4th finger pain

[jamie_liszt]

About 2 weeks ago I was practicing an accompinament where the left hand was all octaves. I practiced it so much that my 4th finger (LH) Got really sore in the joints. I rest my hand and took a break for 1 week and now I have to re-learn the polonaise and raindrop prelude for monday night, Which I have basically done already. I played the repeated octave section to heroic polonaise about 3 times and my 4th finger got sore in the joints again so I stopped playing.but I cant stop now because I have 2 days to practice the rest of the polonaise.

Has anyone got any tips on how to stop the pain, I have tried some tablet capsule things that have magnesium which my mom uses for her joints,   Ive also tried heat packs and ice packs, and Arthiritus cream and I havnt played the piano with my left hand, unfortunately I have to before the performance. Anyone got any ideas on how to stop the pain?

[lung7793]

Hard to say...I would say lay off it until it heals, but if you have a performance that makes it difficult.  Try not to injure it further by practicing hard on it.  You may see if you can do the octaves w/ the 5th finger instead of 4??  Or, easier yet, take one of the registers of the octaves out!!  J/k, though it makes the section a lot easier.

[lung7793]

Let us know how the performance goes!

[jamie_liszt]

The performance went great, I didn't make any mistakes and I managed to get through the octaves section in the polonaise without any pain in my finger which was good. The crowd was very appreciative of my playing.