All Students preparing for Grade exams are recommended to use the Hofnotes on-line training pages to practise for the aural tests. 

At higher grades  you must be able to discuss with the examiner musical features such as texture, form, style, and period of a piece of music.  My own  web pages to help with these parts of the test at Grade 5+ and at GCSE are available here!

ABRSM Grade 8 2011 2012 Piano

Nocturne in B Op32 No1, Chopin

Relaxed in mood - but with a sting in the tail!  Calls for an understanding of Chopin rubato and includes some extreme sight reading in sharps (A# minor at one point!).  You may wish to just about double the printed pedalling, clearing with subtlety.  The mordents as at 4 can be on or before the beat - perhaps perform differently when it returns?  Observe - and enjoy - the rest with fermata after the brief flounce of impatience in bar 6; response is elegant in the extreme, and ritenuto, or retained, not ritardando.  The harped chord can be played in the order A#, F# E and I prefer this one to start before the beat; then you can make a difference to the treatment of bar 11.  While practising Bar 12 pause to listen for correctly held notes which do require the printed fingering.  Relax and roll the wrist slightly for the decorated pp runs in bar 16, but don't make the final F# too short.

Where the second tune comes in, experiment with moving the tempo along fractionally, but keep a calm mood; a gentle triplet feel to bar 23's mordent helps with the dream-dance feel to this section.  It helps to think of the [9]  nontuplet as three triplets too.  Hold down the G# in RH through the trill, planning fingers carefully and pausing to listen for it.

Ending is menacing rather than melodramatic: the drum beats are subdued each time for me although you could read the C# version as forte.  Count carefully and learn the section in strict time, paying attention to how you finish chords and treat silences: the shocked response of elegance to the f outbursts. I interpret the last forte as full rather then loud, and merge the final crotchet chords with the decayed sound thereof, letting the final octave outlast that subdued cadence; there are other ways to read this section and editions vary so do some research until you find a solution you like.

This is a sample taken from the recommended recording of the complete Nocturnes by Nelson Freire:

Last updated on: 03/01/2012