Chopin 10/12 - strict legato, or whole hand jumps with pedals?

[asanoth]

Hello,
I am a hobbyist, playing just for my own pleasure. Some 5 years ago, I learned Chopin's Etude op.10 no. 12. Not really as well as I would like to, but listenable (if that is a word).
In recent years, I had quite long breaks, either not playing at all for many months when being abroad, or, after that, focusing on other things and playing just here and there for fun with very little practice.
I started playing more this spring, and would like to bring this piece to life, as it really fell apart. I was trying to find better ways to practice it, and came upon this video (I actually came upon it via 10/3, which I am trying to learn) by Greg Niemczuk:

He actually advises quite an opposite approach than to what I would have thought:
- do not play legato, play in groups in fixed hand positions, while the last note of the group is stacatto and you move your whole hand into the next position (e.g. the main run you play C-G-C. D-E-G-C. D-E-D. C-G-E-D. C-G|-C-G-C.)
- use a lot of pedal to connect the notes in both left and right hand
- do not practice slow for too long, as in slow practice you will do hand movements (like strict legato) that you will not do when playing fast
I quote: "I promise you all concert pianists are playing it this way".

While I would expect:
- focus on legato, connect all notes especially in the left hand as much as possible
- do not use nearly any pedal, just maybe half pedal to keep the bass notes going
- practice slow, than also slow, and after that slow again, with rythmical changes etc.

What do you think? Niemczuk's approach seems way easier, and I am a hobbyist, playing only home, so easy is good, but I also started learning this in order to improve my left hand technique.
My aim with this piece is a good articulation and musicality, not necessarily the top concert speed.

Thank you.

[jeffreybloomer]

Great video! This is helping immensely! I've been playing for a long while, but I plateaued years ago, coupled with life events that didn't allow me to practice for years, as well as some teachers whose behavior towards me made me not want to pursue my music degree. And it's only recently that I found my childhood passion for music again. I recently finished Chopin's op 64 no 2 in C# minor. And it feels great to finish a piece after such a long time.

[dizzyfingers]

Pianists practice pieces in ways that are not indicated by the composer's expression indications.  Chopin wrote "legatissimo" but I presume most pianists practice it staccato much of the time - - I know I do.  I agree it's all about hand positions.  Jumps are ok.  To try to connect those large distances between notes with a finger stretch is rather naive - - the kind of attitude I had when I was a young student, when I assumed Chopin's music was as ordered and clear cut as Mozart's.

I would practice it without pedal while learning and then introduce the pedal carefully and intentionally - for example to handle jumps. Etc.

[jonslaughter]

I don't know but I find this to be one of the easier pieces for some reason. I play the run legato for whatever reason just naturally picked up the intro. I personally would say play it legato. The accents are what is important. I don't know, I can't say much except when someone says stuff like "I promise you all concert pianists are playing it this way" you should be weary of such over generalizations. Usually people that do such things are lacking in the awareness department.

In any case, I would basically agree with your statement. I always practice things as slow as possible because it builds a solid foundation. I always practice to a metronome. I find that helps a lot. It seems to organize the brain in some way.


Ultimately you just need to figure it out yourself. That is the best way. You play it how you think you want it to sound, not how others tell you. These things are not set in stone and it isn't a life and death thing. If you want to play it completely different you have every right as a human to do so. You get to decide how much effort and how "accurate" you want to play it. You also get to decide how you approach learning it.

I think if you approach learning things like this you will find it much better than trying to look for others telling you how. I used to watch a lot of videos when I was learning guitar. I likely watched over a 1000 guitar instructional videos. The fact is they are all useless. Not completely useless but they will never actually teach you *how* to play. They are just showing you things. Once you know how to play you can do those things they do too. Once you understand music(theory) things will just make sense. It's sorta like reading. Do you want to sort of have mommy read to you at night and you try to sound out things while she holds her hand or do you want to read like an adult? I'm not saying this as an insult but simply saying that when you go to others for "insight" you are somewhat defeating yourself. Yes, we all do this at the start when we have no clue. It's like training wheels on a bike. But at some point you learn that you can have a lot more fun when you take them off. You do scrape your knee's and hurt yourself but you learn from it.

What I've noticed in my own playing is that when I "learned" a piece and then forgotten it after not playing it for a few years I realized I didn't really learn it like I thought. Why? because there are some pieces I haven't played for 5 years and for some reason I can play them without issue right off the bat. I couldn't even tell you the chords in some without reflecting on it.  In any case what I found is that the issues are parts where I didn't understand that well for never solidified and relied on "momentum" or "freshness" to carry me through.

So my guess is that if you just work through it and get over the initial "hump" of having to relearn it what will happen is most of it will come back quite naturally and you'll be left with a few "pot holes" or bars that you might not be able to recall but it will be much easier to learn them once you have relearned the easiest parts you have down.

But basically you have to figure out how to do it. It will be different for you than anyone else. My suggestion is not to worry about playing it through correctly. Play what you can remember the best, skip or fudge or whatever the parts you forgot, and build it up progressively by filling in the "pot holes". If you go bar to bar to bar and start struggling with something because you can't remember the "tricky fingering" or whatever then work it out, play it slow, or whatever until you get it, but do it after you already filled in all the easy stuff your brain can recall. Make sure you run through it a bit. you have to "grease the wheels". You have to set up your brain to recall it. If you expect just to play it perfect right off the bat then you are setting yourself up for failure and frustration.

What you should find is that there will be easy parts and hard parts. Play the easy parts. Likely it should be pretty easy. Play it. Your brain should be "warming up" then go through the entire piece slowly enough. If you have to skip over things because you are just completely brain dead on it then just skip it. The next day or two you should likely start feeling like it's coming back. In a week you should feel like you are going to be able to get it up and running fairly quickly.

I can't tell you how many times I've "relearned" a piece thinking I completely forgot it only to have it come back to life after a few days even with just a few minutes of work on it. Sometimes I might just spend 10 minutes a day for a week on a piece I'm trying to work back up. By the end of the week I'm basically ready to play through it. I might need to be able to spot fix a few bars. I might have learned something wrong and realize I need to work it up differently but sometimes it amazes me how deeply buried things can be and then come back out. It's convinced me that we actually never forget anything. It's just a matter of *learning* to recall it... and that is something that needs practice too. When you go to these guys for help and "advice" you are subverting that process.

Remember, the great pianists of the past didn't have YT to slow them down. They had to figure it out all on their own.

[essence]

I heard Fou Tsong play it once in a concert with both hands.

To be clear, I mean he played the LH part with alternating left and right hands.

As you say, everybody is different.