Hand span

[inspired young pianist]

Hey,
does anyone know at what age our hands stop growing?
I'm 16 and am hoping my hands are still yet to grow, because I struggle to play octaves or more, legato or at all evenly.
How do people with small hands cope with big chords?
Thnks in advance
x

[alessandro]

Hey kid,

Your hands will probably still grow a little.   It  all depends on how grown-up you are, isn't it.  As long as you're not adult, you're in a growing phase.  You can do stretching exercices for your fingers in order to gain a little span.
Pianist with small hands indeed 'cope' with big chords.  It's simple, if you can't reach the span in the piece you can or put the piece aside or you cheat.  My hands, for example, aren't exactly what I would call small, but in the Rachmaninof prelude in Cminor, I can't play the chord in the middle section neatly, so I cheat, I only play the lower-note.
 
Kindly

[inspired young pianist]

Thanks for that.
Can anyone recommend any exercises or pieces to 'stretch' my hands, or prehaps more accurately, to adapt my hands so they are used to such streches?
Thanks again

[nicco]

do some rach

[jre58591]

godowsky wrote some excercises for stretching and finger independence.

[le_poete_mourant]

Stretching your hands is fine as long as you do it properly.  If done wrong, you can really hurt yourself.  Flexibility and dexterity are more important.  If you have ever seen these young Asian female pianists play, they have difficulty reaching chords and other streches, but they can figure out other ways to reach it.  Chopin, a small man himself, had small hands but was able to open them like a snake's jaw, as a contemporary put it.  (This can also be inferred from his Op. 10 No. 1 Etude, which requires arpeggios of 10ths.) 

[will]

Chopin, a small man himself, had small hands but was able to open them like a snake's jaw, as a contemporary put it.  (This can also be inferred from his Op. 10 No. 1 Etude, which requires arpeggios of 10ths.) 

Chopin's piano was on a smaller scale than todays piano. His 10ths are smaller than our 10ths.
And more to the point you do not have to reach a tenth to play this etude - in fact if you try and reach for the tenths you probably won't be able to play it - assuming you have a normal reach.