Chopin Polonaise in A-flat major Op. 53

Ornstein

I relearned some Chopin pieces. This time I realized how legato-intensive this piece is and had a better grasp on the dotted rhythms. I also had the opportunity to practice on the piano beforehand which helped. Some parts still need work obviously.

Thanks for listening!

BartK

Oh, I love the Heroic Polonaise! Has been on my wish list forever.

Great performance!

ShiroKuro

Ornstein that was great! Thanks for sharing it!

You mention practicing on the piano beforehand, so was this a recital? I notice an apple monitor in the background, so perhaps not a recital, did you just reserve a studio to record in?

Ornstein

BartK Thanks, I appreciate it a lot! I highly recommend the Herrman Scholtz edition on IMSLP if you decide to learn it. I'm still adapting to a lot of the fingering changes but I can't praise it enough. Even his trill/mordent fingerings I think are the best out there.

ShiroKuro Thank you! Yes just reserved a studio to record in. At first I could not handle this piano's action at all (82g key downweight vs the commonly cited 52 g standard concert weight) but have steadily gotten better each visit. What I tell myself (jk of course) is that if I can master this specific piano, I'll sound like Argerich on a lighter concert grand.

Peyton

Wow!!! Pretty awesome.

KevinM

Fantastic.

ShiroKuro

Ornstein Yes just reserved a studio to record in.

Cool!

At first I could not handle this piano's action at all (82g key downweight vs the commonly cited 52 g standard concert weight)

Oh wow, that's crazy!! Why is it so haavy?? What kind of piano is it?

Jane

Wow! Very impressive!

Sometimes I can keep my mouth shut. I hope you'll forgive me if this isn't one of them. My comments are meant as constructive, and I'll never be able to play that piece the way you do.

It sounds rushed to me, Ornstein. The octaves particularly, but the piece overall... almost like an etude.

Your timing is 6:31. Your octaves vary, but my tap-along app says about 103.

For comparison, Garrick Ohlsson's recording is 7:00 and he takes the octaves at 98.

Arthur Rubinstein's 1964 Moscow recording is 6:41, and the octaves at 95. (His younger recordings are at 98 in 1950, and 110 (look at mee!) in his 1934 recording.)

The the two Cortot recordings I have are 6:46 and 6:28, with octaves at 100 and 95 respectively.

Paderewski's 1937/8 recording is 7:29 with octaves at 87.

Jose Iturbi (don't laugh! I first heard the Polonaise from an Iturbi recording I listened to in the 50s) is 6:38 with octaves at 95.

Josef Lhevinne is speedy, as one would expect, at 6:08 with octaves at 112. But his don't sound rushed.

Sofronitzky's 1951 recording is 7:03 with octaves at 99.

Aside from one person's sense that your playing feels rushed, the octave section seems as if you jump on it at full volume from the first note. I prefer to hear the octaves start a bit softer (even a little mysterious) and then build.
And even though it isn't "program music" per se, "something" happens in that little break of chords in the middle between the two sets of the octaves. Again, just my preference but I like a little breath of some sort there.

As my tag line says, "expert on nothing with opinions on everything."

Ornstein

Peyton KevinM Thanks guys, I appreciate it a lot!

ShiroKuro I know the studio works mainly with musicians in other genres; my observation is outside of classical and jazz (choiral/church, rock, pop, hiphop), they prefer a stiffer action.

Jane I think we're in agreement. To me the runtime is viable interpretation-wise, since we agree that Lhevinne's isn't rushed. In my case it is rushed due to inaccuracies with some of the dotted rhythms and lack of stability in the tempo.

For instance Bar 29/0:55 I realized afterward playback I did not get right. The legato fingerings in the Scholtz edition are what Horowitz/many at the Chopin competition use, but to me it's very hard to get used to. I was literally not taught any of this, I still have many years of ignorance and unwitting bad habits to undo, so you're gonna have to grade me on a pretty steep curve, Jane.

The octaves do have to be sotto voce, yep you're right there. It gets too tight for sure; I had an insight here that this is difficulty is actually the right hand. Some of those spots I need to hash out and the tension spills over into the left hand. The RH here needs to be legato and phrased with appropriate fingering, and have that pulse, so this is all very new to me. I really feel someone like Ben Laude or Dennis Zdanov, or Aaron Petit, they should do a very very updated and sweeping discussion of editions, for everything. Chopin, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Mozart, Hadyn.

This 'hand tension spillover' I realized was also true of 0:15 where I scraped through the RH 4ths. I've actually corrected that by switching the left hand chromatic scale fingering from 4-3-2-1-3-2-1 (from the Scholtz edition) instead of 2-1-2-1-3-2-1 (my intuitive fingering). This was very mindblowing, I thought 'there's no way this actually matters'... but the purpose of it is to actually unify the overall motion between both hands, and that's what let me fix it a few days ... AFTER the recording... it's so evil how these epiphanies only happen after you try to record or play.

So yes, absolutely don't feel you ever need to soften anything (or anyone else reading this), I'm in total agreement with your critiques and I will work on them.

twocats

Ornstein that's a very impressive technical achievement, especially with a heavy action (don't give yourself carpal tunnel)! I would love to hear a lot more sweetness in the melodic sections, they are over so quickly but I think they need some more freedom and time 🙂

Jane

Ornstein it's so evil how these epiphanies only happen after you try to record or play.

That's maybe a wee bit harsh...LOL...
When I was learning yoga, I found photos (we didn't call them "selfies" back then!) were very instructive in the learning process.
In playing piano, listening to one's recording (sometimes a few days later) can be very educational.

As for Chopin editions, most of the Kool Kids seem to have switched to Ekier (AKA The National Edition), especially those playing in the Chopin competitions. Considering the different versions of the same pieces that Chopin sold to different publishers in his lifetime, the Ekier is probably as close to urtext as one can come.

While you can download some of the Ekier scores from imslp, it's worth buying the actual volumes (available from Amazon) because they each include a pamphlet of performance and source commentary. (Cover pic below).

Strictly for Chopin fingering suggestions, I've found it worth consulting multiple editions. I've found some good ideas in Joseffy's (including some hand redistributions) and Paderewski's editions; rarely from Mikuli. Cortot is interesting but I rarely use his fingerings.

There's been more scholarship on Chopin and ornaments in the past few decades. For the trills, such as in bar 33, where there's an E-flat grace note followed by an E-flat trill, many people now interpret that as meaning the trill BEGINS on E-flat, rather than beginning on the auxiliary note (which is considered correct for various trills in Chopin and is descended from Baroque practices).
In the aforementioned Ekier commentary, they say, "on no account should this note be re-played" (although one does hear it that way in some recordings as well as in yours). (Highlighter emphasis added by me.)

And I'm not qualified to be grading anyone, Ornstein. 😱 (That doesn't stop my babbling, obviously....)

Ornstein

twocats Thanks, I still need to think and experiment around. I discovered some good things with the left hand and think I played the accent markings building up to the theme return with some nuance, but there's still something to be desired.

Jane That's an amazing reference, I just tried playing the trill as in that excerpt and right away it feels like it has more flow. I also play the trill longer than shown there, so to not have to play that extra repetition should make these parts sound less constricted/cramped.

I'll try to track down a pdf of the full commentary but if not I will buy a copy as I've been tinkering with the op 44 and op 22 polonaises. I do see several Scholtz fingerings listed as acceptable for some of the other polonaises, by Ekier, so that's a good sign. It's funny as my mindset was to accept total deconstruction and scrutinize everything, but that way of playing the trill has been ingrained in me for a long time. So that was a blindspot you've uncovered for me and I cannot thank you enough Jane.

It is funny how these editions work. I thought Karol Mikuli was the key Chopin student, I have to at least look up his editions. But like ten pieces in a row, his scores had zero fingering markings or commentary or notes. Another one is Vladimir Sofronitsky, I saw he had edited some Ravel pieces, I saw Claude Debussy made editions of Chopin's but again there's just no markings or comments or advice or anything.

They're under no obligation and can do minimalist urtext approach if they want, but I think it is a huge loss. I know Ekier is the textual accuracy standard but the fingerings I had of him or the Chopin institute were very sparse. Perhaps reasonably, his assumption was the teacher would fill in the blanks... which is not a safe assumption for students outside of conservatory. So I really admire the editors like Godowsky, Arthur Friedheim (sadly only edited the Chopin etudes and no more), and Herrman Scholtz (Hans von Bulow student) who tried to give as much knowledge and understanding through their editions as possible.

pianoloverus

Ornstein So yes, absolutely don't feel you ever need to soften anything (or anyone else reading this),....

I think once the introduction is finished, the tempo could be steadier.

Ornstein

I responded to you back on Pianoworld as well, I think you may have skimmed this part of the thread:

I think we're in agreement. To me the runtime is viable interpretation-wise, since we agree that Lhevinne's isn't rushed. In my case it is rushed due to inaccuracies with some of the dotted rhythms and lack of stability in the tempo.

Hope that is a satisfactory reply!

Jane

Ornstein They're under no obligation and can do minimalist urtext approach if they want, but I think it is a huge loss. I know Ekier is the textual accuracy standard but the fingerings I had of him or the Chopin institute were very sparse.

I think there can be somewhat of a difference in attitude between an urtext-focused edition and a "performing edition". Many of the late 19th Century editions of Chopin and others have "Revised and Edited By..." markings. Why should I want some clown revising Chopin??? 😭

Then there are editors like Debussy, who was notoriously loath to print fingerings.

In sum, the absence of fingering is an excellent exercise: it suppresses the spirit of perversity that compels us to abandon the fingering of the composer and vindicates those words of eternal wisdom, ‘If you want something done well, do it yourself’.
Let us find our own fingerings!

https://blog.henle.de/en/2012/05/14/debussy-to-finger-or-not-to-finger%E2%80%A6-why-we-are-adding-fingering-in-the-%E2%80%9Cetudes%E2%80%9D/

Ekier prints fingerings when there are originals available in Chopin's hand, and occasionally adds a few others. He also occasionally suggests hand redistributions.

Trills in Chopin are often a question for me - when do they follow the Baroque paradigm and begin on the auxiliary note?

And if you haven't explored the rabbit hole of hairpins in Chopin and other Romantic period music, check out the late Seymour Bernstein's book if you can find a used copy at a reasonable price (or possibly from https://manducamusic.com/)

https://books.google.com/books/about/Chopin.html?id=lrw3AQAAIAAJ

And Roberto Poli, who also addresses how dotted notations from that era should be played as discussed in this thread:
https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3636287/all/have-you-been-making-this-rhythmical-error-in-many-chopin.html

and in this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Musical-Notation-Interpretive/dp/1574671847

And more arguments about hairpins here: https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3624073/hairpins-misunderstood-played-wrongly.html#Post3624073

It sounds as you and I both also consult various editions for fingering suggestions. I include Palmer's editions for Alfred in those that I'll look to for ideas.

If you're not familiar with it, you might want to check Rami Bar-Niv's treatise on fingerings.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Piano-Fingering-Traditional-Innovative/dp/1479285277

There are a few gems to be found here: https://pianotricks.net/

Ray Alston has some interesting ideas, but he explicitly insists that his scores should only be used in conjunction with a more conventional edition. https://pianopracticaleditions.com/

You're obviously very dedicated to practicing. You may find some of these resources useful, if you're not already using them.