Can anyone help me with some suggestions please.

I'm looking for some Grade 6 and upwards standard Violin music for my daughter to use for concerts/auditions/ competitions either with or without accompaniment.
She has studied the Grade 6 current and past ABRSM syllabi and nothing has particularly grabbed her.

She need some pieces which are relatively short - 1/2 pages but can show good technique and are snappy and exciting.

I know there's a dearth of music available especially Baroque and Classical but can anyone recommend something which is great to listen to as well as play - maybe some difficult folk tunes or something jazzy.

Her teacher has only suggested Vivaldi. We've also tried a bit of Elgar and one or two modern pieces.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

This has also been posted in the Teacher's Forum.
Many thanks

Look at grade 7 book. Not short pieces, but some sound really nice. especially like adoration.

Legende- Winieski(spelling?)
Poeme- Fibich

All I can think of right now. If you asked my teacher he could suggest loads from his collection. Shame you can't ask.

I think the OP wanted suggestions for building repertoire, rather than just shooting onto the next grade.

Try some of the graded ABRSM books - there is also a nice series called real repertoire for the violin by trinity, it has some simpler pieces and some more complex - probably between 4-7, but the grade isn't so important - what's important is how well she plays it.

I think she might enjoy those.

Consider the Mozart sonatas. They are sometimes denigrated by violinists as piano sonatas with violin accompaniment, but some of them are substantially more than that. I particularly like the E minor, KV 304, which has one of the easier piano parts. They don't meet your criterion of being short, but your daughter could play one movement for an audition.

I've just noticed your last bit about folk tunes - firstly let me sternly say that ALL folk tunes are difficult if you want to play them properly (rather than just play the notes, which is what classical players tend to do when playing folk).

Now the gentle telling off is over I'd happily advise on some great reels and hornpipes to get your daughter going - the thing she'll probably have difficulty with here, though, is not the actual notes - that's the easy part, but playing in a convincing, stylish way with all the appropriate ornamentation and the right gliding rhythms.

I'd happily recommend some stuff and even provide recordings of it to help her learn if she's genuinely interested in trad - however, it will be a challenge, but it will help her with her classical in the long run by unlocking her vision of music a little (just like a good dose of classical work can help trad players to produce a better sound - I'm all for playing on both sides of the fence !)

Let me know if I can help.

Thanks for all the repiles so far

Rosfrog - I wasn't suggesting that Folk tunes were easy but we do have a selection in some books that are basic tunes and not at around her technical level of playing.
I understand what you mean by the stylistic challenge, however.

Please, please do recommend some things to us. We would be very grateful.
Thanks

Rosfrog didn't like the idea of 'easy folk' - I agree with him - even the very simplest-looking folk tunes are very hard to play in the right folk idiom. Well I don't like the idea of 'something jazzy' - jazz is very difficult to play right as well!

But OK, a jazzy tune is different from jazz as such, but I hope no one here thinks a 'jazzy tune' is jazz, because it very often isn't.

Try handel sonata in f major.
vivaldi's A minor, G Major, and G minor concertos from the L'estro Armonico is also quite good.
I also like chanson de nuit and chanson de matin.

Hope i helped.

I love chanson de nuit too

yash as soon as my teacher played chanson de nuit I loved it and said I wanted to do it for my orchestra auditions.

Tommorw I am buying handel complete works becuase I desperately need to build up my repetoire.
I will suggest some stuff from that.

Gypsy Jazz Book 2 is fun...there's a Grade 5 alternative list C piece from this so the publisher etc will be listed in the syllabus, I can't find my copy just now

Ah, that's where you went wrong you see - you don't find trad music in books - that's classical musician thinking that is...

Seriously, though, very few trad players use scores, simply because all you can write down on the score is the bare bones of the tune - you have to see it like improvised Jazz - it's not about the notes that are there, but what you do with the whole thing. It is, for example, entirely impossible to write down the rhythm of a reel - you have to hear it, feel it, see in being played for dancers, then slowly start to copy it. It's somewhere between two and four, with a slight lilt, but not dotted, and an off beat stress, but not as simple as one TWO three FOUR - I never thought I'd get it when I came to trad from classical (I was about grade 6 then too) - but I got there in the end (or rather, am still getting there every day) and the best way I can explain it now is that it's like you're playing a tune that's in four, but thinking in two and accentuating like it was in triplets, but it isn't...

If it's the ever dreadful Huws-Jones book you've got, then take Cooley's reel as an example - it's written in a way that makes it around grade 2 standard - but if you play what's in the book, you'd be playing a grade 2 standardish classicalish piece that's meant to sound like trad. If you play it properly, you're looking more like G6 standard and if you play it like Frankie Gavin or Liz Carroll - then most diploma players wouldn't be able to manage it.

If you let me know what tunes she has the scores for, I can record them or point you to recordings so she can hear how they're supposed to be played and then perhaps she might find something amongst them that she would enjoy learning.

I thought trad would be easy. I was very wrong. I'm enjoying the challenge though and if nothing else, I have more control over my bow now than I ever had before - it's all in the bow!

Weeeellll, you can find the bare bones in books, surely....
Deja vu


Anyway - have a trawl through old syllabuses... Something like "The President" (J Scott Skinner)? It's folkish, and needs good technique. It's a fairly straightforward Grade 8 piece - unaccompanied...
How about some Martinu?

Sure you can get the bare bones - but then you have to know what to do with it to make it sound right - a good trad musician friend who teaches traditional fiddle always tells his students to wait until they're very competent players before using scores - he's right, once you know all the things you need to do to make the tune sound right, and you're competent at improvising, then you can take a tune and play it from the score, alternatively you'll just end up playing what's written, which is where a lot of people go wrong.

Rather than learn from a score, better to learn it by ear from a good player, then you'll learn it with the correct style and intent from the start rather than adding in another step to the process. You'll also hear what they're doing with their bow which won't be anything like as logical as classical bowing.

Scores are a useful tool in traditional playing, but only in the hands of an expert player in the genre, otherwise they simply stop you from getting into the right place musically.

I agree about the Scott Skinner - great stuff. Still needs a fair bit of attention to style, though, a good opportunity for some free improvisation in the President.