Just for collecting feedbacks: Chopin Scherzo in Bflat minor

I've learned this second Scherzo about 6 weeks (but not so dilligently) and I made a recording in a first single take with a bunch of wrong notes and slips. Nevertheless I was in a special situation - My husband turned the pages for me and played a roll of audience at the same time (and he loves this piece so much and criticized me after hearing severely ). So it is kinda "live" recording :lol: :lol:

I think I must practice and polish this 2-3 months more. It's not so terribly difficult, but I must train my hands for the large chords. And I had no time to study it without instrument - actually it's my way how to develop my own view or interpretation of a piece. If I study something only on playing, I tend to play without being thoughtful and to limit the imagination within my poor technique. (I think this recording is played unthoughtfully indeed.)

Anyway the aim of this recording is to document how I played it in July (cause I can't practice so much for coming weeks in Seoul to which I'll fly today) and to hear your opinion (which is always very helpful to me ). But I'd like to say in advance that it will require much patience of you to bear the wrong notes in large numbers which I made from the start to the end of the piece :roll:

Thank you all.

 

nice playing!

it's really difficult to judge Chopin's performance, because it is so often played and everyone has its own personal "perfect" interpreter of these pieces. so... not to be personal... I'd say it is good and coherent. Maybe there could be a little more "fire" in some places (mainly in the end). I have also learned that not only fast tempi brings "fire", but sometimes only "intensity", forza. (I mean... it's not necessary to play fast: you can play loud, or with accents sometimes to bring "fire" to music".)

but that's it. very nice, a bit more fire.

 

I can hear that you are working on this with your customary discipline, and it shows all the makings of a good performance. The couple of slips do not matter much, not does the clangy piano.

The only thing I would say is, you need to sort out your rhythm in bars 7-8 and all similar places. You distort the rhythm of bar 7, then wait a comically long time before hitting the first chord of 8. This really is no good and perhaps a simple counting excercise will cure it. It is my only real criticism on an otherwise fine effort. Yet there must be more fire and individuality, ultimately, but that can well wait until the technical side is all finished.

 

I have been looking forward to you posting this since I knew you have been working on it lately. You have made impressive progress for having worked on this piece for just six weeks! Your interpretation is already sounding very musical, even at this early stage (that's one of my difficulties :roll: ). You seemed to do a lovely job overall of bringing out the singing melodic line in the places where that was needed, although there was one spot towards the end where I might have liked for the melody to be a wee bit louder in order to contrast with the accompaniment. I agree with the others that a good dose of fire would be appropriate for this piece; that will probably come as you become more intimately acquainted with the work musically and technically. By the way, do you intend to memorize this?

Thanks for letting us have a peek into how this scherzo is coming along. I eagerly await your final recording!

 

Your playing is terrific and well balanced and when you've finished polishing it up it's going to sound even better. But I have to I do disagree with your comment that "It's not so terribly difficult". This is one tough piece - and you handled it very well technically. Like a lot of Chopin's music, this piece is not only difficult - it is also harder than it sounds because it does not lie under the hand well (unless you're double jointed, like he was).

As far as interpretation I agree with the earlier comments about the opening bars. It's a matter of personal taste of course, but I prefer those spartan rest-filled opening bars played in rigid tempo, delaying the entry of any rubato till the following melody-filled scene in D-flat. For me that enhances the contrast between those two sections.

 

Felipe, Chris, Sarah, Andreas and Tom, thank all of you very much! I appreciate so much that you guys took your precious time to listen this imperfect recording simply for the sake of advices for me!! I think this kindness can be only based on the friendship between the true music lovers
All of your critiques, advices and encouragement were accepted gratefully and if my final recording is good, I owe that to you.

Felipe, yes, I always feel the lack of power or fire when I play picky ff spots from romantic repertoires on this piano. I don't know exactly whether this is resulted from my untrained hands or the weak treble of this instrument. (With other available pianos I can play comparably with more "fire". But I must admit my experiences with different instruments are really limited.) Anyway you can't expect a real fire until you get the control of technical things, as Chris and Sarah said.

And you guys are completely right with the rhythmical problem at the opening. Actually my teacher reminded me of this problem several times so I tried to play always with counting in front of him, as Chris suggested. But in the pseudo-live ( :lol: :lol: ) situation I was maybe back to my bad habit uncouncioussly. That reveals also that I've never seriously grappled with this problem in the context of interpretation

Chris, did you mean by "clangy piano" that the treble of the piano sounds sometimes metallic? I can't find the word clangy in the dictionary, I found just "clang" of the meaning "1. A loud, resonant, metallic sound. 2. The strident call of a crane or goose." I think you pointed out the awful sound of several keys fully out of tune from the treble. Unfortunately the instrument will be not better when I'll submit an improved version later

Sarah, it is ME who benefits from this thread. Thank you for your kind words Yes, I did intend to memorize this piece, simply because I dislike the noise of page turning on a recording and this piece is 23 pages long :wink: And it seemed to me somehow easier for memorizing than others. But it could be just my self-deception as my miscalculating of the technical difficulty of this Scherzo :wink:
Yes, Tom, it's a sort of self-deception which can also work in a positive way for a poor girl with smaller hands and normal joint And thank you for the nice interpretation suggestion!

Andreas, thanks so much for your elaborative critiques. It was really helpful and I've learned a lot of your suggestions. Bars 476-516 are also for me one of the most difficult spots and I've actually messed up with them I just pretended to have a control 8) Thank you for the positive evaluation of 310 and later. Really encouraging

 

Seems like that word did not exist and I've just invented it. In English it is quote common to make a noun into an adjective my appending an 'y'.

 

Wow...
A girl with small hands playing the second mvt of Scriabin's 2nd sonata... should I believe this? :lol:

I really don't know how Scriabin, with narrow stretchs which could barely reach an octave, played that piece.
But lots of great pianists had small hands (Scriabin, Godowsky to name some).
Gyorgy Sandor used to say that small muscles are better for accuracy.

 

English is uber lax unlike its German counterpart

 

But large hands are better for....

 

It's true cause I did divide all of the long stretches into playing with both hands for the sonata. And it did work for the broken chords of the 2nd movement or it was no serious problem for the slow first movement to change the normal chords into arpeggios.
But in this Scherzo there are some large chords which cannot be played in arpeggio and these lead me to push wrong notes. For example F-A flat-F in the fast passges (bars 103 and 116) or A flat-D flat-B flat (bar 72) need more training for the smaller hands. :roll:

Did have Scriabin smaller hands? :!: Then, did he also play the large chords in arpeggio? Unbelievable... but an encouraging fact
The benefit of smaller hands you mentioned is oft said by teachers who are teaching asian females. Actually there are many korean female piano students who have even smaller hands than my ones and nevertheless seem to play nearly everything.

 

And what is "uber lax"?
Btw I have seen your hands at your photos which are accessable through your artist page, Julius

 

Re: Just for collecting feedbacks: Chopin Scherzo in Bflat m

Very well done, Hye-Jin. I don't have much to add to others' contributions. It's a very good practice to think about the interpretation far from the piano, at least as much important as experimenting with the living sound, trying different solutions on the instrument. However what impressed me more of your playing was the beautiful singing tone. I don't see any difficulty unsolved, you just need more time to shine some spots and progressively increase the speed, which could take some months. Then you will treasure forever one of the masterpieces of classical music. Not bad at all!

 

Hyenal, are you sure you are in the right PhD program? Since you are studying philosophy you
are obviously not concerned with acquiring great wealth so maybe you should head on over to
the music department instead? Couldn't you be a player that thinks rather than a thinker that plays?
Despite the slight rough edges in this recording you are obviously a natural musician.

 

Re: Just for collecting feedbacks: Chopin Scherzo in Bflat m

Thank you Alfonso! I'll take time and practice on it with patience

 

Thank you for the kind words, bclever. Certainly I'm not sure about it, however this is simply related to my frustration at the philosophical things :lol: , not to any regret not having majored in music. In some sense you are right, cause if I didn't find PS, I wouldn't be satisfied with my situation. But on PS I have friends with whom I can share my love toward music and maybe also some audience who can enjoy my playing. What else do I need? :wink:
Btw I've read in a post of you a while ago that you have a nice digital piano called "Nocturne". How long should I wait for your debut? 8)

 

I don't have much to add to the previous comment, but I just wanted to tell you this sounds very promising! Keep it up, we're all holding our breath for the final version.

 

Hello Hye-Jin. I'm afraid I'm more of an appreciator of fine music rather than performer of it
I played bass guitar for many many years but I've only been playing piano for about 14 months.
The height of my piano output is the little prelude of Bach in C minor (the long one) and
I currently have the first F major little prelude working at about 1/16th the correct speed

I did buy a digital recorder/mixer a few months ago to record some stuff to post here but
as soon as I plugged my piano into it I discovered a problem with the electronics which
I have not yet worked up the energy to try and fix. Maybe this weekend I will open it up
and figure out what is going on and get something recorded.