Tips on playing the left hand octaves of Chopin's A flat polonaise?

[mtierra]

I'm not sure what the best way is to be able to play the powerful left hand octaves of the polonaise op 53. What's a good way to practice it to get it up to speed? With the repetition, my arm becomes painfully stiff.

[kitty on the keys]

Try not to think of the octaves as 'powerful'---or the melody will be covered up. Drop and rotate the arm and wrist. use a touch of pedal on the 1st beat of each measure---then add more to achieve a crecendo. If you have a copy of Seymour Berstein's 'With your own 2 Hands''---give it a read.


Kitty on the keys

[ted]

With rapid octaves I have always found it much easier to use as much finger movement (3,4,5) as possible, let the thumb take care of itself, keep loose, play close to the keys and keep wrist and arm bouncing to a minimum. This might only work for people with reasonably large hands though. It's rather hard to describe how it feels (looks like a spider galloping) and my technique has lots of flaws at the best of times. However, I can keep playing fast octaves indefinitely this way while I certainly can't if I bounce around too much.

[imbetter]

make sure you use loose wrists and practice it slowly and they'll speed up but the loose wrist part is very important.

[kitty on the keys]

Ted & imbetter---I totally agree with you. That's what i wanted to say too Ted---you described it perfectly.

Kitty

[antichrist]

same problem here,tho i can do it %60ly and very tired after that

I think its the best to use 15 15 15 15 all the time

[mtierra]

These are great suggestions:

1. loose wrist and start slowly, let speed build naturally
2. Pedal tapped at the beginning of each group of 16ths

One other thing -- it seems that sitting low is easier to achieve the loose wrist than higher. What do you all think?

[dan101]

Your wrist has to also have some sort of an undulating motion (part of being loose). It's a tough passage that will get better gradually with all of the good advice that you've received.