I'm working on this piece for an upcoming concert, and I can't get it up to speed. For some reason, my left hand can't do the repeated chords at the normal speed - I tense up and the chords are either overly loud or completely sloppy. Does anyone have any advice on how to practice to make sure that the repeated chords are neither tense nor sloppy?

Tension will kill in this piece, that's for sure. What is the primary source of the tension? Is it wrist, forearm, shoulder, or some combination of the three? That tension is what must be attacked.

I remember last year when my son was working up this piece that his new teacher (new at that time) deconstructed his technique and rebuilt it in order to work on tension. One thing she did was to teach him how to 'drop in' to chords from above. At first, she didn't care if he hit all the right notes. She just wanted his arm to drop into the chords with only the slightest tensing at the moment of finger contact. Her purpose was to get the tension out of his shoulder/forearm/wrist trio. Only then could she rebuild his way of playing so he could master both the chords and the rapid octaves in the piece.

Playing the wrong notes should always be avoided. This piece is not very simple, you have to think over the fingering twice or trice to find the most comfortable solution, and then play it at a very slow tempo

I think it is better to work the tension out with separate exercises, where you have no problem with hitting the right notes, than to use the prelude as an exercise for improving your lacking technique.

But Op 23 No 5 is not an extremely fast piece, and chords are, with few exceptions, not repeated many times.

I actually have no trouble with any part of it except the repeated chords in the accompaniment to the melody in the first and last section. I can play all the other parts of it just fine. The fingering is no problem. What's driving me crazy is that in the groups of three repeated chords, my hands are out of sync, and my left hand can't keep up, and tenses up as a result.

Ah well. Back to the practice room with me.

I don't know the piece, but if by repeated chords you mean a chord repeated quickly on the same notes, I have may a solution (ever tried to play some Schubert accompaniments with repeated triplets?). The trick is to not leave your hand in the same position on the keys as this will cause your arm to tense up trying to stay in the same spot. When I don't pay attention to this, I find my wrist locks up, then my bicep, and eventually I find my shoulders up by my ears!

Choose two or three slightly different locations on the keys, towards or away from you.

I don't think, in the context of this piece, that this is a solution that would work. Finding "different locations" on the keys means an extra motion that could possibly increase tension rather than reduce it. A loose but controlled wrist seems to me to be the better solution

Regards,

I'm sure you know better than the music professors.

Well, it sure worked for him. Technique improved and the piece was mastered, all simultaneously. Voila.

The 'dropping in' exercises were independent of this particular piece. They were worked using any particular chord pattern one chose, and one could choose chord structures of this piece or plain old I chords in any position. Getting the right notes was indeed the goal, but not the only goal, and not the first goal. The first goal was developing a relaxed approach to striking large chords, singularly and in repeated patterns.

Larisa,

Is it the repeated trios? The ones where the right hand also has a repeated trio? These are exactly the ones that demand a relaxed dropping in with a little wrist bounce (like a shock absorber) to help with the repetition.

I guess I should clarify that the slightly is very slight - like millimeters/fractions of an inch, and it is not going for specific locations on the keys. It's more like letting your hand be free to move than thinking "I'm going to put my hand _here_".

Is there any specific measure you are talking about or just the whole chordal rythymic technique? I have approached it by first establishing the optimum fingering of chords, second getting a feel for those rythmic clusters. For the rapid repeated chords have you tried as Piano Dad suggests? You could hold one simple chord under your fingers and then use your shoulder and forearm to play. Perhaps your fingering insecurity is making your shoulders tense. I often find that myself and it is then not possible to play rythmically.