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And unfortunately, the Fantasy Impromptu is too often attempted by students at the grade 6 level or lower.

Too true, carey. I think that one of the curses of the Fantaisie-Impromptu is that too many relatively young, technically facile players attempt it while more mature players avoid it because it is overplayed and superficial (?) in content. Even though Chopin did not (apparently) wish this work to be published, it is, in the right hands, a lovely piece of fanciful writing, even if it lacks great depth. I don't think that every piece has to be profound to be beautiful or to be captivating. Even if the repetitions in the Moderato cantabile sections occur once too often, surely that section contains a lovely bel canto melody, rivaling - or at least equalling - anything Bellini wrote.

Regards,

Well said !!

You have a very good point! Maybe you could guide me in the right direction.... As far as my background goes, I'm 33, have played since I was 5, and took 10 years off from age 20-30. I've played a range from Bach's French Suite selections, to Debussy's First Arabesque, Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, and Rachmoninov's Prelude in E Minor (his easiest one!)

At work I spend 8 hours a day trying to recreate perfection in a tiny black hole (the life of a dentist), and managing 8 women. =) Playing piano is my therapy!!!! I would like to find a piece that is an expressive outlet. I tend to find Debussy and Chopin and Rachmoninov great for reliving tension, but I'm sure there are many other composers that accomplish the same emotion in their music.... Any ideas?

I keep wondering if your drills are perfectly pitched - -
(Also how do you feel about Little Shop of Horrors?)

A good stress relieving nocturne might be C# Posthumous. It's meditative, not too long and only has a couple of killer passages. It also starts sounding half way decent early in the learning process which is a great incentive.

It's spelt wrong. BruceD got it right: fioritura, not 'fioratura'.

It's really up to you, but I personally prefer Op.9 No.1 (in spite of the fioritura).

Mark_C My process as well. I don't like approaches that divide the RH passage into various groups of 2, 3, etc, to coincide with the LH notes. That I find more "mechanical."

That's easy. You just play 11.915 notes in one hand to each note in the other. Piece of cake!

heh heh...
Mark, a statement like this isn't a crime against mathematics so much as against language itself....

Like you, I start out with a "calculated" framework, and then ultimately smooth it out a bit. However, that framework doesn't have to be a simple "play a note every n/m beats".

For instance, in the 11-over-6 passage in m.2 of op.9/1, my initial framework isn't "play the RH every 6/11 (or 0.545) beats of the LH". Instead it's "play the RH as two groups of 4 16th's followed by one group of triplets." I start there, and eventually smooth it out.

-J

Well, since I'd never heard the term before, I tossed a coin: BruceD or Kreisler, both very authoritative sources. I guess I guessed wrong.

But I'm pretty sure I spelled "bitch" correctly.

Maybe one of those collections that have the music of many different composers? I used to love going through those kind of books and discovering things I liked. Maybe someone here can suggest some good ones - I'm not really sure what is currently available.

Some other ideas would be Mendelssohn Songs Without Words, Schumann Romances, Brahms Waltzes, Schubert Impromptus - just for starters.

I don't think a piece is necessarily superficial just because it's overplayed. At least it's more inspired than the piece that gave Chopin the idea - the E-flat Impromptu by Moscheles.

I think it's not one of Chopin's greatest works, but try making a room completely dark, eliminating all other sounds, and then turning on a recording of it by a great pianist like Rubinstein. It's quite a fantastic experience. (Sorry, couldn't resist. )

Try it. You may gain a new level of appreciation for the work.

That's exactly what I meant!

(It was follow-up on your prior post and my reply to it.)

Speaking of polyrhythms, I didn't think I had any problems with them until working on Ondine - the climax is nuts! The first beat is 7 vs 6, then 6 vs 7, followed by 7 vs 5 and then 6 vs 5. Drives me crazy...

For op.9 no.1, it's helpful to think of the 22 against 12 as being two 11 over 6: it's almost like 12 against 6 (two notes of RH against one note on the LH), just there's one less. Get the left hand steady first and then start to add in the right hand. Think of those sections as an invitation to apply lots of rubato against a strict left hand.

For things like that, I don't do 'math' at any stage; I only do it when there's more of a difference in the numbers of notes, to have some rough idea of 'how many notes in this hand per note of that hand.'

But with things like this, there isn't really any 'how many notes per note,' because it's very close to 1:1. What I do (and I think what most people do?) is to mostly practice the hands separately at first, and get the feel of how each beat feels for each hand, aiming for it to be 'second nature' to play each hand, to get to where you can put the hands together and be thinking of each hand simply as "one beat" and having the notes fall properly without thinking about them.

I know that some people divide the whole thing into fractions -- in this case it would be 42nd's, 35th's, and 30th's. Sometimes I do that a little but not a whole lot.

I just do approximations. Like for 7 against 6, I just play the first note together...then alternate RH and LH...so R+L...R, L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R, L, R. This way I can practice complicated rhythms at a very slow tempo...which is the tricky part. They always get easier as the tempo gets faster.

I'm glad that you quoted me in your response; it saves me going back to verify my post. You must have noted that I said that I thought that the Fantaisie-Impromptu was avoided because "it is overplayed and superficial" and not "superficial because it's overplayed." In other words, not cause and effect, but simply a two-sided critique.

Regards,

Are you talking about "that bar" in Chopin's 27/2? How dare you!