Hopefully, one of my old posts on the op.10 #1 will be helpful:
A question was posed as to improving tension-free velocity on the opus 10 #1:
First off, I would need some technical data. Are your hands small, medium, or large? Can you easily span all minor tenths? Ninths? Octaves? Fingers slender or thick? When you play rapid arpeggiations (now this may take thinking about some aspects of your playing that you haven't considered), do your fingers reach and stretch to the notes, carrying your hand; or does your hand carry your fingers to the targets? Have you been playing this Etude with elbow rotation, hence fanning out the 4th and 5th fingers without much vertical finger motion aiding the depression of the keys? Have you tried altered fingering that requires more active lateral hand motion?
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The key word you mentioned is tension, and without seeing you actually play through a few bars of it to precisely isolate potential velocity detriments, I'm going to assume that the stretch between the 3rd, 4th, and 5th fingers, after playing the first two small intervals with the thumb and index finger are what is the cause of tension. That is, stretching for octaves and tenths with the 4-5 fingers. This is usually caused when your hand is not active enough in carrying your fingers to the keys and you're not only imparting the vertical motion in trying to "finger" with the 4-5 fingers after the stretch (which is ordinarily never a problem when playing arpeggios whose cells are limited to the octave), but lateral finger motion as well, the 4 and 5 fingers moving in 2 planes, 2 ranges of motion, which will certainly slow you down and build tension in the interossei muscles of the hand.
Your hands are adequately large enough to play this Etude with hand rotation alone. I don't know if you're familiar with using hand rotation, the hand bringing the fingers to the keys, aided by slight finger vertical motion at the strike of each note to assist in phrasing. Hand rotation will eliminate reaching, or stretching, using the interossei muscles to move the 4-5 fingers laterally.
Try this simple motion. Imagine a large knob, like on an old-fashioned radio, the knob the diameter of a grapefruit. This knob is at about chin level. Reach out with a loose hand just letting your fingers make light contact with the imaginary knob and turn it. Left to right, right to left. Back and forth. Let you elbow remain motionless in the same space throughout this motion example. You should be turning this imaginary knob simply by rotating your hand at the wrist.
Try it slow. Then faster, the main goal to remain relaxed. Try it sitting at the keyboard with the hand held high enough off the keys not to make contact. Your fingers should be loose and outstretched, in playing position, but completely relaxed.
Let's try this on an arpeggio that fits the shape of the hand perfectly. Cdim7th.
C Eb Gb Bbb (A) with the 1-2-3-5 fingering for now. Roll the arpeggio back and forth 1-2-3-5-3-2-1-2-3-5-3-2-1, etc., etc. with your fingers lightly contacting the keys, your hand rotating your fingers through (depressing) the keys. Once you become familiar with the proper symbiosis between hand rotation and fingers, in this case the hand carrying the fingers to the keys, incorporating the hand properly, you'll be able to play this static arpeggio much faster in this way then using fingers alone.
Once you feel comfortable with this, let's expand the arpeggio and turn a slightly "larger knob", closer in size to the configuration of the etude.
C Eb Gb Bbb (A) Dbb (C) with the 1-2-3-4-5 fingering. Follow the same steps laid out above. The fingers slightly more apart, but again, without tension because you are not reaching for the top two keys of each cell, your hand taking that role.
I'll follow up with more once you've gotten these suggestions in hand. This will lead to a prep. exercise that should add 20 to 30 points to the tempo you're playing it at now in a short amount of time, although quarter = 120 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of at all.
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Take your time. Adapt slowly to new ideas, taking each step in analytically as you run through it manually. Live with it for several days and then get back to me with some initial feedback and your ideas on it based on your introduction to this, and then we'll progress to the next phase. Like the wicked witch of the west said, "These things must be done DELLLLLLLL-icately"
wave motion of playing mechanism in the Chopin Etudes
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All the Chopin Etudes are designed to address a specific technical obstacle. They all work and will improve the inherent weaknesses due to the anatomical configuration of the hand. There will be a carry over effect between certain etudes, like the #1 and #2, which both stress 4th and 5th finger execution as their main problem, but each attacks the problem from a completely different angle. The #1 is a hand rotation Etude with the 4-5 extended in a rotative targeting role. In the #2, the 3-4-5 fingers are called upon to be used like another set of 1-2-3 fingers from the opposite end of the hand. In the #2, true articualtive finger independence must be used, and economy of individual vertical motion depressing the keys. This is further complicated by the addition of notes in the thumb and 2nd fingers, forcing execution with a relatively zero planed hand (much easier to execute 3-4-5 chromatics with the hand angled towards the pinky at about a 30 to 45 degree ptich).
My personal belief is that an undulatory motion, some slight wave-like motion of hand rotation towards the thumb on each use of the 1-2 fingers (when a chord is sounded in the right hand on each beat) and then a hand rotation pitched back to the pinky will produce the best effect in executing the #2 (in any key). The 1-2 fingers already in position to play each closely quartered chord, a quick rotation on each beat towards the thumb will automatically produce the chord without even depressing the fingers (just targeting them), immediately after sounding the chords on each beat, the hand rotating back towards the pinky for the following 3 sixteenth notes.
At the piano, this motion should appear almost identically to the way a bassist slaps and pops with his thumb, not articulating with thumb motion, but by rotating the thumb through the string by rotating the hand.
Topic: Chopin Op. 10, No. 1