Amedee Mereaux's 'Bravura' Etude, No. 24 Audio + Sheet Music

[4candles]

After doing some research, it seems that Méreaux wasn't a shadowy, unknown figure in music during his lifetime or indeed afterwards. His études were highly valued by famous French pianist, composer and teacher Isidor Philipp, who included some of them (including this study) in other collections of piano music he published as editor. Also, interestingly, none other than Prokofiev knew these studies and played at least one of them!

[madlovba3]

And this is not unplayable! kaki0genkin uploaded a video of it O_O: /watch?v=k57Tl7qAGFs&feature=f­eedu

God, that guy is kinda insane xD

[pianist7137]

I look at this and immediately I feel like cheating xD

[OrbiliusMagister]

Any pianist going to record this in studio would definitely cheat: almost every hand-crossing is not musically necessary.

On the other hand (the left one XD) I'd gladly pay any ticket to watch a live performance of this monster...

[gohanisbuckethead]

amazing !! this is definitely my favourite so far , great musical interest and great harmony. it doesnt matter that its unplayble , its still a pleasure to the ears.

[marcphilos]

I can definitely see how one would catch vertigo with this monstrous piece. My eyes would have a devil of a time just trying to follow the massive simultaneous leaps on both sides of the keyboard . Definitely should not be attempted by those prone to seizures and other nervous conditions.

[LordN3mrod]

1:15 :))) Not musical, you say?

[iplongnin]

C Major makes it so much harder.

[Pageboy72]

Michael Nanasokov should "play" some of these. They did it with Alkan's "Le Preux."

[123eldest]

Damn, my arms would fall off by the end of this!!

[FranzLisztian]

The funny thing is that it doesn't sound very difficult at all.

[theromanpraetorian]

oh no! he is insane with the clefs!

[JlDsanity]

You know, even if there were somebody who learned and played this piece the way it's supossed to be played without error, I'd imagine they'd look incredibly stupid at the piano due to the constant hand switching in this Etude.

[Aul1kki]

@JlDsanity Especially, because it would be so much easier without hand-crossing. I would like to see it anyway! It would be some sort of piano acrobatism :)

[talonboy5432]

Okay...I'm gonna move this Etude up on my to-do list already...

True its not as musical as Alkan but it sure feeds my hand-crossing needs.(Refining hand-crossing now although it already is comfortable enough to execute.)

[talonboy5432]

Thanks a lot for the upload of this Etude...As a matter of fact,I've been looking for mereaux's works for a long time but to no avail.

Until now of course...

[llamasownyou]

That's just scary

[MrZnoo]

who on earth could play the part on 3:46 on that speed?

isn t this supposed to be slower or somth?

[GingyPno123]

@MrZnoo If you search on "Hyun-Jung LIM Bumblebee" You are gonna see something that´s very, very, very, fast.

[tomekkobialka]

Yeah, someone pointed that out earlier in the comments. But this is an etude for hand-crossing alone, so the whole point of it is to cross hands. You shouldn't be learning to play this etude without crossing hands (but if you're recording it for a CD, you could cheat a bit... :)

[JlDsanity]

hmmm... If there's anybody who ever interested in an Etude that emphasizes on hand crossing, I'd look at Liszt's "Un Sospiro", which is, compared to this Etude, much easier... hahahaha

[rvn10rvn17]

i can't believe hamelin said that this etude is really hard, driving him crazy..

judging by the score, i can say that Alkan's etude op. 35 no. 5 the allegro barbaro is tougher.. i can play it roughly half maybe will try this soon..

anyone agree with me?

[pianist7137]

I played allegro barbaro and honestly I think it's nothing compared to this.. The leaps here are quite insane at this speed.

[tomekkobialka]

This is DEFINITELY harder than allegro barbaro!

[JlDsanity]

Nah, this is def much harder lol

[addeex1]

@rvn10rvn17 damn man are you joking me? :O This is 4789372194 times harder than the allegro barbaro, that is one of the easier alkan etudes!! If you play this as an etude and follow the score, this...... is extreme... :O

[shokinaful]

Dear Tomekkobialka, your "Amedee Mereaux Etude" project is very interesting. Whta kinds of collaboration are you looking for? If I find some audio of playing, I'll send you. Although this is just a midi, I can feel the beauty of his composition. You have done the excellent work done writing all the notes out into Finale Notepad. 5*****

[tomekkobialka]

Yes, all I need is just audio of at least one etude. Doesn't matter whether it's MIDI or human playing.

[ReturnOfTheStienway]

wow! Thanks for the introduction of this composer to me. Check you messages.

[4candles]

This would surely be incredibly hard to play, nearly impossible I would think, at that speed! Though I'm glad to hear these etudes, I don't know if some of them are worth the effort of learning.

Thanks for posting these rarities!

[tommy9882]

so unknown

even wiki doesn't have his biography

but I dont think his pieces are thousands time harder than alkan

[JlDsanity]

Was Mereaux capable of playing any of these?

[tomekkobialka]

I dunno...it'd be pretty cool if he did! I guess he must've because he might want to be able to perform the piece in a recital. It would be embarrasing to not be able to play your own compositions!

[madlovba2]

It's very very difficult!! Thank you for posting!!! Where did you find the MIDI of it (and maybe other Mereaux etudes)? I've been searching it for a while and I can't find it anywhere...

I think Mereaux was somekind of "Czerny of grandmasters", don't you think? Musically, his etudes are not really interesting (like the most of Czerny's op. 740), but it's a really good technical exercise for a great virtuoso!

[tomekkobialka]

I didn't find the MIDI, I wrote all the notes out into Finale Notepad then converted it into MIDI then the MP3 you're hearing now with the Fluid R3 piano sound.

[georgecziffra]

Why did he have the left hand jumping over the right hand for half the piece? Obviously nobody would play it that way.

[tomekkobialka]

But this is an etude purely to exercise your hand-crossing technique. So if you don't want to cross hands, then you shouldn't be looking at the etude in the first place.

[EarlOfEs]

@georgecziffra Said the guy who named his youtube account after Cziffra

[JMCYutz]

en effet, la répartition des mains paraît bizarre !

[TheFrenziedPianist]

And this being one of the reasons I prefer Alkan. Alkan has musicality while still being difficult.

[vokuheila]

@TheFrenziedPianist lol keep in mind this is a computer playing =P

[vokuheila]

I bet I can play this on guitar hero -_-

[neil73]

I've honestly thought, for a long while now, that some pianists set out to compose pieces that are difficult to play on purpose!

Not that theres anything wrong!

[f1f1s]

Heeeey, what's wrong with the notes duration? Please, fix the pedal or voicing in order to make staccatos staccato and marcatos marcato. And the dynamics... Please, diversify it accordings to the marks - it would be a leap to the next step of listening pleasure.

A piece intended to exhaust the performer or to show the vast chord hand throws. Cziffra would be really proud. In his paraphrase on this piece he'd have introduced a few chromatics and a few rapid Bb-octaves in his crazy cadenza! =D

[tomekkobialka]

I didn't want to go into staccatos and stuff because:

1. I've got Finale Notepad, which isn't as good as Finale or Sibelius.

2. This is more of a draft, just so you can actually hear the notes. I don't want it to go too much into EXACTLY what the copy says, and don't want to turn this computer MIDI into a musical masterpiece.