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A very valid point; guilty as (not) charged!

Regards,

Hi there. I would not use my 3rd finger on the B-natural. The reason is that it's fast, and I find it cleaner to put my 2nd finger on the B (3rd on prior C#) and then thumb on D and 2nd on F#. With the 3rd on B, the thumb has to travel a greater distance to get to the D than if the 2nd finger is on the B.

As for your bar 37, I pass the thumb on the E like my Paderewski score says. Practice the 5-1 from D# to E. This is a better fingering in my book as it uses all the fingers. :>

Hi there. I would not use my 3rd finger on the B-natural. The reason is that it's fast, and I find it cleaner to put my 2nd finger on the B (3rd on prior C#) and then thumb on D and 2nd on F#. With the 3rd on B, the thumb has to travel a greater distance to get to the D than if the 2nd finger is on the B.

As for your bar 37, I pass the thumb on the E like my Paderewski score says. Practice the 5-1 from D# to E. This is a better fingering in my book as it uses all the fingers. :>

That video is really funny !

Mark - I agree, very interesting discussion. WRT your last point, I'm wondering if the first explanation actually makes more sense. Even in his dotage, I don't think Vlad would have needed to resort to facilitation of this kind; in fact, it almost becomes more difficult because the left hand has to skip down quickly to play the B - A# in the bass. I'm thinking it may have been a live performance thing: a mildly dramatic left-hand gesture with a leap that does emphasize the D# appoggiatura somewhat and brings out a line of sorts (C# - D# - B - A#, though I may be stretching a bit here). I do think it is the kind of quirky dramatic flourish that you rightly point to as one of his calling cards.

I'm reminded of something similar that I saw in a fabulous performance many years ago by a Cambridge undergraduate of Chopin's B minor sonata. In the last movement, at the beginning of the dominant passage leading back to the E minor statement of the opening theme (bars 90 - 92) and in the corresponding passage later on, she played the first note of each figuration grouping with her left hand (except for the first one, obviously). I'm sure this was mostly for dramatic effect, certainly not facilitation, and it worked as a performance device, more so in the second iteration, where the left had can stay involved longer. Not that it actually "made" the performance or anything and as with Horowitz the musical rationale was dubious (though again you could claim that it was emphasizing the appoggiaturas). However, it helped in a small way to differentiate her performance, as confirmed by the fact that I still remember it more than 30 years later, even though I can't remember her name!

Briefly back to fingering and the Scherzo, does anyone else keep the same fingering pattern throughout the figure in bars 13 - 16, i.e. 5 - 2 - 4 - 1 all the way up? For some reason, I find it easier and more satisfying to play the third group with 2 on the E# and 1 on the F#, even though it goes completely against the grain of pianistic common sense.

Absolutely loved the beauty queen performance BTW. Made my evening.

Well, you know my name, and I do that too.

That's been the usual normal natural way I've always played it. Never thought of doing it any other way -- for both musical and technical reasons.

It never occurred to me that it was unusual, none of the teachers I've played it for have commented on it (nor judges in competitions), and I tend to doubt that it's as unusual as you think. But then again there are other things I do that I know are unusual, which neither teachers nor judges have said anything about either....

Well maybe that's a touché. But you have to revert to RH only when the LH starts the chromatic scale, so where's the technical reason? And the musical reason, as I mentioned, is rather specious.

Totally off point: That movement to me, is a pianist's dream. Moderately difficult, yet sounds much harder than it really is. And the ending, with its almost beatific figures that fall under the hand so easily (there was a reason that Chopin considered B major the most "natural" key for the piano) is pure joy for the performer. The only real challenges are touch control and evenness in the RH filigree passages and LH endurance/accuracy in the final recap. But what a fabulous piece of music! As you said before, Chopin was a very piano composer. As I have said, "It was to the piano that Chopin devoted nearly all of his important work. It was from the sounds and performance idioms of the piano that he drew his inspiration . . . " (The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, p. 50) Have you ever met a musician who didn't love and/or respect Chopin?

Because it is musically different when the left hand comes in. (See more below. *
By the way these parentheses contain a pun.)


No. See above.


Have you played this piece?
If anything, it is the opposite.

It is extremely difficult, one of the very hardest things Chopin wrote. For what it's worth, I've played both this sonata and the Liszt, to which it is sometimes compared. IMO this one is harder, and in most people's opinions this movement is the hardest part of it.


I think that's wrong too. (Have you played the piece?) That final downward right hand riff (starting on the very high B) is deceptively a finger twister and mind-hand twister, because while it seems like it's just a repetitive continuous thing coming down, the physicality of it changes when those jumping left hand octaves come in. It can tend to "confuse" and throw off the right hand if one views it merely as a continuation of the upper part of the riff. It's way, way harder than it seems that it should be. Very often it is played as mush, and sometimes (if not often) it is sort of "faked."


On that, we agree.
But James Huneker, the Chopin biographer whose material is excerpted in the introductions to Schirmer editions, didn't think so. Here's what he said -- the entirety of what he says about the movement:

"The last movement, with its force and brilliancy, [yes, 'brilliancy'] is become a parade-piece for virtuosi, but it is rather lacking in significance."

I always thought probably the reason he felt this way was that he couldn't play it.
....which brings us right back to how hard it is.


Yes.
Many, many non-pianists.

As for pianists, none that I've met, but one that I didn't. Glenn Gould said that Chopin didn't understand the piano (!) because he failed to realize that it is essentially a contrapuntal instrument.


* Regarding it becoming musically different when the left hand comes in: The new documentary about my old teacher Seymour Bernstein ("Seymour: An Introduction") which I heartily recommend to all here) has a part where he's coaching a student on the opening of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Concerto. Seymour is playing the orchestra on a second piano. He stops the student (who is superb) a couple of measures after the "orchestra" came in, because the student was just keeping on playing those arpeggiated figures the same as before the orchestra came in. You can't do that, first of all because the orchestra won't be heard properly (even though it's ff) plus because (Seymour didn't say this, but I'll say it) the role of those arpeggios is different than when it was playing solo. Likewise here. It's kind of like about that downward riff at the end but in a different way, and it's very very much like the Rachmaninoff. When the left hand comes in.....well I don't know if this is what you "have to" do, but I can't see how you wouldn't: The right hand suddenly "shuts up" a bit, and those accents on the 1st note of every 6-note group are less than before.

That's why it's musically different, and that's why it becomes technically different.

Simple answer to your answer to my question about ever having met a musician who didn't respect Chopin: no; those who do not are not "musicians", whether or not they are pianists. They are charlatans. For better or worse, I am a Schenkerian and Chopin is virtually a blueprint for Schenker's ingenious reductive analytical concepts. That doesn't make Schenker right, and it doesn't "prove" that Chopin was a genius, but it sure is a benchmark. Respectfully, read some of Jim Samson's work.

Simple answer to you question "have you played the piece?": yes, of course I have.

Chopin "didn't understand the piano"? Oh please. I love you Glenn, but get over that one or you'll never rest in peace.

Briefly back to fingering and the Scherzo, does anyone else keep the same fingering pattern throughout the figure in bars 13 - 16, i.e. 5 - 2 - 4 - 1 all the way up? For some reason, I find it easier and more satisfying to play the third group with 2 on the E# and 1 on the F#, even though it goes completely against the grain of pianistic common sense.

I will use 5241 for the 1st 2 groups and 5231 on the last group. The 3rd finger on the D allows me to stretch my hand better in preparation for the upcoming B. Don't be afraid to use your thumb on black keys. Something else I do is in 62, 294 & 304 take the dotted halves with the left hand.

Mark! I may move to NY before the end of this year.

Nice!
Want to say what might be bringing you out here?

In any event, keep us posted about it!

Concerts hopefully. Would you PM me with your contact info?

Another scherzo related question. Has anyone done scherzo 2 aswell? I was looking at the bflat minor just now and I'm curious about the fingering again, left hand starting measure 65-116. Does everyone just use 5-3-2-1 with jumps for instance m. 66 with the C flat? My edition says use 1 on the C flat then bring 2 over to the D flat - is it safer to just do "jumps" or shifts all the way through these measures for instance the 5-3-2-1 fingering I mentioned. Just curious, I'm not actually properly doing Scherzo 2 now but learning measures 1-130 just so I have a start for the future and the knowledge would be good.

Thanks again all

Put aside about fingering and technical stuff for the time being. Though Boris Berman is probably more famous for his Prokofiev concertos and sonatas, I find his masterclass DVD very useful for me in understanding the structure and musical aspect of this piece.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Masterclass%2BMedia%2BFoundation/MMF2041