Ballade no.4, thoughts and tips greatly appreciated!

[goldenyeti220]

[jamienc]

Bravo, young lady! I think you have done a wonderful job of presenting this extremely difficult and beloved work of Chopin for us! This is one of his most difficult and mature works and I think you handled it beautifully. The fact that you have tackled this piece at such a young age means that it will only grow to be more refined and personal to you as you grow older. Unfortunately, I have waited a long time to perform this piece at the ripe old age of 48, and I wish I had started earlier! And actually, you have inspired me to bring this piece back up to performance standards so I can play it again!

Firstly, I want to commend you on your handling of the coda. I think it is marvelous how controlled and accurate you were with the last few pages of this difficult piece. You took time to ensure that all of the notes and the voices were heard in a way that made the coda much more enjoyable for me as the listener. Don’t mind the fact that it was slower than most other performers take it, because it is not all about speed! I very much enjoyed this portion of the performance due to the fact that I could “”hear” everything Chopin had written. Excellent job making this coda extremely successful!

If I were to provide any kind of feedback with regards to the rest of the piece, it would only be with regards to the amount of rubato that is applied to pretty much every phrase that is performed up until the Coda. Please take this advice as that from simply one person who has lived with Chopin for quite some time and prefers some things over others based upon the types of interpretations you may find online from some of the great pianists. And of course, please discuss anything I might say with your instructor and strategize the way you might perform it in the future. I certainly do not want to give any advice against what your instructor has already provided especially if they are working with you in a way that produces the results that are evident in this video. However, I must say that I was very much distracted by the micro-rubato that was evident all the way throughout the piece to the extent that I became almost expectant of the fact that it would occur.

Chopin is very much known for the use of rubato to create an expressive lifting or relaxation of phrases that brings the listener to a point of musical importance. This happens so much in the performance in the first five or six minutes that it becomes a distraction. In my opinion, I think that the more “straight” that this piece is played in the beginning is much more effective than trying to be overly expressive with the rubato applied to the melody and the harmonic changes. I myself try to play this piece very much accurate with regards to tempo and rubato and only use it sparingly in places where there are obvious signs of expressive musical affect. I certainly don’t mean to imply that you should play it as if you were following a metronome, but if you could reduce the amount of tempo fluctuations by about 70% of the time you use it in this performance, it would be a marvelous and effective performance.

Again, discuss this with your instructor and see if you can use much more sparing application of rubato, and continue to do the wonderful work you have done with this piece!

[goldenyeti220]

Bravo, young lady! I think you have done a wonderful job of presenting this extremely difficult and beloved work of Chopin for us! This is one of his most difficult and mature works and I think you handled it beautifully. The fact that you have tackled this piece at such a young age means that it will only grow to be more refined and personal to you as you grow older. Unfortunately, I have waited a long time to perform this piece at the ripe old age of 48, and I wish I had started earlier! And actually, you have inspired me to bring this piece back up to performance standards so I can play it again!

Firstly, I want to commend you on your handling of the coda. I think it is marvelous how controlled and accurate you were with the last few pages of this difficult piece. You took time to ensure that all of the notes and the voices were heard in a way that made the coda much more enjoyable for me as the listener. Don’t mind the fact that it was slower than most other performers take it, because it is not all about speed! I very much enjoyed this portion of the performance due to the fact that I could “”hear” everything Chopin had written. Excellent job making this coda extremely successful!

If I were to provide any kind of feedback with regards to the rest of the piece, it would only be with regards to the amount of rubato that is applied to pretty much every phrase that is performed up until the Coda. Please take this advice as that from simply one person who has lived with Chopin for quite some time and prefers some things over others based upon the types of interpretations you may find online from some of the great pianists. And of course, please discuss anything I might say with your instructor and strategize the way you might perform it in the future. I certainly do not want to give any advice against what your instructor has already provided especially if they are working with you in a way that produces the results that are evident in this video. However, I must say that I was very much distracted by the micro-rubato that was evident all the way throughout the piece to the extent that I became almost expectant of the fact that it would occur.

Chopin is very much known for the use of rubato to create an expressive lifting or relaxation of phrases that brings the listener to a point of musical importance. This happens so much in the performance in the first five or six minutes that it becomes a distraction. In my opinion, I think that the more “straight” that this piece is played in the beginning is much more effective than trying to be overly expressive with the rubato applied to the melody and the harmonic changes. I myself try to play this piece very much accurate with regards to tempo and rubato and only use it sparingly in places where there are obvious signs of expressive musical affect. I certainly don’t mean to imply that you should play it as if you were following a metronome, but if you could reduce the amount of tempo fluctuations by about 70% of the time you use it in this performance, it would be a marvelous and effective performance.

Again, discuss this with your instructor and see if you can use much more sparing application of rubato, and continue to do the wonderful work you have done with this piece!

Thanks you for your feedback!

Due to issues with my parents I learned this entire piece on my own (and hence do not have an instructor, apart from some teachers at school who provided some feedback). Watching my own recording I do agree that there was too much rubato in places, and especially in the first theme I could have had better control over my dynamic range, although it could have been partially due to nerves (I had a brief memory lapse near the beginning) - a teacher who was watching my performance later said that my excessively dramatic interpretation of the A section ultimately made the entire piece seem a little, in a word, “anticlimactic”, and overshadowed the more emotionally intense aspects towards the end of the piece.

I have started working on speeding up the coda a little without sacrificing its overall musicality (which  has proven quite difficult to do considering that my piano at home blurs everything with even the slightest application of  pedal, in addition to the keys being ridiculously heavy).

[essence]

Very well played. You will spend the rest of your life digesting this wonderful music.

The first few bars are very difficult to get right. You need to establish a tempo, allow it to flow, and make the octave G's appear as if coming from a dark pool!

one tip my teacher taught me at one time - in the main melody, with repeated notes, keep the key pressed down a little, so the repeats merge into a longing. These repeated notes occur throughout - controlling them and making them like a legato human voice is difficult.

Legato is always the key in Chopin.

Around 9:00, the fast notes are still the melody. Don;t rush them, it is not a technical exercise.

Actually, another advice. Go away from the piano, and sing the top line all the way through. Maybe you can do it with your recording as a background. See how you breathe and what seems natural. Imagine yourself pleading to an absent lover.

Play through bar lines. Never slow down to emphasise the next note - you would never do that when singing.

The performance which has lived with me for 60 years is this one