She has a selection of performances on show, this one playing music intended for classical guitar!
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I like that ... there are very talented young folk taking on the accordion.
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She has a selection of performances on show, this one playing music intended for classical guitar!
Super - she's fantastic. I note she is also playing a sensible sized instrument!
Sensible sized as compared to what? A double base, grand piano, or church organ?
She is playing a full size 64/120 (Italian) bayan, so they don't come much larger... unless you go for PA.
It's called a compact model CBA
Time for us Oldies to take a step back and just watch and listen.
I wonder if she has done her 10,000 hours yet.
( How could this be so quickly diverted away from the musician, her music and her audience to go to the instrument:
Now Michelangelo, a fine piece of daub, but do tell, who makes you brushes?)
I wonder if she has done her 10,000 hours yet.
( How could this be so quickly diverted away from the musician, her music and her audience to go to the instrument:
Now Michelangelo, a fine piece of daub, but do tell, who makes you brushes?)
Too true, and all too common here!
Shhh I’m trying to listen… lol
Amazing performance… she’s put in her time irrespective!
I don’t care so much what they are playing as long as we continue to see younger generation kids play, but this is awesome.
Amazing performance… she’s put in her time irrespective!
I don’t care so much what they are playing as long as we continue to see younger generation kids play, but this is awesome.
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Here is a little info from her site Re the 10,000 hours. Oh and on the Pigini model.
""" Born in the Canary Islands (Spain), Sofia began her musical education at the age of five, gaining a full scholarship to study at Scotland’s National Specialist Music School ‘St. Mary’s Music School’ in Edinburgh at the age of 13 where she studied for 4 years, winning their annual competition “Director’s Recital Prize” in 2020. She is currently a student of the well- distinguished Serbian accordionist and pedagogue Djordje Gajic at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
In 2021, she was awarded a partial ABRSM EU Undergraduate Scholarship at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as well as been supported by the Craxton Memorial, Drake Calleja Trust, Live Music Now Scotland and Talent Unlimited.
Sofia plays a Pigini ‘Sirius Compact’ bayan made in Castelfidardo, Italy."""
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""" Born in the Canary Islands (Spain), Sofia began her musical education at the age of five, gaining a full scholarship to study at Scotland’s National Specialist Music School ‘St. Mary’s Music School’ in Edinburgh at the age of 13 where she studied for 4 years, winning their annual competition “Director’s Recital Prize” in 2020. She is currently a student of the well- distinguished Serbian accordionist and pedagogue Djordje Gajic at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
In 2021, she was awarded a partial ABRSM EU Undergraduate Scholarship at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as well as been supported by the Craxton Memorial, Drake Calleja Trust, Live Music Now Scotland and Talent Unlimited.
Sofia plays a Pigini ‘Sirius Compact’ bayan made in Castelfidardo, Italy."""
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You are right. I checked and it is the Pigini equivalent of the Bugari 540/ARS/C. The Bugari has 52 notes from C# to E and the Pigini has 52 notes from E to G. I first thought that E to G must have been 64 notes, but it's indeed 12 less. As an owner/player of the 540 I should have recognized the form factor. I still wonder who makes what part of these accordions. Apart from the shifted range and indicators on the bass registers the Pigini and the Bugari are really identical. (I have also seen the Pigini "in the flesh", it is exactly the same.) I cannot believe that something like the treble and bass case are made completely independently from each other...
Thanks, I am occasionally right !
Yes I too think quite a few Bugari accordions are pretty much identical to Pigini ones.
Yes I too think quite a few Bugari accordions are pretty much identical to Pigini ones.
For the larger bayans that is certainly no coincidence because they are all copies of the Jupiter bayan design. I believe Pigini initially worked with Jupiter to create the Sirius bayan, so Pigini was learning from Jupiter how to do this, and later Pigini worked with AKKO to help AKKO get started (so AKKO learned from Pigini). All fruitful collaborations which imho resulted in AKKO making the best bayans. Other Italian accordion makers all copied that generic bayan design, each adding their own ideas (and mistakes)...
And I think that does not work at all. The non-pliable tone quality of a loud accordion beyond mp makes this sound like a fair organ rendition. The music is not patterned in a way that an accordion can lend credence to. Pretty much everything linked in the parting screen works better on accordion. My first impulse was that "Romantic" area music is unsuitable for accordion, but the Paganini/Liszt Campanella is just great. The Scarlatti is neutral (does neither gain or lose much through accordion). Schnittke works quite well again.
But if you see things like the Hindemith accordion/viola duos or the recently posted cello/accordion duo (and the related music by the same duo): that just works so much better. I really think we have a problem on our hands that accordion is either composed for in an exclusive or semi-exclusive context (solo accordion or accordion ensemble) or all we get is arrangements. This makes it rather hard to get out of the preexisting genres with a topping of novelty covers.
And it means that many great talents are essentially without much of a viable career path and with limited appeal to a general audience. Why take an arrangement if you can have the original?
"...Why take an arrangement if you can have the original?"
And why not?
There are many musicians who are quite capable of handling a range of genres of music, a variety of instruments and even lecturing in mathematicians at prestigeous universities.
There were great composers like JS Bach and Vivaldi who adapted the core themes of their music to whichever instruments were at hand at any particular time.
Music is Music, it is not an engineering discipline confined to a narrow spectrum of fixed principles and, for me, there is no joy in artistic puritanism.
Because some material doesn't work well on the accordion because it has been written exploiting the way an instrument sounds. Bach will warp itself to lots of instruments. Berlioz won't.
But there are instruments that aren't capable of handling the details of what a part has been written for. It tends to be quite obvious with instrumental covers of vocal performances, but there is other music that just loses significant elements when performed on instruments that lack significant aural qualities that a part has been written to exploit.
It is an engineer's idea that a score will express everything that makes music tick, and the instrument doesn't convey anything.
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Clickity clack register changes are disconcerting….. should figure a way to quieten that down.
While not all music written for guitar may sound well on the accordion I find that some actually sounds quite well.
When I first heard Sergey Teleshev play the Love Waltz by Ulrik Neumann I didn't know it was originally for guitar. I took the guitar score and wrote my own version for accordion ensemble:
Sometimes it doesn't work at all. To perform the slow movement of Concierto de Aranjuez I had to leave out the middle part as that would not sound well at all on accordion. But what remains is something I do like a lot:
Contrary to what the picture shows I was the one playing the guitar part (on accordion) and my wife played the bass accordion here.
That is a detail many accordion players forget. You can almost always change registers without them making noise. It is a matter of learning how to press a register so you don't hear it. And with chin switches it is even easier.
Well, an amateur player will rarely have the patience to practice register switches for months and may not have the resource of a teacher who keeps nagging them every week about it. Like some of the finer points of articulation and bellows work, it is easy to get sloppy about when you are the only one watching out for it.
True. I am like the teacher who keeps nagging them every week about it. I don't do it at every rehearsal but I do remind the players in my ensembles that we play "without percussion", so register changes should always be silent. But this message has to be repeated often because it is a point of attention that is quickly forgotten.
That is part of the nature of live performances and the personality of the accordion. They can be removed in the post production of the audio recordings, but not so easy in live recordings… but in either case… why? Just embrace it and enjoy the music.
