Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2

[iroveashe]

I'm trying to learn this piece in depth, can anyone help with an analysis of the score, historical background (what was Chopin going through the time he wrote it? Why is it dedicated to la Comtesse d' Appony?), recommended interpretations (I listened to 19 so far, my favorites are Ashkenazy, Dinu Lipati and Moriz Rosenthal) or any opinions or useful information?

I also have a specific question concerning fingerings of the right hand for the last passage. It's 6ths going up in the Db scale, starting from Ab-F. So it's:

F    Gb   Ab   Bb   C   Db   Eb   F
Ab  Bb    C    Db   Eb  F    Gb   Ab (and goes up another octave and finishes in Ab-F)

The fingering from my score is:

3  4  5  4  5  3  5     3  4  5  4  5  3  4     5
1  1  2  1  2  1  2     1  1  2  1  2  1  1     2

Which I find extremely awkward, specially the 1-3, 2-5 part between the F-Db and Gb-Eb and because the last bit changes fingering but not notes the second octave.

So I check online the Paderewski edition, which I heard is one of the best for Chopin, in says:

4  5  3  4  5  4  5     4  5  3  4  5  3  4    5
1  2  1  1  2  1  2     1  2  1  1  2  1  1    2

More comfortable, but it doesn't suit my hand (at least right away). So I decide to try my own and I come up with this:

5  3  4  5  4  3  4    5  3  4  5  4  3  4    5
2  1  1  2  1  1  1    2  1  1  2  1  1  1    2

Which I find comfortable because of how the fingers 3, 4 and 5 fall into the black keys. But today I show this to my teacher and she says she's not convinced about starting with 2-5, so after struggling with it for about 5 minutes, she suggests:

3  4  3  4  5  3  4    3  4  3  4  5  3  4     5
1  1  1  1  1  1  1    1  1  1  1  1  1  1     1

I know fingerings are a very personal subject, but I have 4 different ones and I want to hear more opinions.

And for the most difficult part... any tips on how to coordinate 6 against 7? Since this is the ending of the piece it's played mostly very rubato, and some pianists make the last note of the left hand of this particular bar (which is doing 6 notes per beat) fall together with the last of the right hand (which is playing 7 notes), I don't want to do it mathematically correct but I'd like to be able to do it 'properly'.

[dana_minmin]

Fingerings: I use...

3 4 5 3 4 3 4      3 4 5 3 4 3 4    5
1 1 1 1 1 1 1      1 1 1 1 1 1 1    1

I slide my thumb to make it more legato


for the 6 against 7, I play this with split brain, i.e. keeping the steady LH and just let the RH go.

My favourite interpretation

This is one of my favourite piece. 

[iroveashe]

Thanks, it seems there are as many fingerings for that part as there are pianists, or even more, since I watched 2 different performances by Leon Fleisher and he uses different fingerings.

I'm still far from putting this part hands together but I'll try to split my brain, any tips for doing that besides getting a chainsaw?

It's one of my favorites too, which is why I don't want to butcher it...

[quantum]

Ashkenazy and Lipatti are also my favorites on this one.

For the scale in 6ths.  I also use all thumb on lower note with 3 4 3 4 ... 3 4 5 in the RH.

[aragonaise]

Hello,

for this piece, I used thumb to play the lower note, and 5th finger for white keys F and C, and alternate 3rd, 4th fingers on the black keys.

My major problem is in playing the running notes after the 2nd entry of the main theme,
Bb-Ab-B-G 3-2-5-1
Ab-G-B-Gb 3-2-5-2
G-Gb-B-F 3-2-5-1
Gb-F-B-E 3-2-5-1
F-E-B-Eb 3-2-5-2
E-Eb-B-D 3-2-5-1
...
but I find myself hitting a speed wall, and the notes are not consistently spaced with this fingerings. Any other fingerings to recommend?

And my favourite interpretation goes to Lang Lang here:

[ramseytheii]

I think the fingering from your teacher is very good.  In general I do not worry much about fingering.  I was going to suggest this,

2 3 4 5 2 3 4 5 2 3 4 5 2 3 5
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

just to be irritating.  This passage does not really depend on fingers; it depends on the mechanism of the upper arm coordinated with the wrist.  If I were you, I would deliberately practice it with fingerings like the one above, or fingerings that make it impossible to use finger legato, such as:

5 2 5 2 5 2
1 1 1 1 1 1, etc.

You probably won't use that for performance, but it will train you to see the passage in a new and more efficient way.

An interesting resource for Chopin's piano music is th book, "Chopin: The Man and his Music" by James Huneker.  It's very poetically written, but always contains interesting things worth reading.  

This nocturne, he writes, "has a 'profusion of delicate fioriture.'  It really contains but one subject, and is a song of the sweet summer of two souls, for there is obvious meaning in the duality of voices.  Often heard in the concert room, this nocturne gives us a surfeit of sixths and thirds of elaborate ornamentation and monotone of mood.  Yet it is alovely, implornig melody, and harmonically most interesting."  etc. etc.

I think an analysis of this score would not be too challenging.  I would start by conceiving it not just a nocturne, but as a Berceuse, then compare it to the famous piece of the same name.

Hope you find that interesting,
Walter Ramsey

[iroveashe]

Thanks for reviving this topic Ramsey with your insight. I'll try those fingerings tomorrow and I must admit I was very worried with the fingers when I made this topic, but later on, watching videos and just experimenting i noticed that not thinking about them at all was much easier and felt more natural.

Thanks for the book recommendation too, I just found it online so I'll check it out.

Sadly I've postponed the practice of this piece because I stopped going to piano classes and because I wasn't getting the results I wanted, and I love this piece too much to butcher it or learn it with lots of mistakes.