Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Rachmaninoff Prelude in C# minor Study Group

What is the minimum hand span you need to play this piece without having to arpeggiate a lot of the chords?

One octave.

Can you reach C#-E-G#-C# with your right hand?

If so, the Prelude won't give you any trouble with regard to reach.

Mel

Toughest reach for me (measure 47, count 3):
- LH: F#,A,E,F#
- RH: E,F#,A,E

Also, but easier is measure 48, count 3.

If you can do those 4 chords, then the rest should be reachable.

That's amazing. I thought this piece would always be unreachable for me due to hand span. However the chords you mentioned are very doable for me. I won't attempt this one in the near future, but it's good to know I could potentially play it one day.

frog52: "Toughest reach for me (measure 47, count 3):
- LH: F#,A,E,F#
- RH: E,F#,A,E"

Agreed! Yep, those are real awkward! I also don't like the LH: D#,E,B,D# in the next measure.
I need to spend time carefully drilling all of these...

If somebody posted this video earlier in the thread, pardon a repeat.

I saw it on the "other" forum:

Rachmaninoff for small hands

Here I am, back again to this thread and this piece. I know I've mentioned before that I have this other Rachmaninoff prelude (23/4) I'm working on for a deadline (March 3rd), and I have had to give it my entire hour of practice every day for weeks. Even with that, it's not going that well. I'm just not sure I'll ever get it. The ironic thing is that it sounds MUCH easier than this C# minor one. I finally decided to just live with the condition of that Prelude and go back to less frustrating pieces--I was actually dreading piano practice for the first time in ages! Not worth it. So I'm back to practicing this beautiful piece and making progress.

Unfortunately, the break from it took away the strength I had developed in practicing the four stave section, but it's coming back. I'm getting the agitato smooth with the metronome, and now I'm working on the chord section at the end of the agitato. Am I right that this will be the fastest section of the piece?

Thanks for the very funny video, Piano*Dad! That was great. The ironic thing about that video was that, of course, this piece doesn't really require big hands, but what did totally intimidate me was how fast he played those chords at the end of agitato! Yikes! Where is the helper with the wood sticks for that part?!

Nancy

Nancy: "Unfortunately, the break from it took away the strength I had developed in practicing the four stave section, but it's coming back. I'm getting the agitato smooth with the metronome, and now I'm working on the chord section at the end of the agitato. Am I right that this will be the fastest section of the piece?"

It's definately the fastest, but not sure its the hardest. I followed Jazyprof's advice and learnt the chords HT "in-sync" before trying them as alternating triplets. You then notice that they are similar to earlier parts of the Agitato section itself. I'm findng that there's a few strategic bars in the Agitato that are awkward and break the flow, particularly if trying ot play against a metronome. However, listening to a lot of recordings, this piece seems to need a lot of "expression" in the Agitato, which is another way of saying "slow down" in the harder bars. The pattern of the first two agitato measures always seems to be played fast (as is the 'chordal' bits that are repeated in the cadenza) but the linking awkward bars seem to be taken at a slower pace. Overall I'm finding the 4-staves section the hardest. But I still haven't properly drilled it properly HT yet - I guess this is top of the list for this week!!

I know what you're saying about some measures being awkward and breaking the flow--I'm glad it's not just me fumbling around there. I think I will try playing those awkward measures today with one measure on each side and try to make it smoother. I find the more I start at the beginning of the section, the more I make the easy measures sound even better against the harder ones, widening the gap in how they sound. I better lay off the ones I have right, even though I sure love hearing them played. I guess that is true in lots of pieces, but it seems especially true in this one.

Nancy

Just spotted this on the P forum We need these!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKKlhYF53w

Hey, I beat you to it. I posted the same video five posts earlier. :p

"Hey, I beat you to it."



Sorry missed it

Good though init?

hi, whats the chord attack practise?

cm,

It's when you break really fast or difficult passages down into sequences of "parallel sets". A a parallel set is a group of notes, ultimitely to be played sequentially (as in C G E G in an Alberti bass) played as a chord, then progressively "breaking up" the chord into a really fast sequence, like a fast rolled chord. You're treating the passage like a series of rolled chords.

Does that make sense?

What you just saw in the video above.
Chord attack

OK, seriously now...chord attack is a practice method where you play a sequence of notes ( such as the triplets in the agitato section of this prelude) as a chord. For example, the RH sequence E G# C# at the beginning of the agitato section can be played as a chord. There are two benefits from this sort of practice: (1) It helps you memorize the section since you see and hear the chordal relationships, (2) It helps with attaining velocity since a chord is the fastest way one can play what was a sequence of notes. You are playing this sequence infinitely fast. Your task then is one of slowing down from infinite speed rather than speeding up. Chang's free online book discusses this at length.

[Edit: Ooops,... gerg was posting as I was writing. Anyway, you get two answers for the price of one!]

Nancy,

This Rachmaninov Prelude is a gorgeous piece! It is well organized, to boot. You have the soft, pensive sections, the agitated sections, and the loud sections. If I had time to attack this (I don't right now) I'd hit the agitated section first because it looks the toughest. Getting that out of the way first makes a psychological hurdle that will help with the rest of the piece.

It looks like about a 2-3 month effort. I'm sure a pro could master it in less time.

Thanks, Gerg. It is a very satisfying piece to work on. I'm actually on the ten month plan with this piece, but I do think I'll get it done passably sooner than that. It's just that I only have a recital with my teacher every six months, so this is my piece for next December since it won't be ready by May.

This piece is so much fun! I worked for about 45 minutes tonight on the chords at the end of agitato, and I made great progress. All of the sudden you can go faster and faster with them, and it's like sliding down a hill. A little scary at times if I'm not sure about the next notes, but for the most part it feels great.

Piano*Dad: I didn't want to post on the other thread since I think it ought to die out, but:

That was hilarious and very clever. I hope you laughed as hard typing it in as I did reading it.

Nancy

Your hands will paint miracles on that black and white canvas! Please record it and share it when you feel ready. :-)

Now that recital #5 is over I am able to get back to our prelude. Last night I finished memorizing the whole piece so now comes the fun part of bringing it up to tempo, working on dynamics, phrasing, pedaling, making the memory more secure. This will take several more weeks. I have a piano lesson tomorrow night so I plan to play it for my teacher (from memory!) and get some pointers from her.

Indeed, my hands get the same urge to go faster and faster as I work on the cadenza. I like your metaphor of sliding down a hill...sometimes it gets away from me. Then I see this video of an adult amateur just like us and I am reminded that speed kills! How not to play the cadenza
I tell myself “slow down and do it right”. Every note must count and must be played with intent.

I've looked back through a few pages of this thread, but I can't find what I'm looking for. I've gotten my fingers accustomed to the Agitato section, the triplet chords at the end of that section, and the 4 stave section. All are coming along pretty well. Now I need to know my goal speed for those sections. Maybe I should just bring my metronome to the computer and set it on Mr. Cambry from YouTube, which I might try tomorrow.

How is everyone doing? I still have done the first section or the last few measures, but I wanted to get the harder parts broken in first.

Nancy