Chopin Prelude (E Minor)

[josh93248]

Hi everyone, it is indeed a cliched piece but I wanted to give it a shot so here is my recording of Chopin's beautiful prelude in E minor. I hope you all enjoy it and let me know what you think

[ajlongspiano]

Hey Josh,

Nice job. I'm hearing that you have a lot of ideas but I actually have a few big problems with this recording so I hope you won't mind me sharing my thoughts.

1 - I saw that multiple times your key attack came from striking the key from above using sheer arm weight. I would ask you to please NEVER ever do that when playing Chopin. There were a few notes that made me physically cringe because you just hit them so harshly. I'm sorry if I sound harsh, I just want you to fix this whenever possible because that aspect alone makes up like 80% of the problem. For slow stuff like this I would play with flatter fingers, a more relaxed hand, and never strike a key from above but from within the keybed. Now I'll mention a couple other very small things

2 - I felt like your tempo kind of lagged a bit. I know it's marked largo but I prefer this piece played with a bit more motion. Also, I think Chopin was trying to communicate more of an overall feeling than a strict tempo marking. You never want to get caught up in bathing in the sound world so much that the listener thinks " when is it going to end? To been going on forever.. " Always more motion, always getting somewhere..

3 - Try to keep the flow of your phrases more organically. A lot of times it sounded like DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN rather than Dunnnnnndundundunnndundun. Several separate notes rather than one string of them. It was like you were giving each note in a phrase equal rhythmic attention, which doesn't work well in romantic music.

I always like how thoughtful you are and how cleanly you execute your ideas. I can definitely tell that you put a lot of work into this. My only problem is that you seemed to have taken classical piano playing and baroque piano playing ideas/preconceptions and applied it to a romantic piece. That can't happen as they are all separate styles of pianism. I have the opposite problem. I play classical/baroque music too " romantically " sometimes because I'm foremost a Chopin pianist. You have splendid Bach so I can see how it would be very easy for you to take those ideas over to romantic music. Just try to avoid that.

Keep up the good work, Josh. This was a very hard critique so I apologize if I have discouraged you in the slightest. I just know that you want our honesty here and that you want to always be improving. I'm saying all of this because I think you have potential to reach an incredibly high level!

Sincerely,

- AJ

[pencilart3]

Hey Josh! Nice job. I'm not going to give too much feedback as this piece isn't exactly my forte. hehe that was stupid.

Well anyway, just a few things, I agree completely with AJ, especially about lifting up your hand real high and dropping it on the piano, I really don't think you should do that with Chopin pieces, except maybe in the case of a piece like winter wind when the high notes start descending and you need an accent on notes at the top of the piano which is very hard to get to come out. Did that make any sense? well never mind, just probably don't do that in this piece.

Secondly, you almost seemed a little bit bored during this piece. I'm not sure if you were, but by how you were playing, I almost wanted to fall asleep. I don't think that's how this should be played. It can be tired, but not sleeping completely!

But it's your interpretation and if you think it's best to do what you did, go right on ahead. You're doing great!

[outin]

Interesting
I must say that I myself interpret this piece quite differently...I like to play the left hand with faster tempo and with a more consistent pulse and then just let the right hand sing. Calmly.

[josh93248]

Oh well Back to the drawing board 

Anyway, I think my extreme overemphasising of the melody notes comes from a desire to sustain the melody over the accompaniment but the problem is that at this tempo I have to really overdo it considering the decay. I guess the version of this piece I was going for isn't really realistic and I may have to change some things. That said I wouldn't say to never strike a key in such a way with Chopin but perhaps with better justification than I do here.

As I said the tempo may well be better faster so I'll see what I can do.

I'm not entirely sure about the rhythmic and phrasing qualities but will experiment.

I'm really not sure about the idea that I'm being to classical and Baroque with this piece, but maybe that comes from your experience so far of me, I don't know. It's rather hilarious that now I'm apparently a better Bach player than romantic, if you'd have seen me some years ago....

Anyway thanks for offering your advice AJ, I'll see what I can do and make another recording.

As for what you said Noah, I never like how I look when I perform, I always look terrible, I think I need to act more because what I do naturally just doesn't reflect how I feel at all.

And thanks to you too Outin for your comments, we are different pianists but perhaps this also isn't me at my best...

Anyway, bottom line, look for a new recording soon. But I won't take this one down until the new one is up.

[pencilart3]

As for what you said Noah, I never like how I look when I perform, I always look terrible, I think I need to act more because what I do naturally just doesn't reflect how I feel at all.

Oh yeah don't worry about that, that's not really what I was talking about. Trust me, nobody looks like more of a lunatic than me when I play!! haha just try to make the piece more engaging, rather than just chord chord chord chord chord chord try and make it a bit more varying in tempo at certain places, if you think it's best.

[ajlongspiano]

Josh, these things are hard to explain by text so I might have sounded unclear. I'll try to make a video response soon for you .