Fast Chromatic Thirds?

[Sketchee]

Any tips for playing chromatic thirds quickly?  I was working on the section of Liszt's Orage in Anees de Pelerinage where these begin in both hands.  There's also a section in Sonetto 104 that has them; I have that part okay but not in the thrilling way I'd want.  Any advice for getting these passages amazingly even and quick?

[cziffra777]

There's also a section in Sonetto 104 that has them;

I'm also struggling through that passage in this piece, so I'd like to hear advice on playing chromatic thirds as well.

[allchopin]

 Much depends on the fingering one chooses.

koji (STSD)

How explicit..

I've just begun to conquer Chopin's etude in thirds after much constant practice, of course using Chopin's fingering written in the edition.  Refer to this pdf that I bootlegged from somewhere else on the forum a while ago:

www24.brinkster.com/wwwdot/various%20chromatic%20thirds%20fingerings.pdf


When practicing slow, make sure that you are not raising your fingers high into the air, as this loses time and makes more effort than necessary.  Do the bare miniumum to get the next finger over the next key and keep the fingers relatively low - the shortest distance between two keys is a straight line.  Legato is the next hardest obstacle and probably the most important.  When going from E-G to F-G#, the thumb will be jumping, so this must slide to the next key for best legato (though it's pretty tough).  But the important thing in this transition is the upper line, where the melody is, going from 4 to 2 from G to G#.  This must be smooth and well help to cover up any marcato you may have with the thumb transition.

Btw, you should probably do some pre-thread research on the forum .. chances are, your topic has already been discussed (and discussed, and discussed). https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=repo;action=display;num=1058843379;start=28

[Sketchee]

The fingerings in that pdf are very informative.  1-4 and 1-5 work well.

I'll definitely need to adjust the written fingers which the Dover edition of Anees footnotes are original from the manuscript.  The chromatic thirds in Orage and Sonetto 104 are both one semitone further apart that there so I can't use those exact fingerings though.

[allchopin]

Major thirds?  

[Sketchee]

Major thirds?  

Yep.  I can get them reasonably well with the sugesting fingering ... but not amazingly fast.  So far I just try to make them sound even and legato; that's tough enough without worrying about the speed.  It works not too bad for the Cadenza for Sonetto 104.

In Orage, the chromatic thirds are in both hands ascending and descending at what's supposed to be a fairly fast tempo.

[Sketchee]

I adapted the fingerings from minor thirds to major thirds.  Yay.  Here's a cheat sheet using the two pieces I mentioned:

https://music.sketchee.com/archives/finger.html

Basically the idea as I understand it now is to use 1 on white keys, 2 on black keys, 5 on white keys, 4 on black keys.

[Max]

Chopins fingering for chromatic minor thirds in the 4th Ballade is quite useful reference.