The Difficulty (or lack thereof) of Chopin Prelude op28 no1 and my Introduction

[daejiny]

Hello,
Just a quick question, why is this Chopin considered an 8+? I didn't find it to be hard, and as for musicality of my performance, I'm no Rubinstein, but it sounds as good as any other.

And maybe I can double this thread as an introduction and say that I've been playing for two years now, starting with the Mozart k545 and now playing Fantasie-Impromptu. But my theory suffers because I've never done it (and now would be a good time to start, I guess).

If my progress can be considered better than mediocre, I can only attribute that to my lucky acceptance into one of the biggest music schools in Los Angeles (Colburn, but if I'm wrong, correct me).

[ilikepie]

It's probably because one usually plays more than just one Chopin prelude(Heck, most concert pianists probably play all 24). This is somewhat hard already.

[ahkow]

I certainly agree. The difficulty in the Preludes were not intended to reach the level of the etudes. As Schumann said about them "They are sketches, beginnings of etudes, or, so to speak, individual eagle pinions, all disorder and wild confusions".

[amelialw]

I agree with what both of them have said.

My teacher insisted that I study at least 4 of the 23 preludes before I started on my Chopin Etude and that's what I did. it's not that difficult when you study the preludes individually, you study them in sets and they are not as easy as they look/seem to be.

[ahkow]

So which preludes did you study? i only studied with the easy ones like 4, 6, 15, 20. thinking of doing 16 and 24.

[amelialw]

no. 3,11,13 and 23

[ahkow]

3 is interesting. it looks kind of similar to Mozsokski's Op.72 No.2 in G-Minor