Liszt Mazeppa

[rachmanny]

hello, i started working on liszt´s mazeppa 2 days ago and realized this will be a monumental challenge to overcome. Looking at the introduction of the piece i was wondering whether or not i needed to use pedal to make the broken chords sound correct, the piece doesn' t specify pedal in that part but i think it would sound much better with a just little.

The main theme after the intro is very hard. Im memorizing the octaves first then ill get to memorizing those quick thirds in a slow pace. Although i do have a doubt about the sets of thirds, so the fingering is  much:

(left hand)4  4    (right hand)2 2  (left hand)4 4
              2  2                    4 4                 2 2 

i think thats what the score says ( M.S, M.D=left hand, right hand respectively?), is there another fingering for this? or am i interpreting the fingering wrong?...

This piece will require lots of accuracy once i get the octaves and thirds together and memorized, i just hope to practice them slowly and have little patience while attempting this.

Anyone with experience on this work please talk to me more about the approach i should take towards performing, i appreciate any advice.

Rachmanny

[franzliszt2]

Yeh the 42 42 fingering is correct. Some people do use other fingers....but they are lazy! (I don't actually see why they use the other fingers to be honest, it's much easier to learn and to memorise with 42 becasue you don't ever have to worry about the fingering!)

Just practice it slowly all the time, for months. The hardest thing is not the thirds, but hitting each chord after the 3rds, becasue the hands are going in different directions. You just need to play the journey, and practice it slowly for a long time.

The main theme is very hard. The 2nd variation of it is not actually that hard at all (once you have learnt the main theme). The 3rd is quite hard, and then the last variation is just pure evil to get accurate every time. Practice it in the dark a lot.

[lostinidlewonder]

Also notice the absence of legato ties on the 42/24 passages. If you use different fingering then you naturally play them as coupled groups which is an incorrect sound. There is too much to act against for our hands to maintain fortissimo and keep these all separated. Your hand has to slightly drop for each of the thirds using different fingering will cause unnecessary effort for our fingers. Thus simply dropping with the same fingers is actually more efficient! If however these thirds where connected with legato ties and in couples then of course using different fingering would work better since we can play the two position with one drop of the hand, however musically Liszt wants them all separate in sound so the option can go out the door. Skip over to the Animato  part (notice how fingers have changed here and the musical reasoning why) and Allegro deciso, tougher developments I believe .

Students that I have taught this to tend to play the allegro too fast(and heaps of recordings as well!)

[rachmanny]

Students that I have taught this to tend to play the allegro too fast(and heaps of recordings as well!)

i think the perfect speed for mazeppa is about 70% the speed beverosky plays it (he plays it too darn fast). That is the speed i am thinking of playing it. I can imagine how beautiful it will sound too, contrary to sounding like a racing horse inyected with a gallon of steroids. 

[tuufy]

Playing it in position  - 13/24 is harder than 24/24. its requires more finger independence. Otherwise practice in pulse, dont accelerate with the notes, youll end up bad, you can always accelerate when performing on stage but that doesnt mean youll gonna practice it so. And choose wise tempo, coz every variation gets more agitated, and while in the beginning you have to aknowledge where you are in long term.

[precipitato]

i feel that 2-4 2-4 seems to give a better effect of a horse galloping, as compared to other fingerings which make it easier. Maybe thats why liszt intended 2-4 2-4

yeah, mazeppa is difficult... to get the power needed to play it is also a big problem!

[haydnseeker]

I've recently started Mazeppa too.  It's beyond anything I've ever tackled before.  I expect it will take me a long time to master it but there's no hurry: a whole year would be fine.

Regarding the 42 42 fingering, my Peters copy has an editor's footnote: "It is absolutely inadmissible to facilitate the fingering here, as contrary to Liszt's ideas".  It's good to see the previous comments that support this, though I'm not particularly surprised that some people play it differently.

I'm going to find bars 63-78 difficult: neither the melody in the LH over wide spread chords, or the RH up-and-down broken-chord note pairs is a texture I'm used to.  Can anyone advise how to practise this RH part?

[pianoplayjl]

I really suggest studying an exercise from Liszt's technical exercises because I distinctly remember a part resmbling the part of Mazepa you a describing. I'm sure there will be some notes on how to play the pattern in the Liszt exercizes. I think it really involves a great deal of wrist motion and finger relaxation.

JL