Coincidentally, I just spent all of July learning the Winter Wind, as I'm slowly building up my repertoire of the etudes; this was my 5th.
I had a lot of fun with this piece. It has a very straight-forward tempo and the left hand is quite easy all throughout. It's important to know the cues in the right hand where the left hand comes in, but once you get the feel, the pulse is very strong and it's very easily right there under your fingers.
As the previous poster wrote, it's important to keep it at a slow tempo. After having never played it fast, you can do so without any problems if you can play everything slowly.
ANALYSIS:
The right hand is actually a simple pattern: chromatic set in a certain key, and you can transpose and practice this in all the 24 keys if you're patient (I only tried in a select few), but the piece already provides a few transpositions. Like the previous poster, the chromaticity, and therefore all the notes, are important. I tend to give more weight to the upper notes as they descend. There are no "inner" and "outer" voices, there is a chromatic run with an a-minor accompaniment, or e-minor, or G7, and so on, as it changes throughout the etude.
I feel there are two ways to play this descending chromatic run. And I stumbled across the way I feel is best. You can kind of blur the run (I don't mean with pedal) but where all the notes have equal weighting, but after having learned and practiced it, I felt that that "pulse" was naturally appearing in sections and so I applied it all throughout. There should be this descending chromatic "pulse" that counteracts with the bass "pulse".
LEARNING IT:
To anybody who wants to learn this piece: go very slowly and get all the notes correct. Play the complete piece memorized at slow speed (like 40-60 per quarter note). Make sure you have the right hand runs memorized and never learn the piece hands apart. Put them together from the beginning, or else you'll have trouble inserting the left hand (it should be the other way around, the right hand being overlayed/inserted on the left, but that's an unlikely way to practice). Practice the whole piece in groups of four 16th notes with pauses between, then start two notes in and do the same thing, then do it in groups of 3 and alternate starting points again. This is extremely helpful to master all the changing positions fluidly.
It may not be readily apparent but there are quite a lot of 2-on-3 rhythms in this etude, for example the 16th note in the left hand melody actually comes between the last two notes of the 6 group of 16th notes in the right hand. I'm not sure, but I think most people practice the left hand 16th together with the right hand 16th (2nd to last in the group). At a slow speed it's easy enough to accomplish, but at high speed who can tell?
At first I had the first page learned very well, but the second page gave me a lot of trouble, especially in memorizing, all the way until I was done learning the whole piece. I worked the section slowly. Don't get bogged down on one section, do the other pages in block pieces and come back and work on it slowly. And don't give up because of such an obstacle. In fact, it's a good idea to learn each block independently, approx. one page per block (I used the Henle edition).
OBSTACLES:
The most difficult sections I found besides what I mention above were the measures leading up to the left hand runs (37-39) on page 4, and the ending with hands in parallel motion (87) and subsequent measures. I also spent a lot of time on page 5 (with two pick-up measures on the page before)--work through this page carefully as it's pretty tricky.
Contrary to what I believed when I first started working on it, the contrary motion of both hands coming inwards in measures 61-64 is not that difficult. I used more my sense of touch and can play it much more accurately without looking at my hands until the final chords. As long as my 5th fingers always hit each new hand position correctly, it's no problem. Remember, practice 4 notes at a time--through the whole piece!
It's also easy to get blurry at the bottom of the keyboard when the left hand plays the runs in measures 42 and 44, so make sure you keep those notes correct and very clear with as little pedal as possible.
MY INTERPRETATION:
I'm not a purist (unlike Hamelin) and I have my own interpretation of this piece. A lot of people will not agree with me, but I believe I have heard at least one recording played like this on the radio and I really enjoyed it. I have also studied Godowsky's versions of the etudes (I just learned his left hand version of the Op25-12 Ocean Etude this month) and I feel I should be able to communicate my unique approach to the piece. But I don't think I'll attempt Godowsky's version of this etude--that's a little too extreme--even M.A. Hamelin himself wrote: "Incidentally, the metronome marking is completely unreasonable--something that most of the other Studies do not suffer from--and is much better suited to the model than to the transcription." (Insert from CDA67412: Godowsky, The Complete Studies on Chopin's Etudes) In other words, the Godowsky version "presents mountainous challenges" (Hamelin) and the Allegro con brio is really only suitable for the original that Chopin wrote.
So, in measure 68 in the last set of the left hand I drop down a further octave, then come in at 69 in the left hand with an additional octava-bassa A, the lowest note on the piano (I don't think Chopin had it at his disposal when he wrote the piece, but if so he may have written one in). The only other change I made was playing the bass notes marked marcatissimo in measure 92 at the end of the piece as octaves with an additional octava bassa for each note, ending the run again with the lowest A. I feel it is a nice effect.
FINALLY:
One last word: remember to keep everything smooth. I think one of the major points of this Study/Etude (among so many others) is thumb-under surpassing 4th and 5th fingers (but what I mean to say is sottopassing)--don't jump, keep these legato. Also, jumping means you're doing too much movement with your hands and you'll lose your tempo at high speed. Hamelin's approach to tough music like this is AS LITTLE MOVEMENT AS POSSIBLE to play everything, and I don't think anybody can complain about his execution. So, jumps of any kind is out of the question. Practice those 5-1 stretches.
Those of you interested in the Winter Wind Etude may also be interested in Medtner's "Night Wind" Sonata (similar by name), referred to as "very darkly and somberly colored, charged from first to last with the intense, infinite, and inhuman sadness of vast, cold, lonely expanses--a true elegiac nature poem" (Norman Gentieu, La Musique, c'est tout!, Philadelphia, 1990).
-Kolya
Topic: Chopin's Winter Wind etude, op 25 no 11