Michel Cardin : Etude No1 : Bergmann

Michel Cardin

Bergmann Edition: 7 pages

This is a quite different piece from my previous review of his Un Canadien Errant stylistically and also as regards its technical difficulty, not that it’s not a fine piece to play because it is. It just has quite of lot of tricky parts, but then again, it is a Study!

It is an Allegretto in 2/4 that begins in E minor, although the amount of other flats and sharps that it progresses through means that the key signature is often not quite as simple as E minor might make you expect. Mainly semi – quaver driven, it does generally employ arpeggio patterns but these are mixed along with other things like runs. There are usually three voices  with the accompaniment generally in the middle , but there are lots of times when you really have to carefully work out the fingerings etc because he has taken great care not to make too much of this very pleasant piece obvious in its writing.

At 106 bars, not counting the various repeat sections this is quite a substantial piece of writing that does need a good player to do it full justice, but there are so many different moments here  where nothing is usually where you might expect it to be, and the player has to put his thinking cap on quite a considerable number of times. Nevertheless it is a cleverly written piece that deserves to be heard and played.

Chris Dumigan