Home
Piano Music
Piano Music Library
Audiovisual Study Tool
Search pieces
All composers
Top composers »
Bach
Beethoven
Brahms
Chopin
Debussy
Grieg
Haydn
Mendelssohn
Mozart
Liszt
Prokofiev
Rachmaninoff
Ravel
Schubert
Schumann
Scriabin
All composers »
All pieces
Recommended Pieces
PS Editions
Instructive Editions
Recordings
Recent additions
Free piano sheet music
News & Articles
PS Magazine
News flash
New albums
Livestreams
Article index
Piano Forum
Resources
Music dictionary
E-books
Manuscripts
Links
Mobile
About
About PS
Help & FAQ
Contact
Forum rules
Pricing
Log in
Sign up
Piano Forum
Home
Help
Search
Piano Forum
»
Piano Board
»
Performance
»
Fatigue in Schumann
Print
Pages: [
1
]
Go Down
Topic: Fatigue in Schumann
(Read 5011 times)
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Fatigue in Schumann
on: April 05, 2010, 11:51:26 AM
Has anybody any suggestions for limiting the fatigue I feel in the LH when practising the final march from Carnaval. It's caused by the repetitiveness of the LH movement which begins at the "molto piu vivace" section. I try to keep my arms as "loose" as possible when playing these passages but Schumann affords the player little time for recovery before he requires you to do the same thing over again.
Logged
Schumann: Carnaval Op. 9
Sign up for a Piano Street membership to download this piano score.
Sign up for FREE! >>
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #1 on: April 08, 2010, 05:54:34 AM
Start the bass note with your wrist
below
the keys, flick the key up and transcribe an arc with your wrist arriving above the chord with your hand hanging
from
your wrist. 'Drop and flop' on the chords afterwards moving sideways, but roughly below the keys, to start again on the next bass note. The wrist transcribes a large oval. Here's a silent video of 'flick' and 'drop and flop' (first come 'scratch' and 'grip').
Logged
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #2 on: April 09, 2010, 11:55:37 AM
Thanks for this suggestion. This appears to be the technique you would probably apply to the finale of Beethoven Op2/3 (R.H. opening bars) or Liszt 6th Hungarian Rhapsody where the notes which make up the various groups sit close together, but maybe I am mistaken? I can't see how it could be used in the relevant passage in Carnaval due to the rapidity of the lateral movement backwards and forwards across the keyboard in wide spans but I might have misunderstood the advice.
It's just occurred to me to think of the L.H. points of effort in larger rhythmic groupings rather than bar by bar, and the result is not only less strenuous but more musical too.
Logged
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #3 on: April 09, 2010, 12:11:30 PM
The shortest distance from bass to chord is
not
a lateral movement. The physiology is quite different from the geometry. The arc you transcribe (like a rainbow) from bass to chord has your hand hanging from the wrist, resting, until you form and execute the chord. The upside down rainbow on the way back to the bass note makes your wrist/forearm angle acute, which helps relieve stress. Understand the wrist doesn't go up and over after the bass note but the hand hangs and wrist goes
diagonally
to the chord (i.e. don't move your hand, move your wrist). I'd do you a video but haven't got a camera where I am.
Logged
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #4 on: April 09, 2010, 12:59:42 PM
Sorry, I was proffering that advice without a piano to try it on. Now I've had a go on a piono I would do wrist up on every 3rd beat transcribing a kind of upside down rainbow both to and from the bass G. The important strain reducer will be the up on beat 3 followed by the down on beat 1.
What tempo we talkin?
Logged
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #5 on: April 09, 2010, 01:15:48 PM
The tempo increases throughout the movement ultimately reaching about mm.100 per bar (i.e. dotted minim). It's the matter of the rapidity of the movement which makes the thought of transcribing any sort of arc incomprehensible to me, as I can only envisage the arm and wrist moving close to, and parallel with the keys. I think I may be too dim to understand your description of the technique and would really need to watch the movement being demonstrated to understand....one picture equals a thousand words!
Logged
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #6 on: April 09, 2010, 01:20:20 PM
Doing it from the Molto piu vivace at 100 per bar
is
doable (with practice). You'd be surprised how fast your body can move if you let it. I'll try and get some sort of pic/video sorted.
Logged
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #7 on: April 09, 2010, 01:26:54 PM
Many thanks. I would be interested to watch a demonstration.
Logged
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #8 on: April 10, 2010, 10:20:36 AM
This is what I mean. Pratice without the low G's first. I've seen Seymour Fink in his DVD illustrate what I call 'up' or 'flick' as a push into the keys with the elbow - which, in essence, is what it is.
Do the same with the right hand and it will help bring out the accents.
Logged
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #9 on: April 10, 2010, 03:59:35 PM
Ah! I can see how that would work in standard waltz-metre. The problem is that Schumann writes the LH accompaniment so that the bass note occurs on the 2nd beat of each bar and what would be the third beat in a waltz figuration (the weak, lifting away beat) requires the strongest accent. I don't think I could perform the mental contortions that would be necessary to think across the bar lines (against the natural accents of the treble part) in order to feel that my LH is coming from the bass notes rather than darting down to them having thought of the work in the other way for so long.
I've started to find that shaping the music in larger phrases means that I don't accent each bar so heavily and this helps with the stamina problem.
Many thanks for your suggestions, and the trouble you've taken to make the video as illustration.
Logged
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #10 on: April 10, 2010, 04:51:27 PM
According to my edition (IMSLP) Schumann does indeed mark an accent on the first beat LH from bar 9 of the Molto piu vivace.
Logged
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #11 on: April 11, 2010, 11:57:02 AM
Yes that's correct, but therein (for me, at least) lies the problem. If the pedal notes were notated on the strong beat of the bar it would be easy to think in standard waltz figuration ( down, up, up, with the "effort" falling on each lower note) but as the strong accent falls on the second of the two upper chords (what would normally be beat 3 in a waltz) followed by a move down to the bass note this goes against the pianist's natural (or learned) inclinations (as does "Paganini" with its constant contrary motion of the two hands and, to a certain extent "Reconnaissance" with all the thumb repetitions). In short passages these sort of problems are fairly easy to overcome but Schumann doesn't make things easy by requiring the player to endure them over long stretches of music.
Logged
keyboardclass
PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2009
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #12 on: April 11, 2010, 02:32:49 PM
You really want to reconsider your accent on beat 2, not that the technique would be any different. The accents from bar 9 onward
clearly
indicate beat 1 as the main beat. The slurs in bar 19, 23, 27, 31 and so on do also, as do the sforzandos. But then maybe I'm missing something.
Logged
rienzi
PS Silver Member
Jr. Member
Posts: 42
Re: Fatigue in Schumann
Reply #13 on: April 12, 2010, 11:22:09 AM
I don't disagree...I would prefer the accent to fall on the bass notes in order that I can think
up
from them rather than having to think
down
from the first beats to the lower notes, but Schumann's conception has rendered the passage as it stands and the difficulty just has to be overcome.
It could be that we are talking at cross-purposes here and might only clear up the matter with a "head-to-head". As, judging from your profile, you appear to be in a different time-zone to myself I think the possibility of requesting a consultation lesson with you is most unlikely, however!
Thanks for your interest on this forum, nonetheless.
Logged
Sign-up to post reply
Print
Pages: [
1
]
Go Up
For more information about this topic, click search below!
Search on Piano Street