ABRSM Grade 7 - Piano Exam Pieces

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Ibert - Le petit âne blanc (No. 2 from Histoires)

ABRSM Grade 7 – C2

This charming character piece is full of colour and contrasts, inviting the performer to come up with their own imagery, or a story line from the imagination. Make this as vibrant and detailed as you can! The mood is happy at the start, but after a while the little donkey’s delicate trotting (and occasional contented braying) is disturbed by a dark, chromatic inner voice that leads to a middle section that is much livelier and more exuberant. The player will need to develop control over light, bouncy staccato notes, and repeated chords.

Further notes

To get comfortable with the left hand at the start, the finger tips need to be active (not floppy). Allied to the fine sensations in the tips of the finger, the bounces needed to create light staccatos might come from the wrist, or from the forearm (or from a blend) but in whichever way you sense them the movements are tiny. My hand tends to coordinate these left hand bars with a small wrist circle, the 5th finger coming up and round, propelling the hand in the direction of the thumb. I also sense rotary movements between the thumb and 2^nd finger, and between the 2^nd finger and the 4^th. These might be ingredients of your choreography too.

As with anything based on a five-finger position, the golden rule is to avoid fixing the hand. We need to keep two things in mind – mobility and alignment. Focus on keeping the forearm aligned behind the pair of playing fingers in this exercise and you will notice subtle differences in the alignment. Avoid fixing the thumb over the D# when playing the intervals of the fifth and fourth, allowing it to wander away somewhat from the key if it wants to.

After a little bit of preliminary slow practice on the semiquaver (16^th note) pattern, I suggest practising the following skeleton stages at a faster tempo. It’s most important to do these extremely rhythmically, using a metronome or counting out aloud. Repeat each stage once or twice until secure before moving on to the next without stopping (keep the pulse alive in your body). You’ll notice the plan here is to play selected notes from the semiquaver stream, gradually adding rhythmical cells and subtracting others. There are plenty of other possibilities for rhythmic skeletons, see how many you can generate.

As with any string of fast-moving notes of the same rhythmical value, rhythm practice can be a useful practice tool (when done well). Here are some suggestions:

(The exercises can of course be adapted to the new note pattern from bar 11)

Click here to view an article and video in the Online Academy's Quarantine-Spots series with tips for tackling two challenging spots in bars 20 - 29.

Resources & links Click here to view an article and video in the Online Academy's Quarantine-Spots series featuring this work. Piano Exam Pieces 2021 & 2022, Grade 7 is available from the ABRSM online shop here. Click here to view open domain editions for these works (external link). Click here to listen to a recording of this work from the ABRSM exam pieces album on Spotify (external link).

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