Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How do *you* cheat? (Chopin Etudes)

On second look....I blew it there -- that's not at all how it's usually done.
Never mind.

That doesn't negate the fact that it is still an etude.

It doesn't seem all that confusing to me. You play the octave with the left hand - it is sustained with the pedal - and you bounce the left thumb off the key to allow the right thumb to restrike the note. The fingering given is Chopin's own, so I imagine that is what he had in mind. To me, repeating the C with the left hand thumb is far more difficult than using the right. I think that a slight agogic stretch at that spot is okay, too.

If you're not going to regroup the notes (ie Mark's alternate fingering), then I definitely agree. It makes the passage more difficult. But if you do regroup, then striking the C with the LH makes sense.

That's how it's done.
Not what I said.


That, on the the other hand, is not how it's done.

IMO you can't afford any break in the rhythm there, at all -- because it's where you're establishing the tempo and rhythm. That is, immediately.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone do an 'agogic stretch' there, and I think I'd fall off my seat if I did -- not from being aghast, but from losing my balance.


You're absolutely not going to do "Mark's alternate fingering."
It's not an alternate fingering, it's a farce.

I think the point is that if one is playing an etude that is also a a great musical work, making music can supersede the fact that the the piece is an etude. Even if one is focused only on the technical benefits of playing an etude, what about the benefits of playing the rest of the etude as written? Should a student miss out on all the technical and musical benefits of playing the etude (with some minor alteration) just because they don't have the time or skill to play a few notes as written? Some posters seem to act like some has suggested playing an octave etude in single notes throughout.

I think, quite frankly, that any discussion of redistributing a single note in any piece, etude or not, is very silly and almost infantile. As one poster's teacher called similar thoughts "majoring in minoring." An extreme example of missing the forest for the trees. Not the thing that I can imagine really good pianists ever do.

Many students study some Chopin etudes at one point but many never play them at a professional speed. This kind of "alteration" makes redistributing a single note look like a single grain of sand on a beach yet I think most students still benefit from doing this kind of practice. This is why teachers assign the Chopin Etudes to pupils so frequently.

Funny.. cause when we were talking about Bunin purposely leaving out a note, you said it was just one grain of sand on a giant beach.

LOL

....and funny that you call changing the entire nature of a phrase "leaving out a note."

(Leaving out the note was the least of it. It was a tiny detail that helped enable him to do his very different interpretation of the phrase.)

Of the C major etude, Chopin said to a student, "If you study this as I intended it, it widens the hand and enables you to play runs of wide broken chords like bow strokes. But often, unfortunately, instead of making people learn all that, it makes people unlearn it."

I suppose that different hand types have different issues with this etude. Both Horowitz and Rubinstein refused to record it. My hand is a virtual photocopy of Van Cliburn's (we are the same height and build) and one might presume that this etude is a mere lark for me, but not at all - measure 30 has been my bête noire for many years. The fifth finger descending to the fourth finger (E-flat to B-flat) certainly does not compliment my hand (yes, I have tried the third finger, but that is worse). I have seen pianists with smaller hands negotiate that passage with greater ease. But I don't utilize two-handed 'cheating' because I want to solve the riddle on its own terms.

I have followed Cortot's edition (among others, of course) and with all due respect to that noble artist, I find his preparatory exercises, which often utilize a fixed-grip, in direct contradiction to the greater purpose of the etude, which is to achieve elasticity and flexibility while 'under duress' of wide stretches that are unrelenting in ever-varying repetition.

AND YET... a single grain on one big beach.

Thanks for helping me prove my point.

In honor of you, I may go back, relearn the piece, and record it with your alternate fingering. I will, of course, give you all the credit. And I mean ALL the credit. :p

At first I thought the reasoning behind the LH "take" was because the player's physiognomy made reaching the RH thumb down there difficult. But then the subsequent measures would again require a "fix."

I might forgive such a thing for one occurrence in a big work, but not where it's an integral, repeated part of the structure.

Not to make a big thing of it, but glad to be of service.

Is that an undisputed quote??

It surprises me if it is, because I've tended to doubt that he much conceived of the etudes as helping develop technique (as most people assume he did). I've viewed them more as compositional studies -- showing how you can create great music with etude figures -- and pieces to display the technique that you have more than to develop it.

I don't have time to look for the exact quote, but he did mention in one of his letters about "writing etudes in his manner" and of course he also started to write his method. And it seems he was kind of devoted as a teacher, so I would assume he has this aspect in mind when preparing these.

The above quote about 10-1 is in Eisedinger's book, page 68. He got it from Niecks. It was supposedly told to Friederike Streicher by Chopin. So it is hearsay, as is most of what we know about his teaching.

It is a fairly well-known quote that is attributed to one of Chopin's students. Of course, ANYONE could dispute it, Mark (as I've no doubt you will).

I was joking this time.

I think this is a good point, but Chopin etudes are musically lacking compared to say Liszt or Rachmaninoff etudes, which are excellent short performance pieces if you cut the "etude" off the title, whereas Chopin etudes are less serious music.

I've personally spent over 1 full year on op.10 no.4, and I'm hitting the 2 month mark for op.25 no.6 (at this point in my piano playing career 2 months is a lot on something this short), and I think that's part of the genius of the Chopin etudes; They might not be that musically compelling, but they sure as heck are fun to work on, even if they can be impossibly hard!

As for "cheating", I've seen people move notes over to the left hand in op.10 no.4, which I think completely defeats the purpose. The right hand has no challenge when you do that.

But for example in op.25 no.6, before the last page, that descending A major scale in thirds, I use the left hand to play the D-F#s because it doesn't make things that much easier, but it makes it sound smoother, and if you want to accuse me of making it easier, well I still have to play the harmonic G# minor descending scale with 1 hand, and that one is far far tougher.