Description

ABRSM 2024 onwards: Grade 1 List B: Evening Star Grade 1 List C: The Ogre’s Dance Grade 3 List B : Romance Grade 4 List B: Serenade Bass-Time Beginners is …a set of six short easy pieces for the beginner bassist. They offer simple musical and technical challenges, using a limited number of notes, keys and positions to encourage confidence in the early years of study, also introducing simple harmonics and pizzicato effects to create a greater awareness of the possibilities of the double bass. The piano accompaniments are independent and supportive, written for the double bass teacher with some pianistic skills, creating music which is useful for both educational and concert use. Written in a popular and accessible style, Bass-Time Beginners were composed in 2010 for Recital Music’s BassLines Project to create new, Repertoire for beginners. ‘Bass-Time Beginners – Six easy pieces for the young bassist offers a variety of styles and technical challenges in suitably short pieces ranging in difficulty from AMEB 1st to 4th grade. Christine Donkin has written each piece to include specific challenges: Bartok and left hand pizzicato, shifts, string crossing, many accidentals in the harder pieces and opportunities to develop a more sustained tone. The collection allows a player to demonstrate a range of expression and techniques. The pieces need to be learned with the accompaniments as these provide the catchy rhythms that complement the bass part. Without them there are gaps in the bass melodies and a young player risks becoming disconnected from the music. The good news is that the accompaniments are playable by a bass teacher with even quite basic piano skills.’
[Alison MacGregor/Stringendo/Australian Strings Association] ‘This selection of six pieces spans the earliest grades up to around grade 4 standard. They feature good piano accompaniments that characterise the pieces well; my only criticism of the pieces would be that in the last three pieces the bass melodic lines take slightly odd turns, although the style of the piano writing keeps the character and music intact. Each piece makes a good teaching point well, for example ‘Ogre’s Dance’ playing with string and light bowing and early use of slurs. ‘Masquerade Waltz’ is very good for supporting the use of half and first positions, and ‘A Summer Day’ has a smooth melody line that takes the performer into neck position. I found that ‘Evening Star’ is a beginner’s equivalent to ‘Deep Song’ by John Walton, with lovely romantic piano harmony; it is a pretty piece for the early use of slurs. I think these pieces would also make a good addition for enjoyable sight-reading practice.’
[Liz Bradley/ESTA/Arco]