Trill business

[clouseau]

Hello everyone,

I have been working extensively on my trill technique lately with various boring drills and would like to put those trills into practice. Are you aware of any pieces known for their notorious trills?
Preferably from the baroque or classical era

thanks in advance

[klavieronin]

Just off the top of my head; Beethoven Bagatelle Op.119 no.7, Scriabin Etude Op.42 no.3, Goldberg variation no.28

By the way, what did you do to improve your trill and how did it go? Did you see much improvement and how long were you working on it for? I ask because I have a terrible right hand trill/tremolo (left hand is fine, I guess because I'm left handed) and was thinking of undergoing some extensive trill/tremolo training myself.

[clouseau]

Thanks! That Scriabin Etude is very impressive and with a lot of trills for both hands. The text doesn't seem too hard, so I might give it a go.

Basically, I have been doing trills daily about 20 minutes for about two months, practicing the following finger combinations for both hands: 1-2, 1-3, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4, 3-5, 4-5 starting at a slow tempo (with a metronome) where controlled and even sound was possible and gradually increased from there.
Boring as hell,  but after some time I noticed that some trills which I always had problems with, started to work and sound good, that gave me a lot of motivation to continue doing the same.
Now I am not sure, there might be better methods, but I can certainly say I saw results with this one.
But you have to be careful because it is very repetitive, it might injure the hand.

[j_tour]

From Baroque and Classical (excluding the infamous later Beethoven sonatas, I guess), the most work in trills (including various fancy ornamentations -- say what you will about Angela Hewitt but she seems to make the most out of working the ornaments in Bach, maybe together with András Schiff).

I think anything in Bach where you can introduce a trill or any kind of flexibility in making turns, and various extended mordents and trills (I can't remember the terms) could be made into an exercise.

Not much help from me on this repertoire question, but I've been getting some pretty good mileage out of going back to five-finger work from Czerny, Op. 740 (I think it's the very first one from that set), and picking and choosing from Debussy's first étude (pr les cinq doigts) -- something about helping to remembering to use wrist rotation seems to be sinking in.

You know, that idea isn't rocket science, and I'm not suggesting your scales need work, but for me just isolating the basic movement I've done millions of times in the context of fuller LH scales and runs seems to be penetrating my skull a bit.

Then again, I missed the January scale contest, which I was thinking about getting around to doing a recording, just for fun, but didn't get around to it, so I'm just a random internet person, not claiming to be a master.

And it sounds like you're better at LH trills than me -- the repertoire I play doesn't need fingers 4-5 trills, so I don't bother to try.  Anyway, I'm just talking about LH trills -- for some reason, RH trills have never been a problem (still, fingers 4-5 and simultaneous trills in the same hand aren't that strong, but, you know, all those trills in Mozart Concertos when I'm just reading through are my cue to relax and think about turning to the next page).

[klavieronin]

Basically, I have been doing trills daily about 20 minutes for about two months, practicing the following finger combinations for both hands: 1-2, 1-3, 2-3, 2-4, 3-4, 3-5, 4-5 starting at a slow tempo (with a metronome) where controlled and even sound was possible and gradually increased from there.

Thanks for that. I'm going to take the same approach plus some rhythmic patterns. I just hope I haven't left it too late.

[clouseau]

j_tour,
I prefer penetrating my skull than going again through that Czerny. never again!
Joking aside, scales and trills are not quite the same, the technical challenges differ. Though improving trills might improve scales somewhat and vice versa, it is better imo to isolate and attack the problem directly. If your trills are acceptable and you never had problems then there is no need to go through such workouts. I have the same problem with Mozart, Mozart exposes your weakness so obviously that it hurts.

klavieronin,
see how it works for you and tell me if you see improvement.

[brogers70]

I don't know how notorious they are, but the trills in the Bach Two Part Invention in A major have to be played beautifully to make the piece work.

[beethovenfan01]

Hello everyone,

I have been working extensively on my trill technique lately with various boring drills and would like to put those trills into practice. Are you aware of any pieces known for their notorious trills?
Preferably from the baroque or classical era

thanks in advance

How about the third movements of Beethoven's sonatas Op. 53 and Op. 109 Sonatas, and the second movement of the Op. 111 Sonata (that one involves an extended 4-5 trill!!!)? Also, the cadenza of Beethoven's Concerto Op. 37 includes a rather long threefold trill that's rather insane to play.

[j_tour]

j_tour,
I prefer penetrating my skull than going again through that Czerny. never again!

I don't blame you one bit!

Yeah, the way I've been getting at it is not the scale work, but trying to get at a different perspective by working on wrist rotation using just a small fragment of scalar passages.

Obviously, to do trills, you need to practice trills (which is nice, because IMHO it can be done away from the keyboard, in part), but sometimes it's hard for me to see the broader motions without generalizing it into a bigger class of problems.

Anyway, this is a good thread for anyone to get some good repertoire ideas, so thanks to everyone. 

It's funny the A major invention comes up -- I spent December doing pretty much every tune I know in jazz in A major (you know, Donna Lee and all those heads and stuff) so I had to come back to that one.  It's one of the nicer 2-part inventions IMHO -- kind of a bit of everything in A major, but mostly fluid scales, ornaments.

If it's just mordents and some fancier ornaments, speaking of A major, the nice Bourée from the English Ste has a bit of that.  One of the more fun keyboard bourées from Bach, IMHO -- very fun to play.

[clouseau]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!
very helpful

[fftransform]

Bach WTC Book I No. 16.  It is completely bare.

Liszt's Legende No. 1 is maybe the most brutal 'trill piece.'

The LH trills in the Regard de l'esprit de joie (at 1:30) is a very fun passage!

Some bursts of thirds trills:

Some mordants in the RH 3/4/5:

[clouseau]

thx fftransfor, i just saw your reply!

Here are also some trill pieces, which i found:

Czerny op.849 No.22 (Etudes de mecanisme)

 good for trills with both hands: Bach Invention No.15