I'd love to see the Chopin performance, sounds interesting.

I'm updating for my Chopins C#m Nocturne (posthumous). Yesterday I had my pianolesson and brought the sheets with me. My teacher, who has taught me for a year now (that's when I started from the basics), did not think I should be playing it. Basically she said it's too difficult for me and recommended some Grieg instead. Now, Grieg sounds nice, actually very nice when she played it for me, but as I know myself, right now I would have much more motivation to learn the Chopins Nocturne, so I fought back.

Eventually she gave up, but made herself clear that it would take time, maybe a year, to learn it. I said I'm up for it, after all this is one of the pieces that made me ever start playing the piano.

I'm sure I'll learn the beginning part pretty fast, but the ending stuff. The 35 note run... That's gonna be challenging. Anyways, I'm happy to start learning it, I'll start today.

I mastered Chopins fourth prelude in about six months. It's much easier, but I'm better now. Just need to run the C#m scales every day, and play the Nocturne's notes one hand a time. And yeah, I need to have patience.

Hi Curious223:

You MUST play the music you love. That is the FIRST rule, at least around here. And there is a good reason for this: you will be highly motivated to learn it and your level of frustration will be kept at bay.

Definitely, that 35 note run will be THE challenge, but if you are playing the C#m scales every day, then the task will be easier. And good for you for having the courage to tell your teacher what you want. Many teachers think that their students are not "ready" for certain pieces, but we all know that teachers can underestimate the determination of their students. I know I quit lessons because my teacher refused to advance me at the rate I thought was possible. Then I went on to teach myself. The only thing I wish she would have done is teach me more technique, but I sometimes think she didn't have any herself.

Good luck to you
Kathleen

I don't see anything wrong, personally, with slowing the whole thing way down while you play those challenging runs towards the end. Pleasing, even!

I'm wholeheartedly behind you learning this piece, for personal reasons. I started learning it, and thought it was going quite nicely, but one day my amazingly inconsistent teacher heavily criticised something I was doing and I've never played it since. You might say I'm learning it vicariously through you.

Hi Seabelle: Welcome and thank you for further inspiring curious223 to learn this nocturne. Your story about your teacher really angers me. I know there are good teachers out there, but why do I hear so many stories like yours?

Go back to the nocturne and play it as you feel it. This would be Chopin's advice to you. And yes, you can slow down the run and even give it a bit of rubato here and there. I had to do this because my fingers (now age 70) just refuse to move that fast, just like my whole body. Don't forget, you are not planning a career on the concert stage. You can and should "adjust" some music (just a bit) to your own abilities. This is certainly better than not play the music at all.

Write again, seabelle,
Kathleen

That was my thinking about the adjustments. Why decide not to play something you really want to, just because there's a few bars that stymie you? In my case, I don't really think I like the piece as much as I need to to overcome my teacher's objections.

She is generally a fine lass, though. Just... occasionally erratic. She also gives me 1.5 hour lessons for the price of a half-hour one, and she's nice, and I like to think we're buddies and what-have-you.

Kathleen, I might also mention that I considered pinching your signature and posting it somewhere else like I'd just discovered it. It's a very good quote.

Seabelle and Curious -
The most important thing is to practice that 35 note run SLOWLY and EVENLY. Don't even try to speed it up until you can play it slowly and evenly in your sleep. And then when you do start to gradually speed it up continue to alternate your faster attempts with SLOW repeats. This will seem to take forever but not really - probably only a few weeks if done consistently for about 10 minutes a day. And remember for speed, let your whole hand move your fingers, not your fingers move your whole hand. And hopefully someone wiser than me, Sotto? LisztAddict? can give you even more help.

I don't dislike Oscar Wilde by any means, but he was, after all, a drama queen who frequently reveals in his quotations as much about himself as his intended subject.

I've never really found weeping, mourning, sins or tragedies in Chopin's music, though I know people of an earlier era commonly did (like, for instance, my own mother, who thought she was plumbing the emotional depths of his music with exaggerated rubato accompanied by cocktails and cigarettes atop the piano).

I just think that attributing pervasive sadness to Chopin both reflects and perpetuates a distorted perception that he was effete and his music shallow and self-indulgent. Nothing could be further from the truth! Poignancy is matched by the exaltation of beauty from a man who prized dignity, reserve and restraint; melancholy is outweighed by the exultation of life from a composer whose favored key by far was A-flat major.

Steven

I just thought it was cute because it was so melodramatic. I didn't mean to upset anyone.

That's OK. Most of us like it.

Now this is getting funny, as I'm not aware there's any evidence how "most" of us feel about it (or even who's included in "us"!).

I didn't actually mention how I feel about that quotation, but, if I'm going to be mistaken for "upset" about it anyway, I may as well say that I think it's quite loathsome.

Steven

Seabelle: You did not offend anyone. I happened to be very moved by that quote because it sums up how I feel when listening to "some" of Chopin's music---not all, of course.

I agree with you, Steven, totally. Your description of him is magnficent!! I just wish I had your way with words as I have often stated. But please don't deprive or deride your mother her impression of his music just because she heard him in a different way. (Yikes, cigarettes on the piano!) For some people his music is cathartic.

I believe that he was unable to express the real depths of his emotions in words, just as so many of us are incapable of doing. He spoke through his music and through this expression he has touched the hearts of millions. And I also believe that, while he was content and even quite happy for many of his years, he was still, basically, a troubled soul. His homesicknesses, his heartbreak, his health, his anger, his insecurities, his abandonment, his fears---all created the person he was. He even admitted that he rather enjoyed being depressed.

Steven, no where have I ever suggested the one should exaggerate rubato while playing his music.

Thank you for your most descriptive and insightful post. And maybe, just maybe, you loathe the author. Just a guess, that's all. And maybe Frycek might have meant "many" of us.

Kathleen

Yes, and if one practices scales regularly, even just 5 minutes a day, this shouldn't be anything to think about.

But for other tricky runs like the 48-note run in the Nocturne 27/2, besides slowly and evenly, I'd suggest lifting the fingers high up and evenly. Lifting up the finger is as important as striking down.

Us equals you, me, Kathleen, Seabelle and Oscar. Most is four out of five, a clear marjority.

Thank you for the hint. I'll keep that in mind when I get to that part by fluent playing. That is, a few months (at least) from this moment.

Hehe, I am actually pleased that the quotation is under discussion. Kathleen, I've respected your choice to use it, and, though I've always found it troubling, wouldn't otherwise have had an entrée even to broach the topic.

If the quotation is parody (and thus humorous precisely because it's so over the top), that's not so obvious; if meant and taken seriously, it's unbecoming and inaccurate. And when one questions whether such a quip has a plausible basis in reality, the truth is that for every piece or passage by Chopin that possibly evokes such dark emotion, there are more that are exuberant, vigorous, wholesome and happy.

Chopin lovers surely recognize that there are, and always have been, Chopin haters—those who would depict his music as feeble, decadent, frivolous, for the salon or for the sickroom. I believe Wilde's statement trivializes and disparages Chopin's music, reflecting not a deep knowledge, love and understanding so much as what its detractors are prone to saying—or at least thinking!

I don't loathe Oscar Wilde at all, and I certainly recognize his genius for expressing what others feel but might not dare to voice. And plenty of people in an earlier era did think Chopin's music was sickly, weepy, gushy, sentimental, sappy, maudlin. Though fewer people share those attitudes nowadays, they persist in some quarters—and don't, in my opinion, deserve tribute or even acknowledgment (unless to refute them ).

Steven

Truce

Kathleen

I knew there was a trick to it......

But seriously folks.... runs like that are sometimes the things that keep some of us from playing a piece.
That figure is it for me in that Nocturne (I mean, I do play it, but I don't let anybody hear it).

And I even get freaked by the scale in thirds near the end of the G minor Ballade. As soon as I get over that, I can consider playing the piece.....

OK, make it five out of six...

But I also understand and respect sotto voce's point....

Truce...

CA

Maybe you should consider starting to "warm up" that part right away? I mean, as long as it wouldn't intimidate you from even starting to learn the piece.

I always try to start working on the "hardest" part first. It really helps down the road.

Well, I do warm up for the run since I play the C#m scales everyday before I start working on the piece. But when I'm actually playing the Nocturne, I don't want to rush so far just yet.

Little by little I guess..

Not me. I generally consider this kind of intellectual elitism to be about as single-minded as the excessive rubato, wine and cigarettes example.

...

That's excellent. Add at least 1 more scale in some other key, and different key each day. No need to play fast. Play every note as evenly as possible is the goal.

I don't know that I'd call excessive rubato or wine single minded. Some people enjoy such things. As to intellectual elitism, you don't know Steven well enough to make that pronouncement methinks.

Firstly, I wasn't talking about cigarette's or wine, but the example that included them. I like wine and hate cigarettes as much as the next guy. Secondly, I don't necessarily think that whoever Steven is is intellectual elitism incarnate or anything, just that this particular strain of elitism is glib and tedious.

It wasn't very clear.

It's dangerous ground you are treading one by labeling Steven an elitist. It's neither true nor called for.

Seabelle,

Dated remarks that suggest Chopin's music is characterized by overwrought anguish are, in my strongly held and longstanding opinion, beyond distasteful. If you find that opinion elitist, or the way I express it glib and tedious, that's your problem.

Whatever point you attempt to make about wine and cigarettes, please don't presume that my commenting on my mother's lapses in judgment and good taste gives you the same license.

Perhaps you lack the perspective to appreciate that this is a friendly place and that people can agree to disagree. Getting defensive, expressing disrespect and using insulting language don't build credibility for someone who registered five days ago and has a blank profile. I recommend greater circumspection.

Steven

While we don't always quite manage it, we aspire to Chopin's level of politesse around here. So be sure to be nasty in a nice way.

One difficulty with some of those scary runs, including the one in 27/2, is that they aren't necessarily standard scales, or even scales at all. They can incorporate different types of patterns, shifting from scale to arpeggio to something else. Fortunately, the long one in the C#m nocturne goes smoothly up and down without doing anything crazy in between, and that helps.

You've all inspired me to go back to 27/2 and try to deal with that measure more effectively than I have in the past.

There are some Chopinesque fioriture in Barber's Nocturne, which I'm working on, but they are mercifully short; the longest is only 14 notes. (That is, they'd be Chopinesque if Chopin had spoken 20th-century-ese.)

Elene

We may tease but we don't attack. We don't do personal abuse either.



You see, that's not how I've interpreted that quotation up to now. I've read it to mean that Wilde found Chopin's music to be profound and moving on a very deep level - "sins" and "tragedies" as the stuff of great literature and art. I never interpreted it to mean that Wilde felt he'd been wallowing in bathos - now I can picture Wilde fastidiously shaking himself off like a wet cat - but it could mean exactly that. I tried to find it in context last night. It's apparently in a long dialogue that Wilde wrote called The Critic as Artist. I only skimmed it and never found the quote of contention but I'm intrigued now and may persevere. You've given me something to think about.

BTW the Icons of Europe people in their Dan Brown fashion are now somehow trying to link Wilde into with the Chopin/Jenny Lind business.

My solution to that measure is to pretend that I'm having a memory lapse and just leave it out and hope that nobody notices.

(Just kidding, but I might consider it.)