Help with Bartok chords! (Similar to opening to Petrouchka?)

[paulhuang]

hi everyone! i have a very specific question. i've been working on bartok's second piano concerto for some time now, and there's a passage that's been really bothering me.

i've attached this fairly brief section in this picture.



the section is at 5:45 in this video:

i'm just wondering if anybody knows how to get those rapid major tetrads at fortissimo without locking their wrists? i lock them because when i do otherwise (strike down at the keys, i.e. moving my hands up and down), this hurts the tips of my fingers considerably. i constantly bruise these fingertips to such a degree that it hurts to play for the next few days. it's really annoying. isn't the technique similar to the opening chords of petrouchka? if anybody has any advice, i'd be most grateful!

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Wow that's really unusual.  I haven't played anything as difficult as this concerto (well I haven't heard it yet so I don't know) but I can play the opening of Petrushka. 

Honestly, I don't know what to say because the idea of my fingertips hurting when playing something like that never crossed my mind.

[richard_strauss]

I know what you mean. Here's something that you might find useful: when I was studying petrouchka I had a similar problem. I knew that Alfred Brendel played with band-aids so I tried to work out something like that using band-aids and cotton, and it worked surprisingly well. You should take into account a few things though: the band-aid should be loose to let the blood flow, you shouldn't use too much cotton or you won't play comfortably, and, finally, the band-aids tend to fall off your fingers so you should wear gloves. 

[cmg]

I'm just going to assume you're serious and this isn't some spam attack.  This Bartok is about as hard as music gets and am I to assume you're working on it on your own?  No teacher supervising?

Well, if you're not pulling our collective leg here, I'd suggest you look closely at the video you included that pretty much shows how this passage is played. You CANNOT lock your wrists any  longer than the micro-seconds it takes to form the chord and depress the keys.  Then, instant microsecond relaxation in preparation for the next chord.  And the attack on the keys is NOT up and down.  Feel your wrists rise up after playing the chord.  That releases the tension.  It's more like plunging your hands (with your entire body behind them for weight) into the keyboard and bouncing off immediately to ready for the next attack (plunge).  All from the shoulders, back, behind.  That produces the sound.  Not poor bruised fingers striking the keyboard like little meat tenderizers.

Feel your hands dropping and pushing into the keyboard.  Feel your own built-in shock absorbers activated (the wrists rising up and down).

[paulhuang]

Thanks for assuming that I'm serious because I am. I'm playing this for a concerto competition for our school. I probably should find proper instruction, but I can't afford it at the moment. I did save enough money to have one lesson with someone I found at the Music Institute of Chicago, but the level of help I can get will be very limited unless I find someone who has already played this (I'm not sure how I'd do this, but it's probably too late -- the competition is at the end of this month).

I'm going to try all your advice -- the fingertip problem is no longer really an issue. It turns out that  I just haven't given my fingertips time to heal. I thought the calluses I developed would help, but it turns out that it takes time for the calluses to soften. Now it no longer hurts.

The fatigue is still an issue, but I'll try your advice with the wrists with slow practice. The problem with not locking my wrists is that there is some compromise with accuracy. I find that if my fingers leave the keys, they tend to lose their position (which remains static throughout the passage).

Thanks everybody.