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Topic: Pieces that include enormous hand stretches!  (Read 1226 times)

Offline savvygal

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Pieces that include enormous hand stretches!
on: January 25, 2014, 06:20:29 AM
As I pore over pieces to play, I immediately set aside ones that include me to have monster hands to play a chord!  Really?  I'm not a small woman with little hands, but like normal hands and I get so discouraged when I see a piece that wants me to stretch my hand like 10 notes!  Is this for real?  What do you guys do with those pieces?  I'm kind of a perfectionist and feel like I'm cheating on the music if I can't play how it's composed.  Any thoughts?  Thanks!

Offline quantum

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Re: Pieces that include enormous hand stretches!
Reply #1 on: January 25, 2014, 09:32:52 AM
If you can't grasp the entire chord, you can roll or break it.  It could also be feasible to redistribute the notes between both hands.  Sometimes composers do omit any specific instructions under the premise that the pianist understands their own particular physique and know how to approach the chord.

What I tell my students: the purpose of score is to be descriptive not prescriptive.  It's goal is to efficiently describe the music to the performer so that it may be interpreted; it is not the score's purpose to tell the performer how to play. 
Made a Liszt. Need new Handel's for Soler panel & Alkan foil. Will Faure Stein on the way to pick up Mendels' sohn. Josquin get Wolfgangs Schu with Clara. Gone Chopin, I'll be Bach

Offline danny_pianist

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Re: Pieces that include enormous hand stretches!
Reply #2 on: January 26, 2014, 02:55:35 AM
quantum is right, you can break the chord or roll it. BUT if you do reach the whole chord, you should try to do it. Just practice the bar where the chord is very slowly and a lot of times, without tensing your arm. And don't play with the whole finger, just the tip of the finger.

Personally the largest chord I have found in a piece was from E to C in the left hand, I have large hands  ;D but still I had to practice it a lot because it was a very fast staccato 1/8 note and it was repeated throught the piece.

In your place I would just play what the composer wrote (some composers like Rachmaninoff wrote very large chords because they had very large hands  :P )
Play Mozart in memory of me,  and I will hear you.  — Frédéric Chopin
 

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