Rachmaninoff's hand span

[chikchak]

Your talking about small hands.. lol

I barely can do from C to D (8th) and I'm 16!

But still, I played already Rachmaninoff's Prelude 5 (op23 no5) and Elegie (Op3 no1)
Perfectly

It's just how much you want to succeed the piece you play

[birba]

It's just how much you want to succeed the piece you play

  Golden words. 

[bach_rach_and_roll]

When people hold their hands up to mine they go "OMG chibi hand!!"
I can stretch my hand so that my thumb and pinky are in one line, but when I do that I barely reach an octave if I use proper posture. If I slide to the edge of the keys I can kinda get a ninth. I've never dreamed of stretching a tenth. I can't even roll the C-G one as a grace note. You lucky, long handed people.
Actually, my teacher forbids me to play Rachmaninoff because of my limited reach. I'm allowed to play the Polichinelle from Opus 3, but that's it. And if she found out I've read through 3/2, the Prelude in c#, I think she'd seriously slap me.  

and birba, for your last comment about chikchak's thing... that's the only reason I've played Polichinelle and the prelude from Debussy's Pour le Piano... it's not so bad if you look back and say "well I did that with a little determination and a couple dropped notes... I can do it again!" thanks for the reminder

[gyzzzmo]

A relativly big reach due to good spread has indeed some advantages, especially when playing some of the Rachmaninov repetoire.
But on the other hand, it has some disadvantages too. I have to keep my fingers more curved (takes more time) at fast passages on notes between the black keys, because of my broader fingers. And there are alot more compositions of those, than those big-chord-pieces of Rachmaninov

Gyzzzmo

[overfjell]

. And if she found out I've read through 3/2, the Prelude in c#, I think she'd seriously slap me.  

Why? There's no particularly big stretches in there. There is that C# to B, but that's not even a stretch, more a jump. Apart from that, the biggest stretch is an octave, I think...

[tb230]

A bit on the side of topic, but you can measure your hand span on http://www.steinbuhler.com/index.html
According to this, although my little finger measures only 4.5 cm (1.8 inches) , I have a normal span due to good flex.

[pianoplayjl]

Rachmaninoff's hand in the right could play the chord c-e flat-g-c-g and reach a thirteenth. I think probably because he had some sort of illness and thats why he was tall.