What is harder? The revoloutionary or Fantasie impromptue

[richard black]

FI is much harder. This is because I've never practised it, unlike 10/12, on which I've spent a fair bit of time. QED.

[countrymath]

Almost done with Fantaisie too.

Only the Cantabile section left.

[ngo_dustin]

fantaisie impromptu without a doubt. fantaisie impromptu has the sixtuplets against sixteenth notes. whereas revolutionary is just a repeating pattern. it just takes practice.

[vsrinivasa]

i think FI is somewhat more difficult, but RE is definitely not easy. It is at least Associate level diploma. However, FI has many more technical difficulties.

[vsrinivasa]

Hmmm, isn't Fuer Elise longer than either of them?   

Fur Elise is MUCH easier than both of these. It's longer than RE but much shorter than FI.

[rao217]

redbaron, did I say song?

And I don't think it really matters what you call it. as long as people know what you mean, it's all good.

I mean the revolutionary etude is supposed to be a practise piece, a study, where as the fantasie-impromptu is supposed to be like a performance piece. Although you can perform the etude as well.

I'm surprised at the response here. I've always heard that fantasieimpromptu is much harder than the lowerend etudes like revolutionary.

What do you guys think of fantasie vs black keys? black keys has the same difficulty as revolutionary right? so does that mean it's better to do fantasie first? It would be kinda stupid of me to do black keys for the purpose of preparing for fantasie, when it is actually harder...

Whoa whoa, Chopin elevated the Etude form specifically by composing Etudes that were not just "study pieces." Furthermore, even a "lower end" Etude like Revolutionary is not a light technical challenge, especially to make it sound like more than a "practice piece." The left hand in the Revolutionary does not play the same role as the left hand in the Fantasie-Impromptu does; for the majority of the piece, the left-hand in the F-I is serving as a background to the right hand, but the left hand in the Revolutionary etude is almost a melody of sort, and is much more varied than the left hand in the F-I. The dynamics in the left hand for the etude are much broader and mercurial than the dynamics in the F-I.

Even if I agree that they are technically equal (which I most certainly do not), making the Revolutionary sound like a "performance piece" and not a "study" is certainly more difficult than playing the F-I as a performance piece, simply because the balance between the LH and RH is much more clearly defined in the latter. The LH in the Revolutionary is a fire, its growth constantly shifting in magnitudes much greater than the LH of the Fantasie does.

The RH runs of the Fantasie fall nicely under the hand--as does a lot of Chopin. The timing is an obstacle, but it's a very repetitive pattern (3-against-4 throughout) and never really comes close to the variety in the Revolutionary. It's not as if the RH in Revolutionary is particularly "easy," either. The second A section definitely takes some practice to play cleanly because of the polyrhythms (including 3-against-4!) and repeated fast chords that are simply not present in the F-I.

And please, don't refer to the Revolutionary as a "study piece." Chopin never intended it to be such, and calling it that ignores its compositional history.

[thesuineg]

The etude by far, because it requires you to have to try and not make it boring. Admit it that etude gets boring really really fast. The impromptu is easier technically in my opinion, but maybe only cus im better right handed

[ahinton]

The so-called Revolutionary (what a daft name for it, given that one could as easily and convincingly apply that term to any of the other eleven études in the set) in Godowsky's left-hand alone version is certainly harder than the Fantaisie-impromptu transcribed for left hand, if for no better reason than that, as far as I know, the latter does not exist.

Best,

Alistair

[the89thkey]

I think the Revolutionary took me a little longer to learn. But interpretatively (is that right? ) the Fantasie is more difficult to get right.