Here’s another installment of Kopprasch for your post-Thanksgiving enjoyment! Like a handful of other studies in this collection, No. 55 is slow and lyrical, but with greater demands in flexibility and range. Suggested tempo range is eighth-note=72-80, although anything faster than eighth=76 seemed a little too frantic for me. A light, quick single tongue works well for the sixty-fourth note runs in measures 2 and 32. The large grace note leaps found at the end of each section can be problematic, but I found a good burst of air (“tah-huh” or “tah-hee”) combined with the appropriate changes in tongue and jaw position to be helpful. Another concern for me was intonation in the low range: G tends to be sharp (two octaves below g’ in the staff), and c (one octave below middle c’) tends to be flat.

In the interest of comparison, I used Windows Movie Maker to edit and produce this video (I have been using Camtasia Studio for the majority of my editing). I have been mostly pleased with Camtasia’s speed and ease of use, but was pleasantly surprised with Movie Maker.