Mendelssohn Fantasy....

[ralessi]

im working on the F#minor fantasy of Mendelssohn right now and i have a question...well 2..has anyone around here played/performed this? any advice on things to watch out for in general? and during the middle section of the 1st movement thing, after it gets fast..then you have the broken octaves that go up the keybord..one hand or 2??!??! pretty simple question.. just want some input.

Cheers!
Ricky 

[punch]

hodi knows about it and I think they may even have a recording of it in the audition room....

hodi?...

 

[ralessi]

glad to see the responses.....

[sportsmonster]

i have found a video of this song on internet you might enjoy.

you could watch the video and get an impression how to play it
(if you agree with the pianists way of playing it)

https://www.serg.vangennip.com/video/Finale_svek.rm

[hodi]

Hey

this is one of my favorite piano pieces
i worked on the 1st movement, and stopped with it for some time and worked on other pieces, and now i'm almost done with the 3rd movement (the hardest)
will do the 2nd movement (easiest) soon

about the piece

1st movement - it has a lot of musical difficulties, especially in the first two pages, work a lot on the dynamics, it took me quite some time to interept this movement.
on the fast section - use BOTH hands to do the broken octaves, it's actually arpeggios... it's not that difficult.
the most difficult part of the fast movement is just before the fast arpeggios, where u need to do a chord, a single note, a chord, a single note.. with the right hand.
work on it VERY slowly. it's difficult.
the last page of the first movement - just before the end there are lots of 16th in the right hand hand, u need to do it very quickly and with a light touch - like "flying" on the keyboard. very mendelssohnian, think like the scherzo from midsummer's night dream

2nd movement - didn't work on it yet but sight read it.
it's the easiest movement out of the three.

3rd movement - now that's HELL.
there is no place for mistake here,and not much time to breath. LOTS of runs, a lot of finger work. and there are lots of fast octaves and arpeggios as well
it should be played very lightly

don't use a lot of force during this movement, play it as light as u can.
in the beginning practice slowly and make sure u don't miss a note.

the hardest section is the deveploment, there are MANY arpeggios there, which also make it difficult to memorize because none of them repeats.

after the deveploment there is a section with a lot of octaves and then back to the main subject, there in the left hand u have some tricky chords which require large hands. quite hard if u have small hands.


the ending pages are a bit easier, after the deveploment section u passed the most difficult passages of this piece so the rest shouldn't be a big problem.



a Video of me playing the Mendelssohn Fantasy in F# Minor - 1st movement:

https://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3A455EYASZQ1C2MIPH9OP85AR9