OK, so I'm working on this polonaise. It's almost ready. Here's a tease.

Please, any comment or suggestion is appreciated.

I also found a high-res scan of the Chopin photo.

Pete

I am on the slow connection, so I can't listen to your fragment right now. This is the A Major, right? I played this for my first college scholarship audition. It should be pretty easy for you since you've got big hands. The only really hard part about it for me was all the tenths, and all the resultant rolling and stretching.

I broke a high E string while practicing it.

Yes it's the one in a major. I think it's harder than it looks on paper...at least the way I play it.

PF

lol...like I said, I've played it, so I'm not judging it by how it looks on paper. Though perhaps you did? And when I say "easy", I mean relative to the genre of the Chopin Polonaise. You aren't playing it any faster than I did. Just imagine how much harder it would be with small hands!

Speaking of your big hands...my version (Mikuli) has the chords with 10ths, like on the first beat of measure 4, marked without rolls. I can barely reach a 10th (and only some 10ths) but I found it easier and nicer to play those chords without rolls when possible. I rather think that some versions added the rolls because most people can't reach 10ths comfortably. There's not a single roll marked in the Mikuli version. The roll in the left hand on the downbeat of measure 4 sounds like it might be awkward for you (it was unnaturally loud the first time, and you missed the B# the second time), so you might try playing it without the roll.

There are some wrong notes, but I won't nitpick on those since this is a work in progress and there are probably just as many slips as reading errors.

Also, on the third beat of measure 5, going into measure 6, I feel like you are cheating a bit. Especially, that gap between the two measures is strange and a bit anti-climactic. I would work on really pushing that crescendo through to the downbeat of measure 6, as smooth as possible.

Anyway, your touch in the parts that you are obviously more technically comfortable in is really nice. Keep up the good work!

Terez knows all the fine details of this piece, so I won't even try. I'll just add the 'fluff'. I hate that picture. Wasn't that taken something like a couple weeks before he died?

So far, so good, Pete.

I think the polonaise sounds very good. Of course, there are a few errors, but this isn't the final version. Have you listened to the Arthur Rubinstein recording of this polonaise? Maybe it's on Youtube or something, but I think he plays it perfectly. Just listen closely to his style of playing it (I don't think he plays the rolls that were mentioned a few times). Keep up the good work!

pianolady, how can you hate that picture? That's the only thing in existence that shows us what Chopin actually looked like!

Because we would like to pretend that he looked different?

Yeah, he is kind of bitter and scary looking. Can't really blame him considering how sick he was all the time.

Yeah, like this:

He looks dreadfully unhappy in that other picture. And I read somewhere that his face was puffy, pallor skin - just overall looking sickly.

Whoah, I didn't know there was another photograph of him (or is it a dagguerotype?)!! When was that taken? Those two pictures don't even look like it's the same man.

The first image added to this discussion is the only known Dagguerotype of Chopin. I believe the second added image to this discussion is a sketch.

You're right, J. The second one is not a photograph, but a painting. The artist is very good. It does look like a photo. And FC is so cute!

a little OT, but, I was watching our local Public Television Station and showing was a program called "Antique Roadshow", where people bring in their valuables and have them appraised. Anyways, point being, an elderly lady brought in a daggeroutype which she bought for $20. She had no clue who was pictured. She just loved the frame. Turns out, that it is a dagguerotype of Edger Allan Poe. The appraiser almost fainted because he said that there were only two known dagguerotypes of E.A.Poe. He valued the image at well over $50,000 dollars.

I wonder how much a Chopin dagguerotype would go for at auction

Sounds good and relaxed Pete, almost ready indeed. Great tone and touch as usual and nice bouncy rhythm. Couple of slips but you'll get rid of these. The only thing I must nag about is the breatless tempo. There's no give and take, no subtle holding back at the end of phrases, no luftpause between contrasting sections. Like the way you impatiently rush into the trio section, that is not very pretty. A bit more patrician ease will do it.

Yes, point taken! Thank you. I knew it was missing something...luftpause!!! DUH! Yeah, I can play the whole piece, it just needs to mature in my mind a bit. The notes I will surely get.

Thanks all, for the comments, it helps a lot!

Pete