Chopin Concerto 1

[franz_]

I'll tackle it. I would like to have some advice from people who played it, and there should be some here... What are the most difficult places? I suppose they are in the 3rd movement, so I started with that part.
Any help and advice is welcome.

[scott13]

For me the most difficulty was in-fact the first movement. The third is more fast technical work, the first is one of the most emotional movements ever written in the piano concerto genre and to pull off requires exceptional technique and musicality, but is a fantastic challenge to set yourself .

Best advice to you is go through all 3 movements and pick the most technically demanding parts, and make them into daily exercises for yourself. Then once these are mastered, move onto easier parts starting with the 2nd movement and working outwards from there.

Ultimately for large scale works you must try different learning approaches and see what works for you. I go for most difficult parts first, then towards easier, others prefer to cover easier material first so the feel they are making progress.

Best of luck

[franz_]

Well, what scares me in this stadium of the work, are the technical difficulties, that why I supposed that the 3rd is the most technicaly demanding.

Please let me know -even by bars, it would help me- what the difficult passages are.

Thanks for the info!

[franz_]

...no?

[lorditachijr]

What's difficult for you might not be difficult for someone else. If you're at the level to play this work, you should be able to identify what is difficult for yourself. I don't mean to sound brash or anything, but we can't tell you what is going to be hard for you without hearing you play.

[franz_]

Well, there are surely some 'general' difficult spots I guess? I would like to figure them out in order to start learning them already. That's why I started with the 3rd movement too. If i can handle those places, I can play the whole concerto. That's the raison i asked.

[franz_]

an update, i started working on the 3rd movement and start to know the notes. only, people play it so fast! to all recordings I listened, they play with metronome mark 108-112, i can barely reach 100. Any tips or tricks on how to deal with this movement???

[scott13]

an update, i started working on the 3rd movement and start to know the notes. only, people play it so fast! to all recordings I listened, they play with metronome mark 108-112, i can barely reach 100. Any tips or tricks on how to deal with this movement???

As always speed comes from slow accurate practice. I typically practice this movement at around 60 bpm to ensure every note is 100% accurate and articulated correctly. Then i increase by 10 bpm until i am at my desired tempo.

Never rush speed, let it develop out of accurate practice.

[franz_]

As always speed comes from slow accurate practice. I typically practice this movement at around 60 bpm to ensure every note is 100% accurate and articulated correctly. Then i increase by 10 bpm until i am at my desired tempo.

Never rush speed, let it develop out of accurate practice.

Thanks for the comment. I realised it too. I sometimes forget that fast playing comes out of slow practicing. I'm sometimes a bit desperately trying to achieve the real tempo, and than don't understand why I can't reach it. I also realised that to split up the beats mentally helps too, instead of thinking in quarter notes, in halves for example.
If you know any tricks or interesting fingerings or whatever for this movement/concerto, let me know.   You reached metronome 110 by the way?