Specific Mephisto Waltz Questions:

[nanabush]

Hey everyone,

Alright this is the second time I'm posting this, because my stupid cable turned off while I was sending the thread, and it couldn't reload the page  

So I've read through pretty much every thread that even speaks about this piece, and 90% of them are about the difficulty and what other pieces it compares to.  I'm well aware of how difficult it is, and am not simply playing it because I think it's a 'hard piece'.  I recently switched to playing this from the Funerailles (which I finished on my own).  The reason is that there was another student already playing the Funerailles this year and my prof asked if I wanted to play a different Liszt.  He suggested between this and the second Ballade, but I prefer the Mephisto Waltz  

Anyways, I've looked through it, and the only blatant in-your-face difficulty that popped up was the disgusting amount of jumps for the right hand near the end.  I'm not there yet, so I won't bother asking "how to play it" just yet  

So my questions cover the first ten or eleven pages, because that's what I've been looking through the most:

-Pedalling at the start; my edition suggests holding the pedal for about 15 measures right at the beginning (until 2 measures before the marcato).  There are similar markings for all the parts like this on the few 3 pages.  Is it necessary to keep the pedal down?  (Pedal lifts are clearly marked, so it's not too vague...)  On my upright at home it sounds a little muddy (need to wait till Monday to try at school).  So some suggestions for pedalling in the first bit would be appreciated.

-The Glissando; I can play the glissando fine, but again I'm wondering about using pedal, and whether playing the left hand like a scale (my edition suggests that because it apparently creates a neat-sounding effect lol) would be advisable.  It seems pretty tough to play a scale that fast without having any hiccups and having the feeling of throwing my hand across the piano to play it like that.

-I haven't quite gotten to this part, but the trills at the Presto on the 10th or 11th page.  People in earlier threads suggested distributing the notes between both hands, but that seems like it would make it trickier getting around with that.  So any comments on the trills (just general insight, or suggestions for fingering etc) would be pretty cool.

It's mostly pedalling and voicing so far.  The scales aren't that bad (I just did the Mendelssohn Rondo Capriccioso, and the second half of that piece is full of these awkward passages), and the octaves are fine, but I don't want to simply play the notes, so I'm trying to nitpick every little part of the piece as I'm learning it.

I'm also just starting a general discussion thread on this piece.  Again, most of the comments about this turn into a battle over which piece is harder (one thread dedicated to this piece actually turned into a massive rant on the difficulty of Chopin Etudes).  So I kind of just want to discuss random parts of the piece as I'm learning it, and not turn this into a flame war.



Thanks in advance,

Nick

[birba]

I change the pedal on each accent at the beginning.  It's very rythmic that way.  Tell you the truth, I had never really taken note of that long pedal.
You have to experiment on pedaling for that glissando.  depends on the piano.  I start it with the pedal, the first note FF, then immediately pp and big crescendo,  and off at the top.
Those trills are not hard to play as written.  And the alternating hand trick really spoils that bird-like trill effect.