How to play grace notes of Liszt

[lia04]

Hi, I'm now learning Liszt-Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade. It always has grace notes on the first beat in the left hand. My questions is how could I fit the grace notes into the music without disrupting the flow of the music. The melody sounded as if it has a "hiccup" when I play the grace notes on the downbeat. I will really appreciate it if anybody has any suggestions for this. Attached below is an example of the musical figure I am talking about.

[nyiregyhazi]

Hi, I'm now learning Liszt-Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade. It always has grace notes on the first beat in the left hand. My questions is how could I fit the grace notes into the music without disrupting the flow of the music. The melody sounded as if it has a "hiccup" when I play the grace notes on the downbeat. I will really appreciate it if anybody has any suggestions for this. Attached below is an example of the musical figure I am talking about.

I'm playing this at the moment myself. Don't play strict semi quavers and then try to fit them in. Metronomic approaches render a solution impossible.This leaves a dead stop that makes the last semi quaver far too long without any preparation. The key is to stretch BOTH of the last two semi quavers and possibly even previous notes. It's not strict metre but it removes any moment of discernible stopping and instead leaves a stretched but continuous line. By stretching in advance, you actually preserve the line and flow better than by driving the rhythm straight on and then being forced to stop the flow. No metronome will teach the first thing about this type of skill. You have to know how to make it musically logical without trying to be strict at all.

[kalirren]

I'm pretty sure I've heard Yuja Wang play this section in straight tempo.  Sure, she's Yuja Wang, but distortion is not inevitable.

[nyiregyhazi]

I'm pretty sure I've heard Yuja Wang play this section in straight tempo.  Sure, she's Yuja Wang, but distortion is not inevitable.

I have to say that her performance of this is horrible though. It's way too fast and the accompaniment figure is just a blurred mess in the climax. There's so little chance to hear the fine details that you can barely tell if it's strict or not, within the individual subdivisions and the bass is clipped to the point of being as good as absent. There's no excuse for not articulating the support of a proper bass-line, even if they are notated as "mere" grace notes.I respect her playing elsewhere, but there's a difference between not caring if you smear and clip various notes in order to maintain the tempo and keeping a sense of forward movement in a musically detailed and meaningful way. Ginzburg is very good in this: