Piano Forum

Hey all,
I was looking at this etude and trying to read through it, but I just could not play the thirds at tempo evenly. Is there a specific motion to play those thirds/a specific way of hitting the keys? I would appreciate your help--I'm trying to learn this etude and I dont want to learn it in an irreversibly bad way.

There is no specific motion for this etude, or for any other Chopin etude.  You do however need a good fingering (Cortot offers several possibilities, and I believe Godowsky does as well) and good general usage of the limbs. 

Remember that the hand has to be always centered on a focal point in the palm.

The elbow has to be able to, at any time, move slightly and subtly clockwise or counter-clockwise (not "up" or "down" or "left" or "right", the elbow moves 3-dimensionally).

The outer part of the hand, the fleshy part of the palm at the pinky, is the strongest and balances the enormous power of the thumb.

You also have to always feel a personal centering point, no matter how far or close apart the hands are.

Lightness of touch is absolutely essential for this etude, so practice stroking the thirds as one would pet a cat, or as it has been described of Beethoven's touch, "dusting the keys."

For practicing, you should practice not only getting the thirds right, but getting them right in conjunction with a melodic left hand.  So much "stuttering" in this piece is not even due to the difficulty of the thirds, it's the coordination between the two hands.

You should experiment with articulations: in the thirds playing the bottom voice staccato, top voice legato, and vice versa.  For more of this, I recommend looking at the Cortot practice edition.

Without question, you should practice this piece in transpositions, first the easiest (to transpose but not play) in G minor, and then going outward from there.  It is so important with a piece of this difficulty to gain perspective which you will never do by playing it over and over again in the same way.

(This is also based on the Busoni theory of making something much more difficult than it actually is.)


This is not even the "tip of the iceberg" as Bernhard would say, but I wanted to offer some advice that has nothing to do with a "proper motion" to play thirds, because there is no such thing.  Just as in Alexander Technique, there is no "posture' but "acture," here there is no "position," only "action."

Walter Ramsey