Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner just how challenging is chopin's polonaise?

and i mean THE polonaise (in a-flat major "heroic"). are there any particular technical difficulties that it poses? i can play listz's prelude from the 12 transcendental etudes (if that says anything about my abilities), and am currently studying his a-flat major impromptu (#1).

yes, i want to learn another a-flat major piece and am prospecting the polonaise. so if anyone plays it (or has played it), would i be taking on more than i can handle?

i've read some info on this piece on wikipedia, and it reads "this piece requires extreme virtuosity to play.."... extreme virtuosity is partly the reason i'm a bit skeptical. (it's also a major piece, compared to an impromptu or a nocturne)

I've never played it myself, but it would appear to require a lot of power and stamina. There's a lot of power needed in those passages, and to keep it up over the entire duration of the piece could be tough. Plus there's lots of octaves and large hand stretches throughout the piece.

The toughest part, to me, looks like the middle section with the perpetual octaves in the left hand. The scale runs might also pose a bit of a problem.

Again, I haven't played it myself, so I can't speak from experience, but it appears to be on the tough side, but not impossible. I don't know how far I'd trust wikipedia as far as technical advice on a piano piece - it's better suited to general info, not specialized technical information on how hard a piece is. Besides, "extreme virtuosity" is a relative term. It takes "extreme virtuosity" to play the Heroic Polonaise, Mendelssohn's g-minor piano concerto, Ravel's Gaspard, and Rachmaninoff's concerti - yet these are all vastly different pieces and are different leagues from one another.

I'd say go for it - it sounds like you've got some experience playing difficult works. If you put your mind to it, you should be able to master the Polonaise.

I would say it is more difficult than the 2 works you mentioned, but I should think you could manage it - the left hand octaves just need to be kept controlled BUT relaxed, I have worked on this piece before and while I was probably playing it on the slower side of tempos, I don't think it took 'extreme virtuosity' to play

I think it depends on what is difficult for you. If you find octave playing to be a real challenge, you might want to start off with a piece that has a lot of octaves that are slightly easier to learn to give you practice in this area before you go on. But if that is not a problem- and I really don't see how it could be becasue once you 'get' octaves you never have problems with them agian- then you should be able to play this piece very well.

The middle section should be tense and high-pulsed and I found that difficult to achieve with my poor octave technique so put the piece to a rest for a while. Otherwise I say the rest is managable.

The real difficulty with the l.h. octaves is playing them 'pp' and evenly. I think it's supposed to sound like distant cavalry growing ever closer, a canter that breaks into a gallop at the modulation to D# major. The switch from anticlockwise to clockwise motion when the pattern moves down a semitone is quite tricky. As long as the tempo isn't needlessly fast, it's not too much of a problem compared with the rest of the piece which does demand stamina, power and some big stretches as 8ude suggests above. I can manage the octave section on its own, but the rest of the piece is exhausting!

No, the octaves are the easier bits of the song, you just need quite some stamina, and you have to learn to relax your hand, stiffened hands in chopin means disaster. I know because i have played it before, and relaxed hands is the key, the middle bit is actually the easiest bit.
This song requires quite some skill to play well, the notes itself are already difficult, let alont the musicality.

and to think horowitz continued to perform this piece with such energy in the dawn years of his life.

I've played the piece in public several times. It's great fun, and audiences love it even if you can't play like Rubinstein. My strongest recollection of these performances is nearly complete fatigue by the time I got to the end. There are many awkward hand positions and strenuous stretches, and they take their toll.

I recall special trouble dealing with the middle LH octaves until I tried a practice trick that worked: play the simple RH melodic line with unusual force, and practice the LH octaves at a consistent pianissimo. This reminded me what the audience was supposed to hear most and helped keep my forearms relaxed in the part of the piece where they were most likely to freeze up. Once you get that section securely under your fingers, the other challenges in the piece (and there are quite a handful) seem much more manageable.

Good luck -- the hard work you'll have to invest to get this one ready is definitely worth the time and effort!

Like the Rhapsody In Blue, this piece always gives me a kick to play it - guaranteed. I've played it for forty years and I love it as much now as when I was a kid.

Whatever you do or do not do in the way of physical technique, it has to be played with real passion or it is dead in the water. The little delicate bit is beautiful and, I feel, ought not to be rushed, as many great players seem inclined to do.

It pays to take the time to work out your own best individual fingering for the right hand fourths in the opening.

The F sharp Polonaise is the best and hardest polonaise ever written by Chopin, they say.

THE polonaise??? op 53?

op 44 and THE polonaise-fantaisie deserve some respect!

Even a little faster, it still doesn't look that bad. I've only played about half of it, so I can't comment on it as a whole, but I think the half I played covered the major themes (everything up to and including the LH octaves). I just never desired to finish the piece (it was right about the time I chose Liszt's HR No 2 instead). I will go back to it someday, though, because it is fun to play.

I think you meant 'twilight'....

in the movie "shine", david's father refers to it simply as "polonaise" as the young prodigy sits at the upright piano during a competition at the beginning of the movie.

surely you can't argue with a movie!

I say LEARN IT! It is an absolute show stopper and anyone that performs on the piano professionally or only for friends and family should have it in their back pocket on the ready to perform.
I use it as an encore piece and it always gets a standing ovation. It is a wonderful piece that shows one's emotional and technical abilities as well as your endurance and passion. GO FOR IT.

F#moll op.44, my favorite.

I started back on this one after a year hiatus from the piano. It is extremely difficult especially at the end, or actually the last three pages for that matter.

Re: The Heroic Polonaise... I can't say too much about it because I've never looked at it myself. My teacher played it in concerts a few times along with other big works. His comments were that he was extremely exhausted afterwards, and the toughest part is really the middle where you have to fight the tempo and the dynamics so much.

John

However heaven-storming and "heroic" the Op. 53 Polonaise may (should? - or should not?) be, I feel that performances that forget the elegance associated with the original dance form are missing something. That "something" can be attained by slowing down the tempo; the Op 53 is so often played too fast, in my opinion. And while there are ff's marked in the score, I find that performances that go only for speed, bravura and force are off the mark.

I could say the same thing about the A major "Military" Polotnaise, the Op. 40 No 1, another Polonaise that sometimes suffers from similar "attacks" by pianists.

Just my $.02 (CDN!)

Regards,

Ab is harder than f#m.

But f#m is a fantastic piece and easily my favorite of the polonaises.