Does anyone have any tips or exercises to learn on how to play this piece well? I thought I'd give it a try as it sounds deceivingly simple. How WRONG I was! My right hand is giving me trouble, especially those inner running notes. Should they be played softly and evenly so the melody can be heard? When I play slowly, they are either too loud or harsh, but when I speed up, some of them are inaudible! Either way the melody is totally ruined! HELP! I have been practicing this piece for over 4 months (don't laugh) now, but I'm still not happy with it. I love this piece for it's beautiful melody but I find it the most challenging, and is really testing my patience!  Has anyone really mastered this piece, what tips can you give?? I HAVE to get it right!

This is the ideal sort of piece to apply the principle of “outlining”. Just get rid of all the arpeggios and rewrite the score as bass notes + melodic notes. Learn this new, “simplified score”. This will get you ear used to the melodic pattern that must be brought out.

Concurrently, learn the mechanics of the arpeggios (some tricky co-ordination there!) by themselves (do a separate score if you need to).

Most importantly, keep to the original fingerings, so that when you join it all together later on, you do not have to relearn all the fingerings.

As you are working on these, take the opportunity to learn some new repertory that has the same sort of musical technical problem. You can do this from two different directions:

1.   Play pieces that are technically very easy, but that will prepare the ground for the Impromptu. Here are four examples in progressive order of difficulty (These are just suggestions – there are hundreds more):

a.   Burgmuller – “The Clear Stream” (from Op. 100)
b.   Gurlitt – “Berceuse” (op. 224)
c.   Grieg  - “Arietta” (from Lyric pieces, op. 12 no. 1 )
d.   Schumann – “Of Strange lands and people (from Kinderscenen no. 1)
e.   Schumann  - “Slumber song” (from Album Blatter op. 124 no. 16)
f.   Mendelssohn – “Song Without Words” Op. 19 no.1

By the time you master the Mendelssohn, the Impromptu should be easy (keep working on it as you work on the pieces above)

2.   Play pieces that are far more difficult than the Impromptu – once you master them the Impromptu will feel easy. The best one is Chopin Etude Op. 25 no. 1, which has a similar figuration structure, but going on both hands at the same time.

In regards to your other questions: Yes, play the arpeggios softly and the melody louder. But remember that there are other ways to accent a note that do not require you to play it louder. You can play it for longer, you can play it slightly out of sync with the LH. Most importantly, nothing is really even. The evenness is an illusion. In this particular impromptu the arpeggio notes must be “grouped” around the melodic notes, so that they are not even (= on the metronome) at all. They actually “clump” speeding up towards the melodic notes. This is difficult to describe in words, but I trust that you will be able to make sense of it and that you will be able to detect it in the several CDs of this piece (I particularly like Radu Lupu and Maria João Pires rendering of it).

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

which grade is this piece ?

Just a bit above grade 8.

When I did this piece my teacher at one point had me practice the inner voices soft staccato (w/o pedal) while bringing out the melody in legato. This was to make sure none of the notes got lost when I speeded up.

What are the grades you are talking about?

You don't have to get depressed just becuase it's above grade 8.  You should try and aim as high as possible, and set yourself high goals!  If you don't try and aim higher than what you can currently do, then you'll find you won't improve very fast.

Actually I already try it and I don't have that much problems with the RH Arpeggio/melody pattern. I'm a guitarist and the pattern is very guitar like, it's very similar to Fernando Sor's Guitar Etude in Em (I think it's XIX or XX) which I used to play. The technical problems that I anticipate are mainly coordination of the trills and fast notes at LH with the RH work. But the big issue is, I guess, rather physical : it's a long piece, like 7 minutes at rather slow pace, and I suppose it's challenging to hold the RH work for so long a time. So I just might end up having the whole piece learned in chunks but not being able to play it as a whole.

By the way, Bernhard makes the comparison with Mendelssohn's SWW Op.19 N.1, but I find that one much more tricky, technically, because of the arpeggios wich are splitted between both hands.

anyway..
What grade is Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu and Opus 10 etude 4?

anyway..
What grade is Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu and Opus 10 etude 4?

They are out of grade : very very advanced 

Thanks to Bernhard for listing the pieces that lead up to the impromptu. However, I'm not sure if Chopin's Op. 25 #1 is 'far more difficult than the impromptu'. I have learnt 25 #1 and I think they are about the same level. It is the similar figuration structure in both hands in 25 #1 that makes it easy.

2.   Play pieces that are far more difficult than the Impromptu – once you master them the Impromptu will feel easy. The best one is Chopin Etude Op. 25 no. 1, which has a similar figuration structure, but going on both hands at the same time.

What might classify as 'far more difficult' would be Christian Sinding's 'Rustle of Spring' which presents similar arpeggio problems to be solved. But what makes it difficult is to be able to play it at speed where the left hand isn't similar to the right. Or maybe it just depends on the individual learning the piece.

Regards,

dennis lee