Hi jgoo,
I recently started a thread about the Chopin etudes and got some cool comments.
I am like you I can't play any of them completely
Here are the ones I started working on
I am working on Op10#7 and it is not that hard after all, despite what people were telling me.
A lot of people do not like it, but its my favorite to listen to, that's why I started with it.
I read some stuff about it, and now I can feel I am improving. There are some tricks for playing it. Like follow the fingering even though it looks horrible, and don't worry about making everything legato. Everything sounds legato at tempo anyways
. Move the wrist; do not reach out for keys with your fingers or they ll get tired very fast.
I'll eventually nail it through intense practice.
On the other hand, I thought Op10#4 would be easy, but it is incredibly hard, I just can't play any measure right. It is really confusing. The keys you have to hit in this etude always seem a little too far, or in the wrong place, and I can never reach them without hitting something wrong or slowing down.
I heard 10-3 and 10-5 are the EZiest so that s probably where I'll go next.
Oh another thing, I tried playing 25-6 ( the thirds ) for about five minutes, then gave up. I doubt I will ever be able to play that. There's just something about the way your fingers are developped I guess, that makes it impossible (for some people) to play thirds that fast. This is depressing, but fortunately piano is a lot more things than just doing trills with thirds. This etude is beautiful though.