Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Fingering quesiton - Rachmaninoff 32/2 B flat minor

I'm seeking some fingering advice for Rachmaninoff's Prelude Op 32 No 2 in B flat minor.

In measures 17-19 I'm curious how people play the right hand, I've tried a couple of different fingerings, but none jump out at me. Also, I'm interested in advice for m20 in the left hand.

(I'm counting from the first full measure)

Thanks in advance.

I play 54231 for every RH figure of measures 17-19. (In m.20 in the RH I strike the chord with 532 and the G flat with my 4th finger, though one could switch to 4 on the F and play the G flat with the 5th if more comforable). Similarly in m.31, I recommend 52 for the pairs on the 2nd and 4th beat, as I find this easiest for me to strike securely at a fast tempo.)

For the LH of m.20 I recommend 145 for the chord followed by 21 23124 (flowing into 145 again for the 2nd chord, and identical fingering for the second half of the measure). I guess that small hands could play 135 followed by 11 23123.

Hope this helps.

43121 or 54121 for rh 17-19 until 4th motif. 5th motif onwards do not require an accent on the 4th note, so I finger 54221. Lh from m20 thumb under on d natural cromatic and so on. Opening chord should be 5/3/1 followed by 2, 1 for the dotted progression. I am not satisfied with my current mental performance of bars 25-30, but these are the trickiest for me, particularly as the bottom F, etc of the rh part "belongs" to the left hand part. I will have to play it at home to give a fingering assessment.

Thanks to you both! I'll give these a try.

I'm having huge problems with bars 25-30. In particular the RH of bars 27-28 - does anyone have any advice please for fingering that'll work at the required tempo? It seems extremely hard to get this up to anything like the required speed (and any thoughts on this, too, btw?).

This is what I use for the RH:

Bar 25: 5215 152542 152542 152542 (larger hands may prefer 4 instead of 5 on all the upper Fs except the first)

Bar 26: 13215 132521 132521 132521 (from the 2nd to 3rd beat, "hop" gently and quickly with the thumb from the C flat played close to the end of the B flat, moving "northwest" up onto the B flat)

Bar 27: 32521 454212 454212 454212 (smaller hands may prefer to end 121 on the last beat)

Bar 28: 454212 454212 545212 545212

Bar 29: 454212 454212 454212 545212

Bar 30: 454212 454212 545212 545212

Disclaimer: I am an amateur and not a teacher, but I've experimented with the fingerings to this piece on and off for the last 23 years so I hope they are helpful. I recommend the usual RH slow practice with different rhythms and accents, and also in 5 note groups. For example, if you number the notes in sequence from 1 onwards, practice 123454321 back and forth, building up a bit of speed and sureness over several repetitions, with somewhat of an accent on note 1; then move forward to the same thing with 234565432, then 345676543, and so on.

thank you very much!

The fingering you've given for bar 25 is very useful - slightly different from mine (5215 151532 151532 151532) but otherwise I think it's the same as I've been using (eg bars 27-28). I guess that just means more practice required

Best Regards
Andy