QUOTE ON I've said this before in other threads, and I'll say it again: that part in the Waldstein is not an octave glissando. Nowhere does it say to play it as a glissando and it is completely possible to play all of the notes quickly at tempo without doing a glissando. QUOTE OFF (I think this was Retrouvailles ..)
Not sure what you mean by the response above.
On the Waldstein: there are three ways to do it - octave glissandos, individual octaves with superhuman wrist speed, or Schnabel's 'cheat' (see his edition, or just work out your own, with both hands playing the octaves pp).
Everyone's talking like a bunch of pianists around here and ignoring the far more important musical question: what musical effect is being attempted? I.e., what do you want it to sound like?
(vastly preferable to 'how do you push down all those keys so fast?')
My facsimile of the Waldstein autograph gives no definitive indication - the only clue it contains is that each octave is marked 5-1. What does that mean? Probably on Beethoven's piano you could do it either way; on a modern grand it's harder.
Schnabel's 'cheat' doesn't quite get every note, but that doesn't matter - it sounds the best. Even Gulda, whose Beethoven cycle is technically immaculate in every detail, doesn't bother with the glissandos - it's musically wrong.
Particularly on a modern piano.
Ironically Horowitz's Waldstein, the recording with the fastest individually-played octaves on the planet, sounds the worst. The musical effect is all wrong.
It sounds like a virtuoso stunt and destroys the line of the music.
The effect you want is one of superhuman restraint - a smooth sheet of icy water falling off the edge of a high cliff, all pp with no accentuation of any kind. Playing individual octaves, you can't avoid accentuating and making it sound like a virtuoso stunt, which is what Horowitz's performance sounds like. And don't get me wrong, I'm a big Horowitz fan.
The octave glissandi aren't that hard to play either - you might try Rudolf Serkin's trick and surreptitiously lick the relevant fingertips a moment before (he also did this in the octave glissando leading up to the recapitulation in the 1st movement of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto). If you experiment, you can do it ... if you want to.
It's just that you shouldn't 'want' to play those glissandi - or individual octaves - in the Waldstein. The desired musical result should guide the technical approach, not the opposite.
For the Stravinsky and Brahms, just smash your hand down and fake it. At first it sounds awful but it will get better. Lick your fingers. Avoid bloodshed.
But no one should avoid playing the Waldstein - or anything else - because of a couple bars that are problematic. And don't avoid playing the Goldberg Variation because of an ornament you can't play 'correctly.' (lots of cheats there too).
If you get the sound right, no one will care how you achieved it - that's the whole trick of piano playing.
peace, claude
ps and don't forget to play my piano etudes, the greatest piano work of the 20th century .. still awaiting the great performance I imagined when i wrote them ..
Topic: Octave Glissandos...