# What are your favorite encore pieces?



## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

Encores are often short, technically challenging pieces played at the end of a concert. Correct me if I’m wrong I’m doing this from the top of my head. So what are you’re favorite ones? 
2 examples of mine would be La Campanella, (Paganini/Liszt, I like both) and Massenet’s Meditation


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Wolf, Italian Serenade for SQ gigs. Don't hear it as often these days, though.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

I don`t care for encores very much as you say they are usually showy virtuoso pieces or shallow popular pieces. But rarely one can hear things like Brahms` _Intermezzi _as Lupu sometimes did. I definitely prefer the latter type as encores.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# minor. To which he himself referred to as "that damned Prelude in C# minor!" Due to how much it was requested.


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## perempe (Feb 27, 2014)

BFO's last concert's encore was Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings (after the last movement).


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## campy (Aug 16, 2012)

_An der schönen, blauen Donau _and _Radetzky March_.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

The first that popped into my head was the Overture from _Candide._


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Back in the 80s the Marriage of Figaro Overture was used by a few of the less adventurous guest composers to my local orchestra.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

Eva Baron writes, "2 examples of mine would be La Campanella, (Paganini/Liszt, I like both) and Massenet’s Meditation"

Have you heard the violinist Michel Rabin play Massenet's Meditation? It's one of my most treasured violin recordings, & Rabin is one of my 2 or 3 favorite violinists, even David Oistrakh was in awe of him (which is saying something):






Here are some of my favorite encores--not surprisingly, being a piano lover, they are all piano pieces,

1. J.S. Bach-Siloti Prelude in B minor, BWV 855a--I first heard this piece played by Emil Gilels on an LP recording of his famed 1969 Carnegie Hall concert in New York City. Gilels played it as his final encore that night:





.

2. Federico Mompou, his "Preludio VII a Alicia de Larrocha." This was the first solo piano work that I ever heard by Mompou. Alicia de Larrocha played it at a recital she gave at Lincoln Center in New York City. The Prelude was her third encore that night--out of five or six, & she held the audience spellbound with it. After the concert, I couldn't get the piece out of my head, but I didn't know what it was that I'd heard. It wasn't until much later, when I finally heard Larrocha's remarkable Decca album of piano works by Mompou that I realized it had been the Prelude No. 7 that Mompou composed & dedicated to her,






3. Isaac Albeniz, from Book 1 of his "Iberia", "Evocation": My two favorite recordings of this work (& the rest of "Iberia") are by pianists Rosa Sabater (linked below)--who, like Larrocha, studied with Frank Marshall (a pupil of Enrique Granados), and Rafael Orozco:






4. George Frideric Handel, the Minuet from his Keyboard Suite No. 1 in B-Flat Major, HWV 434, as arranged by pianist Wilhelm Kempff, who played the Minuet as an encore (& recorded it). Here is it performed by Roland Pöntinen, on a gorgeous sounding old Steinway D:






5. Chopin Mazurka, Op. 17, no. 4: This is my favorite of Chopin's 51 Mazurkas, about which Franz Liszt once said that it takes a pianist of the "first rank" to play each one of them! I've heard many pianists play the Mazurka, but I've most liked the way that Halina Czerny-Stefanska & Roland Pontinen interpret it:

Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4
Mazurkas, Op. 17: Mazurka No. 13 in A Minor, Op. 17, No. 4

6. Chopin, Berceuse, Op. 57. Chopin's Berceuse makes for another wonderful encore piece (along with many of his Nocturnes & certain Preludes). My favorite pianists on record in this beautiful work are Maryla Jonas, Jeanne-Marie Darré, Harold Bauer, Vladimir Ashkenazy (who recorded it twice), and Ivan Moravec,

Here is Maryla Jonas playing the Berceuse about as well as I believe it can be played!,
Berceuse in D-Flat Major, Op. 57

& Moravec:
Moravec plays Chopin Berceuse

& Ashkenzy twice, both early in his career, & later on:
* Ashkenazy plays Chopin (Op.57 Berceuse)
Chopin: Berceuse in D flat, Op. 57

7. I've not heard Robert Schumann's "Mignon", from his Album für die Jugend or "Album for the Young", played as an encore. But if I were a concert pianist, this is one of the encore pieces that I'd most want to play. In the past, the most highly regarded Schumann pianists--such as Horowitz, Richter, Haskil, etc.--didn't play or record this Album. I suppose it didn't show off their hard earned virtuosity enough. However, "Mignon" is actually quite difficult to play well, musically speaking. It may seem simple but... it isn't. Schumann wrote the music for his own children, to teach them how to play the piano. Hence, the Album was composed with the utmost care, tenderness, & love. For me, "Mignon" is one of his most beautiful solo piano pieces that Schumann wrote:

--Homero Francesch: Schumann: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68 / Part 2: Für Erwachsenere - 35. Mignon

--Reine Gianoli:
Schumann: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68 / Part 2: Für Erwachsenere - 35. Mignon

--Alexis Weissenberg: Album für die Jugend, Op. 68: No. 35, Mignon

Michel Block, & Paul Badura-Skoda played "Mignon" exceptionally well, too, & might have been my first choices here, but I couldn't find their recordings on You Tube.

8. The late Radu Lupu, who sadly passed away earlier this year, used to play wonderful encores at his concerts. I especially enjoyed hearing him play Debussy's Preludes in recital (along with works by Schubert, Brahms & Enescu), but he would sometimes play a Debussy work as an encore, too.

Back in 2002, I heard Lupu play Debussy's "D'un cahier d'esquisses" as his second to last encore in a recital that he gave at Carnegie Hall in New York. I'm not sure that I've ever heard another pianist sound so at home and insightful in this piece. It was the first time that I realized Lupu was one of the great Debussy players. He had the most perfect piano touch & creative sensibility for Debussy's music, despite that he never set any of Debussy's solo piano works down on record. With his characteristic humbleness, Lupu only played Debussy in concert. I hope that some of these concerts were well recorded, & will one day be commercially released!!

Here's a link to the Carnegie Hall concert that I attended that night: Lupu's Debussy encore begins at around the 1:28:30 mark, if anyone wishes to skip ahead:

RADU LUPU Recital 23 January 2002 Carnegie Hall NEW YORK

(For the curious, here too is a link to a 'bootleg' recording of Lupu performing Debussy's Preludes Book 1, at a concert he gave in Paris on May 18th, 2009: Radu Lupu Debussy Preludes Livre I Paris Theatre du Chatelet.)

9. Lastly, here's the final encore piece that Lupu played at his 'farewell' concert on February 3rd, 2019 at London's Royal Festival Hall, before he retired from the concert stage. Fittingly, Lupu's last concert was in England, where he had many years before won the Leeds competition as a young man. The work that he chose to play that night was the Intermezzo, Op. 117 no. 1 by Johannes Brahms, a composer with whom he'd been closely associated throughout his career. It's one of my favorite pieces, as well:

Radu Lupu farewell encore


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Contents:
1. Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
2. Air #3
3. Berenice Overture
4. Haydn Trumpet Conc.
5. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
6. Minuet
7 & 8. Air & Sailor's Hornpipe


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## perempe (Feb 27, 2014)

Nocturne No. 8 in D-Flat, Op. 27, No. 2
Waltz No. 6 in D-Flat Major, Op. 64, No. 1 "Minute Waltz"
Waltz in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2

These were the pieces Ingrid Fliter played after Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 on Thursday in Müpa.


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