Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 #2 fingering

I'm liable to get too much information on this, but I'm at wits end. I've been playing this for an embarrassingly long time, well over a year, and longer if I count when I've previously played it. I have confidence in every section but measure #52 the "delicatiss." (which I believe is short for "delicatissen" right? ). I have practiced it extremely slow countless times. I have followed Cortot's exercise suggestion over and over. And in the end it's still hit and miss. And of course, since I mess it up at least 50% of the time, the anxiety starts at measure #50 which is probably most the problem right there. (Got meds?)

I've recently been playing it on a different piano than usual (an upright with lighter and faster action to it) and I thought at first that helped a lot..... until it didn't.

Other than the anxiety, I think my main problem with this is how the "3-2" fingers have to rapidly change position, sometimes drastically so.

Anyway, just wondering what other people have done to work on this. I'm not sure I'm willing to entertain different fingering than the 5-1-3-2, 5-1-3-2, etc that I see in most editions and which I've mostly been using. I tried a different one but that just led to new problems. But I'm open to suggestion.

I haven't seen the Cortot edition of the Nocturnes but I can imagine, from his edition of the Etudes, that he gives you more exercises than you have time to work on.

The only suggestion I have towards mastering this passage is to practice sections of it in rhythms, to practice in groups, to practice in "bursts" all with rests in between and lengthening each group as your facility increases. Break the passage into both "logical" and "illogical" sections

I have four editions of the Nocturnes with no delicatessen in sight - not even a whiff of garlic or pepperoni - but two of them including Henle's Urtext, have the passage marked con forza. That's somewhat removed from your delicatiss. What edition are you using?

Regards,

My gosh you're right. I have Cortot, Paderewski and Wiener/Schott. Only the latter has it marked 'delicatiss.'

Just to be sure we're talking about the same measure - Cortot calls it the "small note passage". Con forza is marked 5 measures later (and con anima is 2 measures after).

This is interesting! Wiener claims itself to be very accurate based on a reading of multiple editions, teaching copies, and the manuscript. Here's what they say in their notes about measures 45 - 52:

"Chopin made changes to the dynamics in all the extant teaching copies: in bar 45 he deleted the diminuendo hairpin, replacing it with 'cresc', at the beginning of bar 46 he add ff and fff, at the beginning of bar 50 pp, and in bar 52 he replaced con forza in one copy with the abbreviation 'del' (delicatissimo) and 'dol' (dolce). On the strength of the consistent evidence the present edition adopts these changes in the main text, using ff (instead of fff) and delicatissimo (instead of dolce)." (My emphasis)

Only in Austria, right? But that was quite a change from "con forza" to "delicatissimo" ...no?

ANYWAY...God help me if I had to play this con forza. I like your suggestion of making illogical sections. I presume that's to cut off too much overthinking, and to help focus. I'll try that. And I do have a "bad" habit of trying to run through the whole thing rather than do small sections in bursts like you suggest. I need to curb myself more I guess.

Oh, and no, this time Cortot isn't giving 100 exercises for one measure like he does. Just one - doing 5-1.5-1,5-1, 5-1,5-1, 3-2, 3-2, 3-2, 3-2, 3-2, through the run.

This is my very favorite Chopin Nocturne. The G. Henle Verlag Urtext Edition calls for ....... con forza which is how I play it. It takes a long time to learn this passage but once you are able to it is amazing. The hand's muscle memory will take over and allow you to play it with ease eventually. It takes a lot of separate right hand only practice.

The most useful help on difficult passages for me is insisting to myself the fact they are not impossible!

Best wishes to you on this.

Steve

I dare not ask you how long, because I'm sure I've been practicing it for longer. Can I borrow your Bosendorfer? Maybe that will help. It's my favorite Nocturne too. And that rumbling in the night you might be hearing is Chopin rolling in is grave each time I play it.

One of the things that makes practicing this passage easy (?!?) - well, relatively speaking - the fioritura (right hand) can be evenly played as four notes against one note in the left hand. At least there is no trying to divide an uneven number of notes in the right hand against an even number in the left, as Chopin so often does in his fioritura. In the end, of course, it shouldn't sound mechanically even.

Regards,

Yeah.... that's one small grace. But it's not the conjoining of hands that I have a problem with. It's just the right hand. And keeping it up to speed, but that's another story.

I was just trying out some of your advice. I think it is helpful. Doing the illogical sections and the short bursts. I need to cut it down more. But either way, I find that I can practice that passage first and then go right into playing the whole piece and I can usually manage it. But quite often if I don't practice that section ahead of time it often falls apart. I think I must build up some confidence by practicing it moments before I play it. But maybe that's no surprise really.

I can't tell you exactly how long but I played it in my senior year college recital that May so I probably started with it the prior September. I had a great instructor at the time. I didn't get the Bösendorfer until ten years later when I moved to Europe for a two year expatriate assignment that ended up lasting twelve years! I bought it new in Germany where they let me rent it for two years and then applied all the rent toward's it's purchase!

BruceD has a great point above. Since it is 48 / 12 = 4. Make sure to when playing the 2nd half of measure 52 that both D's line up exactly. All of a sudden things will click and you will be fine...

I think the best way to build up speed in the right hand is to keep practicing the right hand separately over and over and over, especially in the first half of measure 52 around where the c is played 4 times in-between the other notes.

All the best / Steve

yes it's that first half that's the main problem

Get your right hand into a rocking motion may help!

I may revisit this Nocturne this summer, since it's one of my favourites. I just hope that I'll follow my own suggestions when I arrive at working on measure 52.

Regards,

I use 5-1-2-1, 5-1-3-1, or 5-2-3-2. Basically, I keep the same finger on the lowest note, not switching as indicated in the score.

Anyway, besides that, it's good to practice in rhythms as BruceD mentioned. Do in groups of 3 notes, and start at different notes.

The most difficult part is the transition from end of measure 51 to measure 52. If you can get through this smoothly, the rest is just a breeze. Focus on the right hand, don't worry too much about which note on the right hand to go with which note on the left hand.

I normally play with my wrist quite low, even lower than the key surface. But when I play a fast single-note passage like this, I keep my wrist high and let the fingers walk over the keys.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

Steve: rocking my hand does help. But it's that twisting I'm needing to do for the "3-2" notes that is the problem. Also, with this fingering, my "2" finger can get a little stuck on the white notes between the black, particularly when I get to the "G". It's difficult to back out enough to avoid that.

It's mainly the third and fourth quartlet (?) and the sixth - the twist you have to do from doing Gflt-G and then F-Gflt with the 2-3 twisting to do that. Also another smaller twist from the E-F to the Eflt-E with the 2-3. Those are my trouble spots.

Bruce- stay in touch! I'm sure I'll still be working on measure 52 through the summer.

Liszt - ok your advice is the challenge - whether to redo all the fingering. As I mentioned i've tried other fingering. But I've just tried all of yours, and a polite no thank you at least on first impression. If you can manage these more power to you, but it puts me way off balance. Using the thumb on each "fourth" note of the groups of four (are they called quartlets?) gives me time to reposition the 2 and 3 fingers

The one alternate fingering that makes the most sense (but I can't find which edition I saw it in) puts a 2 finger on the Gflt and the Eflt when you first play them (instead of the thumb-1). That gets the thumb out of the traffic jam. But as you suggest, it's tricky to change fingering in midstream.

In my copies:

The Granz edition (Brussels, London, Leipzig), edited by O. Keller and L. Wilmet, puts 2 on the G-flat and E-flat (first time), as does Henle, fingered by Hans-Martin Leopold.

The Novello edition edited by Frank Merrick and the Peters Edition edited and fingered by Hermann Scholtz put the thumb on the G-flat and E-flat, first time.

Regards,

Ah, I feel your pain. I decided to learn that Nocturne last year, and the rest of it was straightforward and took less than a week, but I was practicing that wretched bar for over a month before it reached an acceptable level. And when I say acceptable, I mean one that I could reasonably get away with in a performance; certainly not one that I'm really satisfied with or that sounds anything like that produced by a top pianist. The difficulty is exactly as you describe in the thread, it's purely the RH that's problematic, not combining the, and it's the changing positions of 3-2 that are the issue.

I can't really give you any great solution that you haven't tried already or that hasn't been offered by the posters in the thread. I would suggest two things that helped me, though:-

1. Identify specifically where the problem is. I noticed that, after a few days practice, it was reasonably secure until the thumb on the Eb near the halfway point, and the reason it broke down there is because my hand position was not right. Noticing that and practice with the hand further in helped considerably.

2. More slow and systematic practice than you would normally give something. I have terrible practice habits that I wouldn't recommend to anyone, and the amount of slow practice I generally do is woefully inadequate. To force myself to do more this time, I read the story about how Liszt played the Chopin Op.25 No.2 Etude with the RH in octaves at a concert. He played just the first bar slowly, and then repeatedly, over and over, with a slight increase in tempo, until it was at full speed, and then proceed to play the whole thing at full speed in octaves. Liszt could do it in one sitting; us mere mortals need a month or more to do something vastly easier, but the principle is the same: even Liszt practiced things slowly at first, and would only speed up after he was entirely secure at a slower tempo.

One thing that was a big help for me was forbidding myself from playing any of the rest of the piece at all, until I had made some major improvement in that measure (plus the preceding measure).

I used extremely slow and consciously relaxed practice, in different rhythms and groupings, to woodshed it. Lo and behold, under these conditions, a surprising amount of progress happened pretty quickly. I'm convinced that completely setting aside the rest of the piece for a time was a key factor, although I'm not sure why it made such a difference.

karvala - Maybe we should start a Measure 52 support group. Consider yourself lucky! When the thumb is on Eb, that's more than halfway, at least of that more difficult, first part of the run. That does become an odd stretch there. Again my main problem is early, when the 3-2 fingers have to keep changing position drastically forcing a twisting of the hand. When I can manage to twist it less, I improve, but it's not consistent. I do practice slow. I'm a veritble human slow motion movie! As for Liszt, pffffft.

wr - I once read that Richter did something like that, although not specifically to difficult passages. He would start at the beginning of a piece and wouldn't progress until he felt he understood X number of measures. I find that sort of thing tortuous. I have spent much time playing just the measure, but at some point I just have to "reward" myself and play the whole piece again, or at least a longer passage, if for no other reason than to see how much progress I've made. I think the biggest help of isolating a passage, as you suggest, is that it builds up confidence. One big problem is that when I play the piece through I find myself tensing up when I get near measure 52. I'm doing that less and less.

Thank you both!

Heinrich Neuhaus wrote that he once heard Richter (his student then) practice the same four bars of Prokofiev repeatedly without stopping for two hours, until he was satisfied with it. It reminds of a comment Einstein once made: it wasn't that he was smarter than other people, it was that he stayed with problems for longer without giving up. I guess sheer tenacity and perseverance are needed even when you're a certifiable genius. I don't have the discipline for it, though. I like to enjoy myself too much!

I guess that makes me about 1/4 as good as Richter. A half hour on one passage is about my limit.

Ah, I knew which measure this was going to be just from the topic thread. No doubt the trickiest measure in the whole nocturne. I think the "normal" fingering is probably optimal. I usually practice in different groups of 4. Easier said than done, but I think the key is to keep your entire arm light and mobile throughout the entire passage.