Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Chopin Scherzo No.2, Op.31 in B flat minor

Hi guys. I am entering into the Feis Ceoil, clasical piano comp in Ireland, next year and one of the pieces that's required to play is ANY one of chopin's scherzo's. I have my eye on the 2nd scherzo and will be practicing that till perfected.

Has anyone ever performed or tried this and what are the difficulties of the piece and how to practice this piece with perfection. I have the G. Henle Verlag edition (blue cover) which seems to be the best and most clearest.

So yeah, if anyone has any advice or tips to give me in practicing this piece please share and tell me your experience of practicing/playing it! Thanks.

Don't miss the last note!!

I haven't studied the piece, so I don't have too much advice to offer to you. Sorry

But good luck in your studies with it!

I've studied this one and the fourth. Unlike the ballades, the scherzi are in sonata form and use a lot of the same material which makes learning much quicker. With the second scherzo in particular, if you can play the codetta well, you can play the whole piece. Some general tips:

- With the chords in the main theme, play deep into the keys. Make sure every chord is clearly enunciated or else you will wind up with a weak, sloppy sound.

- In the laughter-like climax of the A section, I rushed the learning process and never started slow. I lost productivity from that and wound up having accuracy problems. Don't do this! My best advice to have good accuracy here, and in any piece of music, is to land on each note mentally too, not just physically. Once you've established that you've hit the note, move on to the next one. This applies for the chords in the main theme too if you're having trouble getting the rhythm to sound snappy.

- Don't neglect your left hand in the B section during the right hand arpeggios. Make sure it's solid. Your left hand is the right hand's leader. Chopin put it very beautifully but I forget the quote.

They're not in sonata form. The second one (from memory) is broadly A:A:B:Bvar:A:coda. If I've got that wrong, please correct me. But that's modified ternary form.

John

You're right, they aren't in sonata form.

HAHA. This is interesting because I have never heard anyone miss it but it does seem like such an obvious possibility.

I've heard it missed twice live, and once in a recording by a very famous pianist (I think Richter?)

hahaha

There are quite a few subtleties I rarely hear brought out in the piece. But I really don't want to type a book analyzing it all. Better to get you part way into it, and ask questions as you go. Then, if you're feeling up to it, post a recording for us to listen to. We can offer very specific advice that way.

Play the first or fourth?

This is a real hazard, since the hands start with a D-flat chord in the center of the keyboard and then jump to the extreme ends of the keyboard for the last notes.

The tricky part of this is hitting the high F in the right hand. My teacher recounts an interesting anecdote about one creative way to avoid this risk. Vladimir de Pachmann used to ensure that he'd come out OK by having his piano tuned so that every note at the top end of the keyboard was tuned to F. As long as he didn't undershoot, he had a clean finish. Not recommended unless you're related to a good tuner, but an interesting solution to a real technical problem.

Or you could just practice with your eyes closed until your muscle memory has it locked in. That was my solution. Good luck -- great piece.

Hitting the last note is not hard.

For some people it is.

The muscle memory needs to be assigned to the left hand hitting that last octave. Once you can do that every time, the right hand is as easy as looking at the key.

In fact, if you don't rush those last notes, you can have time to actually look at the left hand's octave, put your left hand on that octave, then look at the right hand's key and proceed with hitting both. If you're playing it at Katsaris speed (rushed IMO), you will likely miss those notes often, but if you take it at a Horowitz speed (more relaxed grace notes) you have plenty of time.

I agree with you; I never found it hard. I'm just chuckling because I've seen it missed multiple times in performance. But I find that I assign the muscle memory to the right hand and look at the left hand. I guess I just trust my right hand a lot more.

Whatever works. We aren't violinists.

Thank goodness

I find that the most hazardous sections are:

1) The left hand arpeggios that accompany the lyrical tune in the Scherzo section. It's so important that this is clean, even, and steady.
2) The repetitive, "sempre con fuoco" section at the end of the trio, before the Scherzo returns. This is the part of the piece where you'll be the most physically stressed anyway, and the rapid fire jumps make this the point where you'll have the hardest time playing accurately.

...oh, vanity, vanity, all is vanity (even in parenthesis). As they say (Popishly), a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And ever the put-down. All these years on and still Larkin about in the kingdom of the mind and always at the expense of the world. Ora pro nobis

Did you mean this post to be on some poetry forum?

Given the date of the post previous to his, he's had three years to compose this!

Cheers!