ShiroKuro Yes, I know, I roll chords sometimes in contemporary pieces I play. But I still worry about a piece requires too much "stretch," and when you're rolling, you're stretching. Btw I like @keystring 's use of "sweep" too, a fluid sweep across the keys into those notes is gentle, but unless you're playing "plunk plunk" style, there's always a stretch involved to some extent.
I'm going off on a limb here and I'm going off on a tangent that may be wrong just from some clues and experiences.
(One initial thought sort of beside the point is reading about "rolled chords". If you have a large block chord where all the notes have to play at the same time but your hand is too small, then you have to roll it. The Arabesque is arpeggiated so we don't have to roll anything if I understand the term.)
Now, I'm thinking that we often learn to play music without pedal first and maybe we have the hand more "in position" to keep the fingers close by the keys. Or if we play C, Eb, G, C and back down again we put the hand into the position of that chord, each finger over the respective note - if the top note is D (C, Eb, G, C, D) you may have a big stretch from thumb to pinky. If you have to roll to the top note, you might still maintain that stretch of the whole hand. Some words I saw gives me the impression you might "stretch". I used to.
It seems that the videos by Dr. Mortensen (Cedarville) on the topic are all gone, maybe part of a paid course. They were excellent and addressed this.
You do not have to have all fingers over the notes they are going to play within a position. Therefore you can keep your hand in a smaller, more relaxed position because sweeping and various motions will transport the fingers to where they need to be. This totally changed how I perceived playing when I learned this.
I tried to find videos showing a few motions and didn't have time to find much. I often work with Woroniki's info. This is a piece I am starting to work with. He is showing one type of motion and exaggerates for demonstration. You will see that along the span of notes being played, the fingers are not over all the keys - they are transported. (Caution: I'd not try to use this video for imitating it because it's not that kind of video.)
I just saw this short, on the Arabesque 1. I don't know if he has large hands, but regardless, you see that his hands are in motion and thus transporting the outer fingers, rather than the outer fingers stretching to the notes from a more static position.
There is the added factor that since we keep the pedal down for longer periods, the fingers can touch the keys briefly and lightly, facilitating this. we don't have to hold down any notes. I'm wondering if this might help with some of the things you're being careful about.
Again, I may be way off base. 😉
