often memorize music quickly, and then practice fully from memory. I really prefer it- I think I play more musically, listen better, and perform better. But this is a humbling reminder to regularly refer back to the score!
Alyse Hokamp 