Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Chopin E major scherzo Opus 54

No, that would be Schumann's Opus 15 No 7.

Speaking of this piece, I used to hate it. I thought it was cheesy. Not anymore though. The ending totally makes the piece for me.

Nobody could write anything so beautiful yet so simple as the prelude-like opening to the fourth ballade. How the heck did he create that melody?! It blows me away.

We will have to respectfully disagree

As for my comment about my bad thirds - well, that's why I said they were hard!

As per Poly's comment, well I meant the entire coda was hard, but the thirds especially so. I don't think I faked the section that you referenced, but the octaves are much easier than the rising figures. Rushing is an issue (with all of my playing....sigh) with the entire coda.

And I don't think that I'm an extreme minority view. If anything the minority is 2; stores agrees with me. (well, at least he did last time we were arguing about this).

What exactly is the argument here?

Well, it might not be totally clear.

As I saw it, what Kuan was saying (essentially) was that the 4th Ballade 'isn't that hard technically.'

Which, as I said (more gently than this), is completely absurd.

BUT, he has "deniability" on it.
Because, he didn't 'really' say that. He said the difficulties are more musical than technical, and "most of the sections aren't all that bad technically."

If we look at those things narrowly, arguably he's right.

But I wasn't looking at it narrowly; I was trying to look at it meaningfully.

Like, how is it meaningful, if we think we're saying something of any interest and importance, to really only mean that "most of the sections" of the piece aren't that hard technically, if some of them are extremely hard? Why is that worth saying if you only mean it narrowly?

(Kuan, take it!)

He things I'm under-appreciating the technical difficulty of the 4th Ballade.

Back to the OP, the 4th scherzo is (no questions here), extraordinarily difficult!

Exactly.


Exactly.

@Mark - let me try for tomorrow....waking up at 6am is difficult for somebody like me!

Actually I think we're pretty done!

My two cents:

I'm sick of people comparing technical and musical difficulty as if they're mutually exclusive. They're not. They're intertwined. Any chump can play the coda to the ballade and make it sound bad. It's playing it musically well that makes the technical challenges hard. Technical difficulty and musical difficulty go hand in hand.

Well, not really. Most people (who play the piano) can't even play the notes -- including even most people who are reasonably advanced.

Ehh, I think my primary argument for saying that it's meaningful knowing that there's only one ridiculously difficult part of the piece is that you don't have to practice as many fiddly bits, and more of the piece (by more, I mean musically, not the notes) is learned thinking and taking time to understand the work.

Does it matter in performance if 10% of the piece is impossible as opposed to 80% of it? Not really, if you've already prepared it and are ready to play it.

But if you're learning it...well it might be possible to get it going more quickly if there are only a few bits that are technically difficult. The fingers don't need time to learn the rest.

Other example: that nocturne. You know that there's one bar that's a devil, and once you learn it, you can do the rest of the piece relatively easily. You can spend time thinking about the music, as opposed to thinking about the notes.

You're implying that they're trying to make it sound good. If a reasonably accomplished pianist takes a stab at the coda without any intention of making it sound good, the notes won't be that hard to hit because 1) the tempo will be down 2) it will be sloppy 3) there will be no attention to musical detail.

It's the process of making those notes sound as best as possible that makes them hard to hit. Really, go try it. Go slap out scherzo 4 without any serious intent. It will sound awful, but it won't be hard.. then try to play it as best as you can. That's when it becomes hard.

@Joel - my last post of the night, but in some ways they can be separated. Think of something abstract like managing climaxes: your fingers aren't going to help you make the coda of the ballade seem inevitable and terrible. It's how you play the other 10 pages leading up to it, in a thoughtful manner, that will make the coda that much more musically effective. Playing the the coda in a tremendously technically proficient and musical way doesn't mean much if the rest of the piece didn't bring you to that point.

Technical and musical difficulties do NOT go hand in hand. You'll come to learn that with more experience. I'm safe in saying that, because any musician WITH a good bit of experience will tell you that they are not intertwined.

The above is a statement with no factual arguments.

You are wrong, stores. At least, in a way. When I say they are intertwined, I mean this:

A passage becomes physically harder the more you attempt to make it sound better. If the musical difficulty is to play fast and loud, that is also the technical difficulty. Not just fast and loud though. Minute control is very difficult technically. If a run calls for quick, fleeting phrasing, and the pianist cannot deliver, s/he will likely resort to using a rubato to compensate for lacking technique. (this is very common in scherzo 4) Therefore, the musical challenge of that phrase is intertwined with the technical challenge.

See?

You just lost your deniability.

The coda is absolutely NOT the only ridiculously difficult part of the piece (even speaking just technically).

And sorry, but I won't be too interested in itemizing the various others. I'll just let this stand as is. Whoever gets it does, whoever doesn't doesn't.


You are right.
At best, it's arrogant semantics.
At worst, it's.......well, let's just say worse.

Where does the coda actually start? When the right hand goes cooky or after the soft chords?

Yes, I don't see how one could consider it to start anywhere else.