This one passage is driving me nuts. Any advice?

[persona]

I've found this type of passage on two different Haydn piano sonatas. I've tried several changes over the past months but still I can't fully master it. The worst of all is that the rest of the piece sounds just fine, but I always have to stop at this particular spot and no matter how slowly I play it, the thirds sound awful. Any advice will be helpful.

PS: The key is Eb Major.

[slobone]

Sound awful why? You mean harmonically -- or they're hard to play? I can't hear anything wrong when I play it.

Are you sure you're playing the right notes?

[persona]

What I meant to say is, I find it very hard to play those thirds and make both notes sound "together". I'm using fingers 24 - 35 - 24 - 13 - 13 to make them legato, but the notes that are supposed to sound simultaneously, sound sepparated instead (I mean, first one, and a small fraction of a second later, the other).

[rallestar]

Instead of your fingering, I would use:

24 - 35 - 24 - 13 - 24 - 3

As for getting the thirds to sound "together", what I would do, and have done when I've encountered third trills, is to practice very slowly, playing slowly enough that each third gets perfect. Something that has helped me is to let gravity do the work - A bit hard to explain, but try placing your fingers on the keys of the third you're going to play, and just relax into the keys, gravity should then do the job. Important not to keep your fingers too relaxed, so that they don't get "uneven" by the resistance in the keys. It's a bit hard to explain, but do some experiments at a very slow pace, see what works best for you.

And play the passage very slowly and perfectly (play as slow as it takes to play it perfect) a couple of times before going to bed.

[guendola]

I would play these thirds with 53-53-42-31-21-1 using thumb legato on the end of the g-flat key. You could switch from 2 to three on the last a-flat and then play the last g-flat with 2 to gett real legato. Playing them evenly is definitely a matter of technique. Practise slowly, keeping all fingers in touch with their relevant keys, even if they don't play, have a heavy hand. then experiment with the height of the wrist as well. It helps me to lift the wrist a little on the second third. For the FA-flat with thumb legato you have to pull the hand out of the black keys a little.

[jinfiesto]

To get them to sound together, try pushing in a little bit when you play each note, eventually you'll just be able to do it.

[ramseytheii]

You may want to practice pushing in, but eventually the sound you want will be achieved by stroking the keys outward.

Walter Ramsey

[slobone]

Aha, the thirds. What works for me is to make sure my wrist is exactly perpendicular to the keyboard, so that each finger is in the same position relative to its key. Then I raise my fingers a little more than usual and keep the two fingers fairly rigid while bringing them both down at the same time.

As for fingering, keep it simple. When you're only playing one note at a time, sometimes it's necessary to use "unnatural" fingerings to maintain legato. But with more than one note at a time it's just not worth it. You should be able to simulate a legato sound if you practice it enough. So I agree with 53 - 53 - 42 - etc.

(And you can be sure that Haydn would be completely bewildered by some of the complicated fingerings people have invented since his day. "Legato, shmegato. I have to come up with a new piece for Eszterhazy every day, I don't have time for that nonsense. And besides, on a fortepiano you can't hear the difference...".)