Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro Practice Tips
In this post, I am going to give you practice tips for Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro. If you’re not familiar with Praeludium and Allegro, go ahead and just do a quick search on it so you can hear their piece. It’s one of the most popular violin pieces and it’s extremely beautiful and full of technical fireworks. A student of mine won a competition using this piece to play at Carnegie Hall. Let’s dive right into the hardest sections first.
If you don’t have a copy of Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro, you can easily find a free copy at imslp.org and just put Praeludium and Allegro in the search bar to get your free copy
Kreisler’s Praeludium & Allegro is in e minor
Since this is in e minor, my first practice tip is to practice e minor scales, three octave scales, and also two octave scales across the instrument to help you work on your intonation and feeling comfortable playing in the key of e minor.
Use this scale practice as your warm-up before even getting into this piece. Key of E minor has one sharp and that is F sharp which is the same as G major. G major and e minor share the same key signature.
Hey, let me interrupt here for a sec. I know my blog post and video is an excellent free resource to help you out in your Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro journey but if you are truly a serious, dedicated violinist that resonates with how I teach and break down complicated passages, why not enroll in the course?
Get full in-depth video training and printable exercises created to help you learn with the fastest progress possible.
Develop a deeper relationship with this piece which gives you the confidence to discuss it with your peers and to teach to your students.
Kreisler’s Praeludium & Allegro is in e minor
Praeludium and Allegro is in the key of e minor. I would highly suggest practicing e minor scales, three octave scales and also across the instrument to help you work on your intonation and feeling comfortable playing in the key of e minor.
Use this scale practice as your warm-up before even getting into this piece. Key of E minor has one sharp and that is F sharp which is the same as G major. G major and e minor share the same key signature.
Kreisler’s Praeludium & Allegro page 3
On the third page of Praelurium and Allegro, the hardest place starts at line four and goes through line 8. This is a stream of 16th notes that can be quite overwhelming. A lot of violinists get lost in this passage. I’m going to give you a tip to help you stay focused and know exactly what you’re doing and simplify really this entire technical passage.
Double Stop Blocking
Play this passage as double stops, two strings at once. In line four measure two we start our double stop G and B, D and B, C and A, B and G. Now as you see between every double stop is an open E what you want to do is eliminate that open E and just play continuous doublestops.
When working on the double stops, make sure you know exactly where they live on the violin and if your fingers touch or not across the strings.
The hardest doublestop exchange is between A to F sharp to C to A. Be sure to isolate this.
Why are we practicing these as double stops when we’re not going to perform them as double stops?
Your left hand is going to be completely set up and reliable allowing your right hand to keep going super articulate. It really simplifies the entire passage if you think the single notes in doublestop relationships.
Practice right hand only
If we segment out our right hand only, all we are playing is one A and two E’s.
Pretty easy right? So you can just isolate that. Just play open strings. Every time you go to the A string, your bow direction alternates. First down, then up, then down, then up.
Putting it altogether
Now that you have isolated your right hand, it is time to add the left hand starting at the third measure fourth line.
That’s really the entire passage how you work it out is just the double stops for the left hand and you have your right hand with the string crossing.
Praeludium & Allegro Practice Tips Triplestops at the bottome of page 3
The next section that’s the most difficult for violinists studying Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro are the triple stops on the bottom of the same page.
With these triple stops, you need to be sure you’re grabbing all three strings at once. These triple stops are not rolled playing one string at a time.
Praeludium & Allegro Practice Tips Page 2 Line 5
Section three that’s the trickiest for violinist is actually on page two and it starts on line five and it’s this
passage
All right so how we want to practice this passage is to really think about the bow. The biggest mistake I see violinists make here is that they just are not listening to the up bows and we’re losing some important notes. So if we work out just the bow we have
so we really want to hear those those lower strings that they come out and to hear the last 16th and the 1st 16th and what I mean by that is this: okay so that’s the idea you want to hear those inner notes they’re really important and to get that up bow to scoop in and especially grab that lower string that’s what I find is the most challenging for violinists. You know. Okay so the what you want to develop here is really good finger motion.
Okay so that’s the right hand. The left hand is really just working out those double stops and you do it slowly and really listen that they’re super in tune.
Okay so that’s the idea there. Those are the trickiest passages in Praeludium and Allegro and I would love to have you join in eight week series specifically dedicated to Praeludium and Allegro two workshops for each page and we’ll have a final performance at the end of the series. It’s an online program where we come together in group workshops via zoom and you get to have direct connection and access to me to help you fine tune your Praeludium and Allegro performing skills and also the skills needed to play this piece. The workshops start October 15, 2020 and they go until December. They are held on Thursdays at 10 AM CST. Now if you’re watching this video after October 15, 2020, what I’d like you to do is go ahead and get yourself on the wait list for when these video workshop tutorials will be made available for purchase. Then as soon as they’re made available, I’ll go ahead and get you that link so you can get these workshop tutorials. If you’re watching this video after December, there’ll be a link below in the description where you can just go ahead and purchase the video tutorials on how to play Praeludium and Allegro. Alright take care everyone and I will see you in the workshop series. Ciao.
Happy Magical Practices,
Heather is a classically trained concert violinist residing in Bulgaria. She received her BM violin performance degree from CU-Boulder, studied with top teachers including Rachel Barton Pine. Heather has held leadership positions with multiple orchestras in the Greater Chicago-Milwaukee area. She has instructed millions of violinists globally via Youtube videos, online academies, group coaching and one on one sessions. Heather’s students have won multiple awards, concerto competitions, held concertmaster positions in orchestras and even performed in Carnegie Hall. Heather is an advocate of a holistic violin lifestyle – putting one’s mind, body and spirit as a violin journey priority.
Please share in the comments which above tips you will be implementing into your daily practices sessions.
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