1) I have no natural facility for piano.
2) Again, I haven't had much in the way of lessons. I've had to figure out the technical puzzles myself.


I doubt it.

I'm a professional (practicing my whole life ) and my first Chopin's study was op. 25, n. 2. I think that is actually a good choice to begin with. It will give you some speed of the right hand and a more balanced left hand. I find the op. 10/3 more challenging, for example. And I'm not talking about that stormy part in the middle! It's hard to make a great melody and a non-disturbing accompaniment in the right hand. Of course, if you only want to play notes, then this etude is not so hard. But if you want to make progress and one day be able to play all of them, then I would still recommend you to start with op. 25/2. Or maybe learn both! "Not so hard" are also op. 25/1 or op. 10/12. My experience with Chopin's studies is that practicing one study for a long period of time won't make it perfect. You have to repeat to study each study more times in several years and every time you repeat it, you're on a higher level! In order not to ruin your hands with excessive but not rational practicing, you should have a good teacher, who will show you what are the most suitable hand-moves for each one of them and how to activate your fingers. And then comes a day, when you can play smoothly and with no pain the op. 10 n. 2!

Here is a video of me, playing the op. 10, n. 12 (Revolutionary) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGYEyK0oMLk , if you want to know more about the person, who is giving you advice!

Hmm...you must have been the type of kid who ate chocolate cake before finishing your broccoli



That's good. The Clementi are wonderful technical work as well and, I would agree, better music than Czerny.

I love broccoli. And I'm not overly fond of chocolate.


I still don't play Clementi. I have to really love something in order to make myself practice it, and Clementi doesn't quite make the cut.

I just discovered last night that I've been playing 10/3 wrong my whole life. Legato fingering makes a big difference.


The expressive aspect of music has always been easy for me. This is why people have always made the mistake of thinking I was a talented pianist (my current teacher included). I'm stupid when it comes to technique.


10/12 has some LH bits that make the RH of 10/1 seem easy. 25/1 is much more difficult IMO, but most people play it horribly.


This!


I started working on 10/2 a few months ago, though I didn't spend much time on it because I had a recital to prepare. It's coming along. As for pain...I figured out with 25/12 that pain is a sign of bad technique. I think I conquered that problem with 25/11...I don't have pain any more from practicing. 25/11 has a lot to offer concerning those 'suitable hand-moves'.


Fantastic technique. My only complaint is that it seems a little too straight (but everyone plays it that way, alas), and that the bass is weak (I think that's the piano). I started working on this one in earnest last week.

Terez, now I feel like you've just been yanking our collective chains. How could you even think that you could play Chopin Etudes if you have "no natural facility for the piano" and are essentially self-taught? The Chopin etudes (some of the pinncale of piano literature) are then way over your head (and hands) and you would really do well to step way back and train, the way everybody else has that can perform the Chopin etudes in an artistic and successful manner.

For your information, IMO the Czerny Etudes are meant only to be highly concentrated studies on technical matters (as a continuation of Kohler), but many of his studies are very musical - and very demanding technically - especially from the School of Legato and Staccato, and The Art of Finger Dexterity. Since you're having trouble with Chopin, I'm sure you would have trouble with these too. As opposed to the "more mechanical" etudes of Czerny which are extended by Cramer and Clementi, the "more artisitic" may begin with Streabbog and Burgmuller, and continue with Heller and the others listed in my earlier post, and these two lines blend together in works of Moskowski, Moscheles, etc. All of these are NOT exercises. At the same time one should be doing exercises like Schmitt (develops independence of the fingers in closed hand position), Phillip fully-diminshed 7th exercises (the superlative training for developing independence of the fingers with the hand in open position), as well as all scales and arpeggios in every concievable combination of difficulty (always and forever), Kullak studies and etudes for octaves, Berens exercises and etudes for the LH, Moskowski's School of Double-Notes. To all this is added repertoire, which always includes Bach. Nothing prepares for Bach; one starts with the easier didactic works and progresses through them (Notebook and other Preludes, Inventions, Sinfonias, 1 French Suite, WTC and Partitas, ... well until you die or can play the Goldberg Variations from memory. *[Was it you that posted earlier that you spent (or would dedicate) five years to practicing the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody? That is insane. If it was you, you are in denial. If you can't learn to play it in one year, forget it, it's beyond you and no matter how much you try, you will not be able because you lack foundation and breadth.] Piano literature is a library as big as an ocean, but to play great masterworks, A. you have to have natural facility for the piano, B. you must have opportunity to train well and thouroghly, C. you must take advantage of that oportunity, D. you must work VERY HARD for MANY years. There are no cutting corners (Arthur Rubinstein cut corners in his early technical training, and later retreated from concertizing for a year to work on what he had skipped).

You seem to repeatedly scorn the notion of graded training, yet every great pianist goes through it. I will bet you that Ms. Babic can list a veritable catalogue of technical work she did prior to advancing to the Chopin Etudes. You should identify what you can play as well as any artist can play, and that should be your baseline to begin (?) training. (But these things must be done when in our youth )

(Well, I think I've had a catharsis.)

Edit: * Oops, this wasn't you. Please disregard the bracketed section.

Then why on earth is all you want to play the hardest of etudes ? And then endlessly moan that you can't do it ? I really don't dig this, you must be one terribly frustrated person (I am reminded of PJF....) There is so much great and wonderful music that does not require hardboiled technical mastery. Even when you confine yourself to Chopin, there is so much to wallow in.

Because I'm delusional. Everyone who knows me knows that much about me.


Are they? Just because I've had relatively little training? I realize I can't play any of them properly yet, but I enjoy working on them, and I'm learning a lot from them...so why not? I don't have zero training - I've spent the last four years working on a piano performance degree - but it's not my teacher's fault that I have so many bad habits from my undisciplined childhood. She's helped me correct quite a few of them, as have Bach and Chopin. I conquer new ones every day. Fortunately my teacher never made me play Czerny, or Clementi (she actually forbade that), or Hanon (she and I both scoff at another student of hers who plays his Hanon every day), or anything else except for one non-Bach/Chopin composer each semester. If she had made me play any of that, I'd have probably quit.


That's what Bach breaks are for.


This, I disagree with. All that matters to me is A. that I enjoy what I work on, B. that I learn something that is applicable to other music, and C. that I make progress on the piece(s) I'm working on. I would eventually like to play some of them well, and while I'm always going past my deadlines, I don't think that Chopin etudes are 'beyond me'.


I scorn it because 1. it's boring, and 2. I don't know that it's necessarily a good thing, judging from the average trained pianist. And 3. I simply don't have the discipline to practice music or exercises that I find boring. I have come to learn that this will never change.

(Edited because I thought you were Chris the whole time I was responding to you.)

I have played a lot of other Chopin. I'm digging the etudes right now. I'm not 'moaning' about not being able to do it; I enjoy the challenge. What have I said that you think is 'moaning'? And you yourself said I could post my recording of 25/11 in the audition room and not be ashamed of it, and while I disagree (and maybe you do too - people don't always say what they mean), then doesn't that answer your question as to why I do it? 25/1, 11, and 12 need more work, and they are getting it...10/12 is really helping with the LH of 25/12, and 10/1 is helping with the RH, so that one is getting much more solid. I've gone back to slow practice on 25/11 and have made a lot of progress. 10/4 has been interesting but it hasn't gotten to the point that I'm learning much from it yet. 10/2 has always been a help for 25/11, and 25/6 is helpful for both (those three work together nicely). 10/3 I'm doing because I need to relearn the fingering; it's been a year or more since I touched that one, but it's ready to go up another notch. That was the first etude I tried as a child, and I segued around the middle part. I started trying to learn the middle section as a teenager, and that's also when I began working on 25/1 and 25/12. I've had two or three goes at 25/12 since, and this is my second go at 25/1.

I was always secretly jealous of people boasting an impressive teacher pedigree. At last it occurred to me to dig up mine, and I'm happy to find that through my lessons with Evelina Vorontsova, it goes back to Schumann and Mendelssohn The sequence being Evelina Vorontsova -
Mikhail Voskressensky - Lev Oborin - Yelena Gnessin - Ferrucio Busoni - Carl Reinecke - Schumann & Mendelssohn.
It seems likely (but I'm not sure) that Yelena Gnessin is a descendant of the 3 sisters who founded the famous Gnessin Academy.

Wow, that's impressive! How do you find teacher lineage? Never mind, I'm sure you just have to read bios. I'm going to look for mine too.

Hi George. First, I'm not now working on any Liszt, but have some plans for some a ways down the road. Regarding our teachers, you must be older than me , because it takes me 5 steps to get to Czerny and 2 of my 3 teachers are already passed and the last has had a stroke and is about 70 (I'm 53). And to add yet again to the discussion of Czerny, I would like to state that anyone familiar with the Schumann Tocatta should appreciate immediately the debt Schumann owes to Czerny's influence (although I am not able at this moment to prove it) for Czerny's Toccata (Op. 92) in also in C major and features double notes! Not many people have ever even heard this piece. Check it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_0u9dLCRRY. The kinship is unquestionable. Another interesting little work is his Op.740, No 33. in A-flat, a study in octaves for the RH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwCQpxkvWvc&playnext=1&list=PLE3B55624475BEECD
Regarding the Chopin Preludes, I think they are overrated. They are a very mixed bag, either super easy or super difficult. They don't serve IMO very well in a didactic progression, and don't serve as any significant preparatiion for his Etudes, which must be approached by much wider terrain.
Please don't say it's Mazeppa or Feux follets

Thanks, this was delightful. I enjoyed his cheeky little accelarando leading towards the end

I think we're safe: those two aren't in the Paganini set. But maybe we can hope to see a new recording of La Campanella being posted soon?

Oops!

Hello Eddy, I am not older, I am 42. I now see that you (and Chris) have an extra teacher lineages. My teacher passed away 13 yrs ago. To give an idea of her age, at NEC, she was classmates with Leonard Bernstein, Alan Hovaness, and Louise Vosgerchian (later at Harvard - I knew her as a juror from a piano competition). They are all deceased. My teacher was never boastful and only after 5 yrs of lessons did she mention that she studied with Heinrich Gebhardt at New England Conservatory. It all started when I was learning the Brahms Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, and Heinrich Gebhardt was the editor in the Schirmer edition. She told me about the lineage once, and never brought it up again.
No Monica, it's not in my bio (sounds pretentious as an amateur). I only brought it up because Eddy brought back fond memories of my teacher... A day hardly goes by when I am not reminded of her - either a familiar piece on the radio, echoes of life's anecdotes, teachings of history, art, musicology, etc. She's the best teacher I've ever had in any discipline. She was a like a second mother during my teenage years...

Thanks Eddy, for the link to the Czerny works. In terms of technical difficulty, the 2 examples transcend the category of "prerequisite," but could even stand as "parallel" to Chopin Etudes in difficulty. Musically, it might be a different story. I will not argue Czerny's established school of technique, only to add that there are many roads that lead to Rome. The evolution of piano technique have included many pianists, and fortunately technique continued to evolve even after Chopin. Perhaps Chopin is a single point along the chronological musical timeline, and so is Czerny. The Czerny school is valid, along with other aforementioned schools of technique on the thread which followed much later. Most pianist ideologies seem complete in addressing the technical elements in piano literature (octaves, trills, 3rds, 6ths, scales, arpeggios, repeated notes, finger substitution, stretches, etc.). Which school of technique for learning the Chopin Etudes - Czerny, Hanon, Philippe, etc.?... Probably a matter of taste or the teacher at hand (no pun intended).

No Eddy, it's not Mazeppa or Feux Follets. Our venerable Aussie nailed it!