Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf

OK, so the tests here are (1) technical CLARITY, (2) pacing of an accelerando, understanding your own technical limits and making those work musically, and (3) accomplishment of #1 and #2 through good practice technique.

Some suggestions: I don't have the Hadcock orchestral book in front of me, but I am sure there are some good suggestions there. I recall, for example, that he suggests rethinking the rhythm in the triplet passage to make it easier to execute. My approach: (1) make the staccato at the beginning of the passage sound nervous, shorter than usual. (2) the triplet passage took a lot of repetition for me to get stable. The standard thing to say here is to pace your accelerando, be sure to gain speed gradually so the end of the lick doesn't crash. (3) the grace note passage: I practiced this alot converting all the grace notes into sixteenth notes, played on the beat rather than before the beat. The two measures played as: (1) 2 e + a 3 e + a (4) | (1) 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a | 1 e + a (tie). I used stopped tonguing between each beat, and then when I returned to the printed rhythm, the polish was pretty much there.

About the technical clarity in general, for some reason, players can lose hand position in this excerpt. I think that left hand curving is just one of my personal challenges, but for both of the technical passages, keeping the left hand fingers curved will help the "diction", hearing the desired notes with a minimum of other sounds in between.

And, some comments about the last phrase. Let's think of the imagery here. The cat is scared, quickly climbs the tree, and once reaching a high branch (the high G-flat), his mood switches back to relaxed and confident. I like to play those last four measures as slinky as possible, as an illustration of cat-ego. I have heard many people play this phrase too quickly, without adding much phrasing nuance. Use the tenuto marks hand-written into the music on your pdf as a guide. Find your own way to play it, but think about what mood you want to create and how you are going to create it.