Argh, it would be great to record the piece but I have no equipment for recording!
Just my mobile phone, and it dosn't really make a ... great way of imitating the grand piano sound so to speak.
A little about relaxation which is very important.
First of all, this is not a short process, but it might not be as far away as you think either.
If you are ever tense, the tone you produce will be more harsh than if you are relaxed, and it's alot easier to produce even touch between all the notes- I'll try to explain my way of getting relaxed in words, as best as possible.
First of all, we have to take a few steps back.
Lower your stool, if you sit aligned with your forearms with the keys.
Take it down a little bit. (this is just for the purpose of practicing to play relaxed)
Now lift your arms in the air, with your hands dangling totally relaxed, making your arms look somewhat like a swan. When you feel, you have no control in you wrist, there is no tension. Let them fall to the keys, not minding what notes they hit, they just fall to the keys, and probably it will sound aweful.
When doing this, if you are totally relaxed when your hands hit the keyboard, your arms should fall down further than you hands.
Where you totally relaxed everytime doing this for 10-20 times? Did you feel tension in your shoulders? Straighten your head, rising it from the elbows making you feel like the queen of england.
When this has been done a few times, and you feel there was no tension, especially in your elbows, wrist and anywhere in the hand, let's move on.
Now place one of your hands on the keys, preferably the left, if this is what you experience most trouble with.
Remember though, when you let your hands fall on the keys in the last step, the hand should probably fall in a very comfortable position, which creates no tension in the hands somewhere.
See if this is the way you placed your hand on the keys now that you are going to begin step 2.
You are going to play, C D E F G. Do this very, very slowly- not cheating anywhere, it might cause tension, and we do this to learn the wrist what tension does NOT feel like.
When you play the first note, the C with your pinky (left hand), move your wrist up, and then down, halfway down, you play the note. And the up and down, halfway down, the D, same with all the rest.
Halfway down should be aligned with the keys, so that down is somewhere below the keys. Where you are as most relaxed and just want to hang. But with the wrist constantly moving up and down in a non choppy way, just slowly, like the sand moving in the desert, from one side to the other. It can never be tense, hense if we tense it up it will be hard to move it constantly.
Again, slowly, not the way you think is slow, more slow than that.
Now after doing this for a long time, learning the wrist to relax, try playing the same notes without as much movement, because one can't play like that in real life.
If you can do this without getting tension anywhere in your hand, again, slowly. You are on the right track, now you get a feel for how it should feel in your wrist and hand when you are playing. In an exagurated way, probably.
The point of all this and to be as relaxed in your wrist does apply to almost all aspects of piano playing. To be able to have more accuracy and speed, achieve great tone, and not damaging yourself and be able to play pieces without getting exhausted. Some czerny etudes are impossible to play without a relaxed wrist, in opus 740 I think, there is a etude for left hand flexibility, I used to be all tense in it, and it wore me out after 2 pages out of 4 or 5. And I mean really wore out, I couldn't move.
So it is really important to learn to be relaxed in your wrist for numerous reasons, as most know but don't take seriously until a good teachers shows you that you are in fact not relaxed, even though you might think so.
This is hard to learn over the internet.
As it's highly induvidual problems.
Next to this excercise, we can use the first bar in the Consolation, without the low Db note, just play the left hand first bar. Very slowly, and the trick now is to have the hand in it's relaxed position all the time, since the notes are more spread out than the hand can handle to be totally and utterly relaxed in, we need to move the hand for each note, so that we never spread the fingers basically. Also note, this is just an excercise to learn to be relaxed, not how one plays.
Do this, so moving from, (I can't remember what notes) so let's say, F to the Ab and we use for example fingers 5 and 4 we need to move the hand, because if we spread the 5th from the 4th finger, the hand is going to tense. And so with the next, and so on.
Apply the wrist up and down movements now, for say, 20 times in super slow motion.
When this has been done the the whole first bar left hand, now use your wrist in sideway motion to hit the notes in a relaxed state. This is more like how one plays, it's always good to move the wrist when practicing to know that you are relaxed. And if you feel you tense up, slow down.
After this I could go into how to strengthen your fingers, especially every pianist experience a weak 4th finger. And you may now know it is weak until you know how to test it's strenght.
Fingerstrenght is also used to create fine tones.
But anyway, let's get into that later on. Most importantly is the relaxations of the wrist and hand. Remember that this does not come after 1 day, but not after 1 year either, and ones you got it, it's like riding the bike.
I hope this is helpful, and remember that you have to know how it feels to play totally relaxed, but still have control, apart from relaxed and just flabbing about.
It's a fine line, and I really wish I could just physically take your hand and show you, it would take 15 minutes, apart from writing this, not knowing if I express myself in a good way or if some things are mistaken or missleading.
Topic: Liszt Consolation No. 3 Project