Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Chopin's Revolutionary Etude Study Group

After much consideration, I have decided to take on this great piece. I’d love to hear from other people who have tried this piece–and if you have a recording to post, that would also be helpful. It is a huge undertaking for me. Up to this point, the most difficult piece I’ve played is Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor (it took me 11 months, and I think the Revolutionary Etude is going to be a couple notches up in difficulty from there.

I had a lesson on this piece yesterday. My regular teacher has never taught this one, so she sent me to her son who is a great pianist and excellent teacher. My main goal for the lesson was to get a game plan together for learning it, and I also wanted him to show me the theoretical structure of the piece, which always helps me when I learn something.

He gave me three steps for learning it:

1. Go through it hands separately and do two things: 1) decide on fingerings and write them in; and 2) look at the chords you’re playing and write down what you see. For example, the first LH run is just the V7 chord (G7, the V7 of C minor, the key of the Etude) with a little ornamentation in it on the way down. It’s accompanied by the actual chord in the RH. He says this sort of thing will help me to keep it all straight, especially once I pick up the tempo.

2. Look through the piece like a conductor would. This can be done away from the piano. Notice how the LH phrases almost always get louder and softer within a measure, but often the RH gets louder just as the LH is quieting down. He also said to pay special attention to the accents in the LH runs. There are several places where the RH has slurs or accents, and it’s important to use these from the beginning, just after you have determined the fingering. My teacher told me that all this will help the piece sound much more professional in the end.

3. Once I’ve really nailed down all the fingering and articulation, he says I should take it straight to memory. I should constantly check that I’ve got the dynamics right in each hand, the articulation correct, and of course, the notes and the rhythm right.

Once it is committed to memory and basically correct, picking up the tempo will be a finishing process, and he thinks I may have to put it away a couple of times and come back to it to get it up to speed. We’ll see. I’m hoping this will be the piece I play for my teacher’s recital next December, but I’d rather have it right than early.

If you feel like joining in on this (long) journey, please do! I'm sure that we'll all progress at different rates, but it will be fun to work together. Also, if anyone has favorite YouTube versions of the Revolutionary Etude, please post the links here so we can all enjoy them. It's very helpful to hear a variety of interpretations.

Nancy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTuBGDPXOM - Yefim Bronfman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTuBGDPXOM - Valentina Lisitsa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hOKcdZJJFU - Sviatoslav Richter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-VjFKLCKwM - Maurizio Pollini

All my favourites are in there. Good luck with your journey! I'm finishing my work on Rachmaninoff's Prelude Op. 3 No. 2, which took me three months, but I don't feel ready for the Revolutionary yet. My left hand is definitely too weak and I need to work on other skills first. I will certainly be keeping my finger crossed for you though!


Mateusz

Hi Nancy

Thanks for the invitation to join in with your adventure. I am approaching from a very different angle and it's already very useful to gain insight from your game plan.

When I returned to the piano 4 years ago I downloaded the sheet music for a few of my all time favourite pieces, including Etude 10/12, I then "tore" into them with high enthusiasm but low, low technical ability. The resulting 'musical blur" gave me a fair bit of fun playing an hour or two per week. Having woken up to the possibility of playing piano slightly better I've spent the last 3 months or so almost starting again, many bad habits need ironing out. So that's were I am now.

Trying to learn and improve piano playing a Chopin Etude may not seem the best way forward but it provides so much motivation. I may try to get a teacher this year although my work schedule doesn't make it that easy.

Back to the Revolutionary Etude. For the last 20 years I've listened almost exclusively to the Pollini version

Etude 10/12 Pollini

Some say a little clinical but it's clarity and articulation are superb and I use this a great deal as my main reference.

I recently bought the Murray Perahia Chopin Etudes on CD and really enjoyed them. I also like

Ashkenazy 10/12

Horowitz 10/12

I look forward to making progress in parallel with a few others
along the way. Any help from those who have got the study cracked will be much appreciated.

Catch up soon

Chris

Hi Nancy,

I have been looking for a new and challenging piano project lately.

The Revolutionary Etude seems like a dream piece to me now, and I do wonder if it will ever be within my technical grasp.

I think I have enough patience to undetake a project that will take a year or so to pay off. My motivations for learning this would be pretty simple:

1. I KNOW it would be more than FUN to play this.
2. I would feel as if I accomplished something huge if I ever actually learned to play this.
3. I would be impressed with myself if I learned to play this.
4. I would impress my non-piano playing friends if I learned to play this.
5. After all the time it would take to learn this I would keep it in my repertoire for as long as I had a piano.

I guess I'm questioning my technical abilities and my patience to undertake such a huge and long range piano project.

The three steps your teacher gave you sounds like a reasonable approach to me. I'm going to give this some thought.

Count me in! I'm looking for a challenge...

My teacher and I have looked at this for a technical exercise and taking small parts for study at different time. This will be a great time to start putting those pieces together.

Alright, I'm going to put in fingering tonight.... share questions about tricky parts later today or tomorrow?

Matt

I might be in!

It wouldn't hurt to try. But don't make it the only piece to work on. You would burn out quickly if you hammer on only 1 piece for hours after hours, days after days. Practice and play pieces that you know they are within your reach, spend no more than 30-40% of your practice time on the hard piece. Do realize that it is a long term project so when you feel the need to put it away for a few days or even a few weeks, put it aside. Do not set a time frame on when you must finish the piece. It may take a year or even 3-4 years, time does not matter.

I'm in, I'm in!!!

About 3 years ago I decided to learn this piece on my own. Right away I wanted to play it at close to performance tempo so I spent hours on small sections cranking up the speed. After a few weeks I developed a bad case of tennis elbow which put my left arm out of commission for months. So I put the piece away.

A couple of months ago I decided to try again. This time I am working with a teacher and the first thing she insisted on was very slow practice, giving every note its due. For my lesson this Wednesday I am supposed to play the whole piece from memory, left hand alone, at a tempo of 60 bpm.

This is going to be fun!

Very Good points LisztAddict. There have been some pieces I've put aside for even longer periods and returned to finish them. Often my piano schedule might be dictated by work and other responsibilities. Other times my piano schedule is dictated by nothing more than moods. I have found when I'm in the mood to learn a new piano piece it's best to go with it.

It's great to see so many people enthusiastic about this piece! It's so beautiful, and sometimes when I hear it, I think "maybe not." But what LisztAddict says is really true--it doesn't hurt to try, and there's no reason to set a timetable for finishing it. In fact, I can't imagine I'll ever truly finish it.

Mateusz and Chris, I hadn't heard the Pollini version, but the clarity is wonderful.

Jeff, I feel the same way about wondering if I'm technically up to it. And I also know how impressive it would be--to myself, not to mention others--to be able to play this gorgeous piece. One thing I like about it is that the right hand is not hard at all, so I can play the melody and listen to it anytime I want. It brings tremendous pleasure just to be able to spend time with this piece, even if it takes me longer than a year.

LisztAddict, I have some fun and easy pieces I'm working on, so I will make sure to keep up with those. Have you recorded this piece? If so, can you post it?

Matt, I'm so glad you're joining. Everything is more fun if you're involved.

With many people working on it, maybe we can all just specialize in a few measures and put the whole thing together for a really good recital piece! However, I bet Jazzyprof will be submitting this to the February recital--it sounds like he has really gotten a head start! I can't wait to hear everyone's progress. I may be still working on this when I retire (I'm about 15 years from it), but I plan to keep at it until I get it. This piece is so much fun; it's hard to stop working on it.

My teacher gave me some more specific theoretical points about the piece, so I'll try to get the music out and post them tomorrow sometime.

Nancy

I'll join in. It might be a week or so before I start it though.

Some advice here:
1. LisztAddict is right on here: don't make the only piece you work on.
2. Just like jazzyprof, I overplayed it and had to give my left hand a few weeks rest.
3. Start learning from the back, the left hand has pretty much the same technique throughout (playing harmonic C minor scale most of the time), but is more varied towards the end, so you will not be as repetitive.
4. SLOW DOWN!!!! Do not attempt to play small left hand sections at speed from the start - not that it is terribly difficult (it is not), but it is where the most danger to your hands and ultimately, performance musicality, resides.
5. Calm down! Play piano, you can always add might to the piece, playing quietly will force you to be much more even and musical. Pay a lot of attention to the small dynamics, like cresc. and dim. in both left hand whole measure passages, and in the tiny right hand phrases. If you start FF it will not be possible.
6. To get your left hand even, here is the best hint I received from my teacher: first, play LH passages accenting every 1st 16th from the group of 4, do this for a while (slowly!), then change to accent every second note from the group of 4, then every 3rd, and finally, every 4th. Once you've done the whole cycle, you may try to increase your speed just a bit.
Just my $0.02

Nancy - sorry but I don't really have my recording of this piece.

I made a sample recording to give you some ideas of how I'd practice pieces like this, 10/8, 25/2, 25/11, or 28/16. 1) very slow 2) slow and staccato 3) group of 2 notes starting with the first note 4) group of 2 notes starting with the second note.

http://www.box.net/shared/q7f8f6bv86

Oh, LisztAddict, this is great! Wow! I can only imagine the level of self-control it takes to play this piece at a consistent slow tempo, but it really helped me to hear you do it like this. Thank you so much for posting this! I am going to download this and make it my short term goal (five months, I'm guessing) to play along with you at this steady pace. Did I say how great this is? I am so impressed. How can you play like this? I really appreciate your showing us how you would practice this. Okay, I will stop gushing and go practice. Thank you again! You are amazing. Thank you one more time.

Nancy

Thank you LisztAddict and YD! I plan to take and follow your advice...you are making me think it might actually be possible for me to get all those impossible sounding notes under my fingers, in time.

I'm working today and won't be able to find some piano time until tomorrow or this weekend...I can't wait to get started.

I remember from the Croatian Rhapsody learning group that there were some participants who zipped right through it...some who dropped out...and others (like me) who straggled through it, taking about a year to complete it. Personally, I'm glad I went through that process because I can perform a fairly decent "Croation Rhapsody".

Revolutionary Etude next? Dare to dream!

I just wanted to back up Nancy's response to your practice recording, LisztAddict. Thank you so much, it's a really great insight into what it takes to practice a piece of this nature and difficulty. Having heard some of your wonderful recordings before (Chopin 10/3 and Liebestraum), this provides such inspiration for the rest of us.

I find the discipline of playing at these low tempos extremely difficult. I'm going to have to seriously "re-program" myself to play more slowly - this may take quite some time.

A general question that has come up - when learning a new piece how much practice time do you devote hours/percentage to the new piece? - I'm sure this varies a great deal depending on ability and practice schedule.

Chris

That's where a good metronome comes in handy. Set it at a slow tempo and just get in the groove!
Online metronome

I have 3 more competitions this spring, a concerto performance with an orchestra , and desperately trying to pull together a recital program. I will NOT have much time to devote to this. My teacher has always told me that when I learn this piece, remember that it's not to be able to perform, but to play for technical improvement. I'm using it as an Etude, rather than a concert piece.... for the time being :p

Matt

Chris, I am trying not to devote all my practice time to this, but I also know that I need to keep my LH in shape or I will not ever be able to play it. So I spend 20-30 minutes each day working out the fingerings and running through the LH. I think it will be no time until I have the LH memorized because it takes so much concentration just to pick out a fingering. I like LisztAddict's suggestion of playing staccato because it builds even more control up in my LH. I hear this staccato suggestion pretty regularly--does anyone know why it's helpful to practice this way?

Jeff, I found some of my notes today from when I was learning Croatian Rhapsody. Do you remember how that music had little letters at the top of each section? I copied them down (I think A-R or something like that) on a sheet of paper, and I turned on the metronome and tested how fast I could play each of those twenty sections without a mistake. Some were at 60, some at 40, etc. I think the whole piece was supposed to be at 80 or more. Then I would find the slowest section and practice it until I could get it up over one of the next slowest sections. Then I updated the metronome list to show how fast I could play it now, and I went on to the next slowest section. It was a little like a border collie nipping at the slow running sheep! That helped me get the whole piece in shape, and like you, I can still play a decent version now. I hope that once I get Revolutionary Etude in slow playable form, I can start the border collie method on these sections also. It breaks it down into manageable tasks.

I've been doing some scale practicing as I learn this piece. I wish I knew my scales much better, but it has helped to play them when I'm working on a section in that key. Most of the runs are a scale fragment or longer, and I think seeing them that way will help me remember it better.

Nancy

Perahia's reading is the one I most prefer.