Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Appassionata 3 - explain the difficulty

I want some clarification from experienced pianists that can play the 3rd mvt. of Appassionata on these questions:

1. What exactly are (in your professional opinion) the top 3 most technically demanding moments in this mvt?
2. What exactly are (in your professional opinion) the top 3 most musically demanding moments in this mvt?
3. What technique exercises would you recommend for these difficult parts of the sonata?


Thanks!

I don't have the answers to these questions but I am planning to learn this piece also for a recital, along with the chopin C# minor scherzo no 3, Ravel's Gaspard De La Nuit and the Italian Concerto. While I don't have the answers you're looking for if you want I can give you the practice advice I skimmed from reading piano books from the library; but if you're not interested I won't bother posting it.

The questions are very hard to answer, because this is a movement that is continuously very difficult. I think specifying 3 places or even 20 would give a wrong message, because whatever places we'd mention, there would be 100 other places that are 99% as hard.

I can't help thinking that when you ask a question like this, you might be misunderstanding how hard the whole piece is. The closest I can come is to say that I think the coda (i.e. starting with the chordal section) is the 'hardest' part. But that's very debatable and it would vary with different people. And most of all, just about every millimeter of the movement is very hard. I don't think it's useful to think try to identify certain parts in your mind as being the hardest. But good luck with the piece -- and maybe other people can answer it the way you'd like.

This isn't a piece you can build technique with - you pretty much just need really strong hands with good training in quick passage work, left hand runs, awkward tremolos, and quick chords.

Overall, the biggest technical hurdle is putting all of it together - a lot of the technical demands are similar and if not right, will burn you out quickly during a performance.

I'd suggest playing around with it to see which parts are the hardest for you, and if you feel that the piece is a big jump away from your current abilities, you should look to other repertoire in the meantime.

Hello Wellspear,

After reading your other thread about the same topic, I recommend reading back what the others said, very good advice in there, and here as well in this thread.

There are no shortcuts - even if I explain to you all the difficulties I know of that work, how you need to have a good knowledge of how to use your arm/forearm weight as this piece requires lots of energy, especially if you play the repeat, etc. In fact, without proper technique and warm-up, you could even end up with an injury with such a work - and this you really do not want it to happen, believe me. When you start studying painting, you don't begin trying to reproduce Mona Lisa the first years, so same with piano playing.

For sure, I encourage you to decipher it and work on it little by little to feed your inspiration, as it is very important, but at the same time don't expect to play this piece anytime soon correctly.

Beethoven is different from other famous piano composers in that many of his pieces were not thought at the keyboard but in his head, as he often composed outside. According to historical documents, this particular movement was written while he was walking in the forest, even though he probably later "finished" his manuscript at the pianoforte. What this means is that Beethoven doesn't give a rat's behind about if the composition will end up "falling on the keys in a natural way for the hands". How the musician will later struggle to correctly play the notes he heard is often the least of his concerns. So the technical difficulties in Beethoven are quite different than those found, for example, in composers like Chopin and Liszt who mainly wrote at the keyboard. Of course, Beethoven knew everything that could be possible or impossible at the keyboard, but at the same time in these particular works what he heard always was the top priority - not the "technical aspects".

So in short, enjoy trying that great piece gradually, only after a good warm-up, and stop immediately if you feel any pain in your fingers/wrists/arms. But also, accept the fact that you won't master this piece anytime soon - it's simply not possible after only two years of piano. It's one thing to appreciate the grandeur of a masterwork, and quite another to be able to reproduce it, as you need time and lots of efforts. More importantly, concentrate also on much easier pieces, so you can achieve true satisfaction mastering easier pieces first. For example, opus 49-2 or 79 are very fun pieces to play, offer some interesting challenges and it's just as beautiful music from the master. Don't think that simpler music is not as excellent. I play piano since 35 years and I often end up enjoying easier pieces myself. Hope this will inspire you in your musical journey.

Sorry but,
What are you doing here?

Your other post

???

There are some technical difficulties sure but strictly speaking they're not bad. The thing I found the most difficult was keeping it stable and under control. It's very easy to speed up, start playing rhythm wrong, etc. You can practice slow with a metronome all day and still have trouble keeping your fingers in line. It takes a lot of discipline, and speeding it up without losing control is a very slow and painful process.

Hmmm... I do believe you contradict yourself here, trigalg.

How so? Perhaps you could call what I described a "technical difficulty", but I think of it as more of a "performance difficulty". At least for me, often times I can play sections of a piece just fine, but playing through is really hard for some reason. For Appassionata mvt.3 there's no single part that's actually hard to play for me, it's just that things fall apart when I put it together!

Correct me Wellspear, but what I understand from your other post is that:

You started piano 2 years ago, you don't know how to read notes, instead your teacher is saying the notes bit by bit to you at your 30 minute lessons.

I think that's what he's referring to.

BTW, if I were you I would skip the Appassionata and rather start with this:

1. Playing it precisely
2. Playing it accurately
3. Playing it quickly



1. Playing it period
2. Playing it well
3. Playing it with all the technical difficulties of answer to question number one



Learn easy songs, how to read music, and get there is a logical manner. Practice your technique. Study theory. Listen to a lot of classical music.

You are posting on here because you want someone to agree with this crazy idea you have that you can learn these pieces musically well even though you do not have the background, and quite frankly, don't seem to have the desire to do the work (which means all the things I said above).

That isn't going to happen. No one is going to tell you that you will play this piece well with your background. If they do, I'm sorry, but they are not telling the truth. It just doesn't happen, no matter how talented one person is. It takes a lot of hard work. This is one of THE hardest Beethoven sonatas - both musically AND technically.

If you want to play for yourself and don't care otherwise, then the answer to these questions are pointless anyway.

+1

And,I really envy your patience for the way you reply to such nonsense.

I'll cut short my post:

You can't pull it off. Let it go and go for something MUCH easier than this. It takes MANY years to reach a level when you can START studying works like the appassionata, let alone mastering it!

+ whatever number you want to put here

Actually though, that might not be true, depending on what someone means by "playing" a piece -- as many of us have said on many threads. If someone just really really wants to play a particular piece and is fine with playing it either real slow and/or without decent accuracy and/or unmusically (and let's not even talk about that thing called "interpretation"), then anybody can "study" anything.

You start out by saying that there's no real technical difficulty, but then you're having difficulty which is technical. If you're practising slowly as you say...with a metronome, etc., and things are still falling apart then the problem is a technical one... and you're not practising correctly... you're repeating the same errors but don't know how to fix them.

stores, do you think it is a bad method to practice slowly with metronome?

Let's just hope that this guy doesn't like the Hammerklavier.

No. It's a good thing. The metronome should eventually be set aside, however, slow practise should ALWAYS be the norm no matter how advanced.