la campanella HELP

[david456103]

hi guys,
i have been playing la campanella for about 9 months now(played it for a recital in june) and am going to use it for a competition soon. however, i am extremely worried that i will miss some of the notes. i know that missing a few notes is not going to hurt that much, but for me la campanella almost seems based on luck, your mood, and the piano. please don't suggest that i don't have the technical ability to play it, since i can play pieces like ballade 4 and concert paraphrase of rigoletto(which to me are less "risky’ to perform). do you guys have any tips to be able to 100% hit all the right notes in this piece?

[49410enrique]

tempo? find where you miss notes. slow it down untill you no longer miss them. work to speed it back up bit by bit. play the entire piece no faster than the slowest tempo of your most difficult section that allows for accuracy.  were it me, that's where I'd look first. there's others on here that can and will offer different good advice as well and surely there's some money still on the table after what i've said but i'd address tempo and control issues first (assuming it is not a memorization/you leanred wrong notes in which case you're playing wrong notes correctly which can be super tricky to 'undo' if you can at all in a short amount of time).

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Practice with your eyes closed.

Incidentally, I've heard from quite a few people that La Campanella is a pretty bad competition piece.

[david456103]

thanks for the advice enrique and rach.
@rach: unfortunately my other pieces are too long 
what do you think is the lowest acceptable tempo for this piece？ is 160 okay? also do any of you want to share the fingering you use for the grace note jumps on the first page?(c# b d# b d# a# d# a# g# d# g d# g# d# etc)