VIDEO: Chopin Polonaise in G sharp minor B.6

[nastassja]

Hi everybody,

For the purpose of a specific exercise, I have recorded this Polonaise without repeats.
Any comments/advice would be welcome!
Thank you 

[quantum]

Well done.  You have got the overall shape of the piece. 

There is a lot of florid passagework in this Polonaise, however it is good to remind the listener that they are listening to a dance form.  It can be a challenge with so much fast passages going on and dance rhythm can get buried in it, but when there is a hint of the polonaise rhythm, try to bring that out. 

Those cadences at the end of sections are so characteristic of the Polonaise, try to shape them more.  There is so much stuff in the music that is far from dance sounding, so it is nice to at least feel like you have returned to the dance at the end of a section.  Chopin may not have intended this to be used as dance music, but IMO it should be reflective of its origins - similar to what Bach did with his dance suites.

Where you have RH single note melodies, bring them out more over the LH accompaniment.  They are a large contrast to the fast passage work. 

For repeated notes, try to articulate the fingers more on the note.  On a vertical piano, the keys need to return almost to rest position so that the action can reset and play another iteration of the note.  On a grand action, you are able to play a note again without needing the key to fully return, thus shorter finger movements are possible.

Think of the overall rhythm when doing the fast passages, it will help shape those passages and give them more direction. 

[thirtytwo2020]

Very nice!

Without knowing this piece very well, my spontaneous thought is that I would like you more often keep to a strict rhythm (I suppose this is what kind of what quantum is saying as well)

The strong, proud polonaise character somehow gets lost otherwise. Maybe it could help if you made sure to start off in a tempo that you can really keep up during the rest of the piece. Now you are playing the first few bars quite a lot faster than the rest.