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I’d like to study Chopin’s Ballade 1 over 2014 (and yes, this piece will be a huge stretch!) . Does anyone who has previously played or studied it have suggestions for how to approach it? How did you divide the piece up for learning? Which sections did you start with? Did you cycle through the sections or try to learn each one well before moving to the next? Did you memorize each section as you were first learning it? What was helpful practice-wise as you were learning it?

For me the piece will have to be memorized to play, which will take time as I’m generally not a very good memorizer. I’d thought to start off my studying by memorizing the coda and the scherzando. I've read they are extra difficult, and once memorized, I could practice those sections alongside the other sections I’m learning throughout the year. The middle section with all the octaves also seems extremely daunting to me. but taking on such a hard section right away might be discouraging as far as learning the rest of the ballade.

I’d appreciate any insights from those who have studied this piece.

Also, anyone want to join me with taking up this piece this coming year?

Hi Valencia, I see that you already have the method covered. I'd certainly start with the most difficult sections. Once performing the piece, you don't fear those bits, but you will attack them with all your heart.
Make sure when memorizing, you also check the music every now and then. An early learned mistake is difficult to unlearn...
Also I'd devide the piece in sections by theme. Make sure you know all variations and how to interpret them. The form of a piece like this is extremely important.
I'm currently busy with no.4. Not there yet, but the end is near. When I'm satisfied, I'll make a recording... ( no turning back now, yikes ).
And then I'll be happy to begin with this ballade in 2014!

Regards Paul

This was one of the last pieces my teacher gave me before I moved to the the other side of London with a job relocation. I had done up to around M125 back then, mid eighties, and have investigated other parts of it since then - but not all. I no longer work sequentially on big pieces like this.

I cannot start any of this before April, when the Tchaikovsky and Joplin recitals will be done, but may be able to pick it up again after that. I have little desire to work on any of the easier passages as I can learn those more quickly later on, nor do I want to start on the Presto until I've got an incentive to finish.

I might need to look at M45-66 again and then anything between M126 and M208. I've already detailed the sections with you elsewhere. They'll come up again, I'm sure.

I'm definitely interested in this, Valencia. Possibly I'll start looking at it after the Mazurka recital. Can't be sure at this point if I'll have too much on my plate but Chopin always beckons...

It'd be good if someone with more experience - an advanced pianist - were to get involved in this...

I don't want to sound negative, but I would like to stress the hard work this (or either) ballade will demand. It can get really frustrating if things doesn't seem to work, no matter how hard you practice. If you start studying it and it appears to difficult, leave it for the time being.
It's not a piece for everyone to master.

I could have been interested in studying this Ballade, but I'm almost 100% sure that it is too technically difficult for me. But I will follow your progress with interest.

Me too but I'd like to have a crack at it. I doubt I'll see it through to the end.

Chopinoholic - any experienced Chopin players prepared to help shepherd us through this would be most welcome in the thread. As to 'mastery', I don't think any of the posters to ABF have such delusions. Getting through to the end of the piece, to the praise of family members - even if it leaves us bruised and bloodied - is all most of us are content to aim for.

It'll be interesting to see at what point the project expires.

dire_tonic, ok I see what you mean. Well said. Maybe I was speaking to much from my point of view without considering others. When I start a piece, I want to be positive that I can play it convincingly in the end. But I'm not easily satisfied when it comes to my own playing. That can be very frustrating at times.

I also think it would be a good idea to have an experienced player in this thread. I'm pretty experienced, but I'm feeling to insecure in giving pointers to other players...

I am currently working on this piece and would love to lend any help I can.

First, I've been keeping notes on sections I find challenging, or tips I've found in practicing using a website I made: http://www.notablescores.com/pieces/1 -- you don't have to sign up to browse the comments, but you do have to sign up to respond to comments or add your own. You can sign up with this link: http://www.notablescores.com?key=ZubB8ix3P-hds3tKbql8iQ

Second, I've also been keeping some notes on my blog, http://musical.neuralfirings.com/ -- I started this blog precisely to keep track of my progress learning this piece. I talk about how I divide up the sections, and which sections I struggle with, etc. I also posted recordings of my practice sessions--from the first sight reading to fully memorized. The short of it is I started learning from the front of the piece onwards, while simultaneously tackling the coda and the waltz. I figured I'd progress a lot slower through the coda and the waltz, and the first half I'd progress faster.. so might as well do both in parallel so not to dampen my spirits when I reached a hard part.

Third, there are a ton of resources online! My favorite one is the editor of the Guardian's book, which documents his progress struggling with this piece for some 18 months. In addition, he writes about all the exciting stuff they covered over the course of the year (WikiLeaks, Arab Spring). There are excerpts and interviews with professional pianists on his website (http://alanrusbridger.com/playitagain) and the book is available on Amazon and Kindle.

Good luck!

As for difficulty, I've always figured even if I can't play the entire piece, I can probably slice the piece or simplify the harder parts for my own enjoyment. As an amateur, I don't see anything wrong with this.

My favorite part of this piece isn't even hard parts, it's this section:


If I couldn't tackle the more difficult piece, just making a small tune out of that section would make me happy on the piano.

I'm not saying Valencia should take this attitude, just offering a different perspective on how to enjoy the difficult pieces without them being discouraging.

While I agree that to play this piece you need to memorize it, I recommend against memorizing as you go. As chopinoholic mentioned, you can memorize incorrectly which can cause all sorts of problems. Best to be sure you can play it well with the score, then work on memorizing in bits.

Can you play through the piece start to finish under tempo? If not, it may not be a good time to tackle this. If so, then head straight to the harder sections and work those out first, while periodically (every 3 or 4 days) playing through the whole thing to see how you are progressing.

Re: Valencia, what is your background and piano experience?

In the previous ABF recitals you say you're a restarter (like me!) after 25 years. Before you stopped playing, how many years have you played or what level did you play at?

If I have a better idea of your skill level, I can better tailor any future comments.

What is "under tempo?" Anybody can do it if it's enough under tempo.

Chopinoholic—love your screen name! Thanks for your posts. I’d love it if you could join in with the Ballade in the new year. I should warn you though that I am not a very advanced player so you will probably leave me in the dust!

In fact everyone who has posted on this thread so far is much more advanced than I am. I hear all the concerns about the difficulties and potential discouragement. I’m not looking to master the piece. That is partly why I keep talking about studying it. Mostly I just want to experience thoroughly engaging with this piece and then I’d like to be able to play it at least somewhat. Sam Rose learned this piece and he was a beginner (I know he has exceptional skills). But it took him awhile to learn and it seems to me he enjoys playing it and others enjoy his playing of it (I do!). That is really all I’m hoping for, even if I can’t play it as well as he does.

Morodiene-Until you’d posted I’d never tried to play through the score. So, I tried it today. Well, I got through it , though it took me quite awhile (however I did not attempt page 6 (the one with all the octaves) because I did not want to strain my hand from the get-go). There is much of the score I haven’t looked at much before so some of it felt like sight reading. I think if I spent a little time getting familiar with each of the sections, the playing it through would go much better. This is an approach I didn’t really think of…to first aim to play through the whole piece relatively fluently, so that from then on I can do that every few days during practice, and then to start the focus on the individual sections in more detail.

Richard and dire tonic, would love to be able to study along with you in learning this. For anyone else who wants to join in, it would be great. Ganddalf, glad you will follow the thread. Maybe at some point you will join in! Though I understand not wanting to take time away from other pieces you are preparing. It’s hard for me to imagine that technically you could not handle this piece, given what I’ve heard of your playing so far. I think you have higher expectations of your playing than I have of mine. This is perhaps in part because you can play so much better than me. My playing is not that great, therefore I don’t expect much from myself, which strangely gives me the freedom to try just about anything. Sometimes I wish I had higher expectations of my playing. However, in the past when I’ve tried having such higher expectations, I failed to realize them, therefore I’ve just stopped bothering with them.

neuralfirings-I was hoping you would post! Thanks for the link to the notable scores! I briefly checked your blog and it is very interesting! I love it that you posted the recordings of how you progressed with the piece. I’ll definitely be referring back to your blog. Your approach of learning the waltz and the coda alongside the rest of the piece is sort of what I was thinking. As for my previous piano experience, the problem is I could barely remember a thing when I came back a couple of years ago. I don’t know my scales, I’ve forgotten all the theory, my technique is quite terrible. This is all very depressing. And then I don’t know things like…picking out the themes in this Ballade. What constitutes a theme? For example, in Paul’s post above, I am not sure what the themes and their variations are. I mean, I can take a guess at a couple of them, but I am not sure.

hey neuralfirings, I just found the themes outlined on your blog....thanks!

Valencia, I just hope that I didn't discourage you with my comments. That was not my intention. I'm convinced that this project will help you develop your skills and give you lots of pleasure. There are two reasons why I can't jump into this project myself. Firstly, I have very little opportunity to practice. If I could have three hours a week I would be very happy. Usually I get less than that.
Secondly I think this Ballade suits my technique very badly. If I was to choose one of Chopin's Ballades for myself to study the first one would be my last choice. But I really enjoy listening to it.

Thank you, I think it suits me. I really need to push myself playing other composers!
I will certainly enjoy this project and will do my best to do well.

A while ago I've found an interesting analysis on the Chopin ballades. It is a really thorough analysis and at least for me it's nice stuff to read.
Grundgestalt and diatonic/octatonic interaction in Chopin's ballades

Also the stuff neuralfirings posted is quite interesting. Good job by the way neuralfirings!

Do try and keep up, Poly. We're trying to assess our ability to play the piece. If your playing from the score is so far below tempo that you can't make sense of the music or you have to stop too often you're probably not ready for this piece.

I've no doubt this is the best approach when the reading skills are up there and the technique is ready for the piece.

My own reading skills are nowhere near ready for this material but I don't know how far away my playing skills are - I know it's a long way.

If I look at M163-166 of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata they look about the most frightening bars in the whole piece and I'd have to study each note as it occurs in order to know what to play but the playing itself is easy as pie and one of the easiest passages in the piece to get up to tempo.

Since Valencia passed over page 6 of this Ballade, M105-121 in my score, I looked at it specifically. The chords and octaves in the RH are easy enough save the trill in M119 (and M123 - both of which I'd be happy to ignore) and the LH is easy enough to play. Just reading the middle line of the page, M112-114, is a nightmare of sharps and naturals and full chords and four against three. There's no way I'd be able to play this page from the score in the foreseeable future but I isolated three and a half bars from the middle of M111 to the first chord of M115, and once I'd worked out the prevailing key signature in each bar individually and got the fingering sorted I got those measures memorised and fairly close to tempo in around ten to fifteen minutes.

I could probably memorise the RH (M105-124) in an evening because I know the piece well enough to almost play this passage by ear. This isn't such a difficult page once all the notes are memorised and the fingering sorted. It would probably be easier for me to read if the key sig. was changed to A major and the fingerings were more intuitive for me.

If I read this page too often I would ingrain the wrong fingering and probably misread accidentals and lengthen the learning process by months. I would probably learn this passage more efficiently by giving each measure its own two to five minute window before starting to join 'em up.

In fact I've just decided that's exactly how I'm going to go about it and I'll start right here in April.

Obviously that was my point.

chopinoholic-thanks for the link! Except that I couldn't get it to work. I see it is a book though...I'll have to look up some information on it. I suspect the material may be somewhat beyond my understanding as I don't understand the words in the title.

Richard-wow...you could memorize the RH of that section in an evening? It will likely take me weeks to learn that page. And even once it's memorized, my mind tends to fire slowly for a long time. Maybe I'll have to learn it a phrase at a time. Hopefully I'll be able to get a handle on it by April when you start this piece!