Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Tristan and Isolde - need advice on difficult ending!

I am doing the Moszcowski transcription of Tristan and Isolde Liebestod, which is probably even a little harder then the Liszt version of it.

There are 4 climactic measures towards the end that just seem impossible.

Its the (fff) triple forte 'con somma bravura' section, where the right hand has played a C# min chord, and then in the bass cleff there is a complicated run that is very hard to decipher.

The first beat of the measure is straightforward enough, but THEN the next beat is 16 notes in the right hand, and the left hand has a a group of four 32nd notes, and then a grouping of five 32nd notes.

I have no idea how to play this rhythmically... if you listen to recordings, its very hard to even tell what is happening there.

Its something like playing 9 against 16, all in one beat!!!!

The next measure when it goes to G#-min is a bit easier to figure out, since its always 6 against 4.

Anyone ever solved this measure, and can help?

Thanks,
Karl

p.s. Liszt transcribed these 4 measures in a much simpler way, just playing some repeated chords in the bass instead of a flourishing run of notes.

It sounds a lot like the Chopin questions that come up - if you look into threads about playing the Fantaisie-Impromptu, or some of the Nocturnes you'll find suggestions on how to play these kinds of things.

You've already figured out how many notes go in each beat. You could further subdivide to get (8 and 4) and (8 and 5). Practice each hand separately until it is fluid while thinking about keeping in time with the larger beat (either eighth note or quarter note), and then try to do hands together. The hard part is to get each hand's notes evenly spaced when doing this.

While I don't know this particular transcription, any passage of this type where there is an irregular number of notes in one hand against an irregular number of notes in the other hand requires that one play "to the beat." Forget about trying to mesh the two with something approaching mathematical accuracy; practice hands separately with an even beat - with metronome, if necessary - and eventually put hands together, aiming for the notes that come together on the beat.

Regards,

This is the only way I could accomplish music like this. I remember percussionists in school tapping out 5 against 7, then 7 against 11 - just for fun!

Not me.

Yeah, Chopin is nowhere as close to this difficult. The hardest Chopin passages don't even come close to the complexity of this measure. Most Chopin just requires you to play 7 against 2 or just 3 against 4...

Is this measure even played in TEMPO?

I can't imagine that I could play 16 notes in a single beat in the first place!

If you are going to practice it with a metronome, what BPM would you set?

It is tricky, definitely. Even Earl Wild sounds like he fudged a few notes in that part of his otherwise phenomenal recording (Great Pianists of the 20th Century #98, my number one desert island recording).

It's a great transcription, post a recording once you've mastered it!

It has taken me almost an hour just to memorize the first 4 measures!!!

It's hard enough with the score! I think the only way is to have true independence of hands. One way to do this is to try something worse....Godowsky-Chopin Etude #45 gives you 3 vs 4, 3 vs 5, 3 vs 4 vs 6 vs 9. It's he11, but awesome (or so it sounds, I can't really play it either, lol).

My independence of hands is OK.

Its more the fact that 16 notes are played on a single beat.

Wow... how the heck do you memorize a piece like this?

Its very slow going...