Etude Classique

Item details

Description +
- Duration: 5 min.
  
  Etude Classique was composed 1978 and has been played widely in Scandinavia at concerts and auditions. The piece is linked to traditional orchestra playing through its use of small excerpts from the orchestra repertoire. But these excerpts are involved in a broader context demonstrating many different styles of playing the snare drum including a quick samba, a waltz and different marches, everything ending up with traditional Scottish marching music. The small excerpts are from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.
Instrumentation +
- Snare Drum
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About the composer +
- Einar Nielsen was born 1947 and is today professor at The Academy of Music and Drama, Gothenburg University. Starting his professional career as early as 1963, playing in different symphony orchestras, he has from the mid-seventies been very active as a soloist and chamber musician in the avantgarde music developing a specific artistic profile including singing and acting. He won the second prize at Rencontre International de Percussion in La Rochelle 1974, and has toured a lot with prominent composers and musicians like Mauricio Kagel and the Kontarsky Brothers.
Reviews +
- Review (Percussive Notes, May 2014)
  
  It is not uncommon for concert snare drum etudes to address orchestral literature. We also often see stylistic studies in this variety of repertoire. In Einar Nielsen’s “Etude Classique,” he accomplishes both in a whirlwind etude that focuses on contemporary snare drum skills. Composed in 1978, this newly published work features over a handful of stylistic shifts and excerpts from three orchestral standards. Style variations include quick samba, waltz, various march genres, and traditional Scottish marching music. The orchestral works that are excerpted include Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances,” and Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.”
  
  This etude could serve as strong compulsory content for an audition situation. It contains specific techniques such as advanced ornaments, multiplebounce (long crescendo/decrescendo), open-stroke rolls (fast-slow-fast), tempi changes, metric shifts, detailed articulation indications, and extreme dynamics. Appropriate for intermediate to advanced players, this work will prove challenging in particular sections, but is fairly straightforward in others. The only pedagogical concept missing from this etude is a common formal structure. “Etude Classique” feels more like a montage of techniques and styles that are commonly found throughout this idiom.
  
  —Thad Anderson
Credits +
- Front Cover graphics and layout: Ronni Kot Wenzell
  Engraving: Johan Svitzer
  Printed in Copenhagen, Denmark
  Copyright © Edition SVITZER
  www.editionsvitzer.com

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