There’s a famous story about how a little boy found his way onto the great Ignacy Paderewski’s piano bench. The child climbed onto the stage before a concert. Oblivious to the audience, began playing Euphemia Allen’s world-famous 1877 hit Chopsticks. Some of the shocked ticket-holders wanted the child removed for intruding on sacred ground. Paderewski, however, walked up behind the bench and added his marvelous skills to the mix. All the while, he whispered in the boy’s ear, “Keep going. Don’t quit, son. Keep playing. Don’t stop. Don’t quit.” I wish we could all be so encouraging and gracious!
However, this story is apocryphal. It turns out that Euphemia Allen’s entire compositional catalog consists of Chopsticks Here’s a salute to Euphemia Allen for her spectacular one-hit wonderness!
This arrangement for 3, 4, or 5 octaves has plenty of opportunities for shtick, including a section where the bass and treble stage an argument. It seems the Level 6 rating stems from this somewhat contentious passage, where the treble is in C and the bass is in F#. However, the two staves each stay within their respective keys, so while those measures are insanely dissonant, there effectively are no accidentals until the transition back to comparative tonal unity.
This arrangement of Chopsticks is published by From the Top Music.
Bells of Lake Norman performed this arrangement to the absolute hilt:
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