I'm not a pianist but these videos open my eyes to the challenges every concert pianist is experiencing. I find it all fascinating. This is a wonderful channel!
Note: Left Hand playing with connection - 6:46 Right Hand Turning point 1 - 8:59 Right Hand Turning point 2 - 10:37 Right Hand Turning point 3 - 11:45 Demo - 12:16 Opening and closing of your hand - 12:34 Showing off 😉- 13:56
Having larger hands certainly has benefits. That being said, there are many ways to compensate for small hands. My teacher’s handspan was just barely over an octave, but great flexibility along with fantastic wrist and elbow technique helped her tackle giants like this piece, many Rachmaninoff Preludes, and even Saint-Saens’ 2nd Concerto. Edit: Claire Huangci has a good lecture about this topic on Tonebase. Highly recommend that video along with their other content on the channel.
@@bodogreiner1536 - Good question. I do share your sentiments that music lessons should be individual and personalized with a teacher (I assume that’s what you meant). That being said, I’ve been using Tonebase for a few weeks now, but I’ve been taking lessons privately for years. In my opinion, Tonebase works great as supplementary material. There are some fantastic lectures there from really big name pianists covering a wide range of techniques and repertoire, but I personally don’t think you can really benefit from them if you’re a complete beginner and you don’t have a teacher guiding you through the fundamentals to apply said techniques. Also, interesting that you mentioned “one size fits all.” I personally do not believe application-based music courses to be effective, but I wouldn’t lump Tonebase together with those. I’m not sure how many actually use it as a full-fledged course, but I think its best use case is for piano students or serious piano hobbyists who want to supplement their piano learning with insights from professionals and performing artists. Again, this is just my opinion. Tonebase offers free trials, so I’d encourage people to just try it out and view the lectures for themselves.
You cannot compensate having small hands. You can work around but that is not the same and trust me for someone with small hands often frustrating. There is no logical reason for only one size.
Yes you can use flexibility to substitute for hand size but it can't 100% replace it. For example in some Liszt and Rachmaninoff pieces it's basically almost impossible to play without having hands big enough. One example is the 1838 Paganini-liszt etude 6 (S.140) in Variation 6, you need to be able to reach 10th very quickly and comfortably in the left hand.
this piece is harder than saint saens 2 on a technical level. ss2 is a beginner concerto, this is among the hardest chopin etudes (THE hardest if you ask horowitz)
@@Hvranq As long as you can play an octave, you can play essentially everything in the classical repertoire, and just roll or substitute any chords that are too big
Yes, I think hand size matters for some pieces but still the size is nowhere enough important than your technique, your technique and emotion are all that matters.
13:56 loved your interpretation! I've seen some really intense performances, but seeing a calm end looks really nice too! I can also hear you playing the notes that plays like a melody with an accent wich makes it really easy to notice. We can't listen to it that much in faster performances! Congrats, hope i can play this etude with great technique and knowledge as you, which is my favorite etude from Chopin and inspired me to keep studying Piano, i cried when listened to Vladimir Ashkenazy performance cause i really want to play it!
Hi Annique! This Friday I'm playing at the Megaron Hall in Athens with my teacher and an orchestra. We play symphony no.3 by Saint-Saens. I only play the four hands part but I'm very nervous because it's my first time performing with an orchestra and in such a great place with so many people in the audience. Any tips ?
First of all - congratulations! What a great chance for you!😊 everyone deals differently with these situations and it’s completely normal to be nervous and stressed. What helps me personally is to stand in front of a mirror, close the eyes, breathe slowly and deeply 5 times, open the eyes, smile and say „You can do it!“ 😊 and whatever happens on stage - try to enjoy it! Afterwards will be enough time to think about what you are not satisfied with but during the performance just be happy that you are allowed to make music for the people who came to listen to you ❤️ have fun and don’t forget to smile!!!🍀🍀🍀🍀
@@heartofthekeys Thank you very much !!! I admire you and I would love to become a great pianist one day so having someone so talented like you give me this advice is very moving! I am very happy about this and I will do what you suggested! ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for your enlightening masterclass on one of the most beautiful Chopin études. I think it's worth pointing out, that in some ways this étude is easier to play on a piano from Chopin's own time because the width of each individual key is fractionally less wide than on modern day pianos so the overall space of a tenth was more much easier to negotiate. The action of a piano from that time was also much lighter requiring much less physical strength. I also think that pianists today, actually make this piece harder to play than it is, by playing it too fast and too loud. As soon as you increase the tempo infinitesimally, you create a raft of other physical challenges and playing it too forte throughout can easily lead to fatigue. One of the greatest recorded performances of this piece I know, is by the late English pianist Ronald Smith. He recorded all the Études, (for the third time when he was eighty and nearly blind) for Nimbus at St George's Brandon Hill in Bristol, UK. It's a little known recording but I feel so very close to what I think, (I know it's personal) where Chopin's musical intentions. Thank you again for your wonderful programme and I look forward to more, Bravo!
I've shared many of the thoughts you expressed in this comment and have played on a 1845 Pleyel identical to Chopin's piano. It is true the keys are fractionally narrower but not that much and the action is different. Although the masses being moved in the action of a key are less, the mechanism is different with the initial resistance comparable to modern piano on the first few milliseconds but then lighter action and also shallower height. I certainly would be easier to play this etude but not as much as one thinks. The argument about easier reach is erroneous, because the technique to play this etude is not by having a big hand reach. I agree however that Steinway is guilty for taking piano manufacturing in the wrong direction for a century now, with actions that have become much too hard for the sake of sound power. I listen to Ronald Smith just now and agree this is a nice interpretation of this etude. To play this etude well, it's more important to be able to keep a steady tempo than rush and slowdown then rush then slowdown all over the piece which brings attention to finger virtuosity instead of the music. Smith has a steady tempo, and brings out each note well , his interpretation is valid.
I recommend watching Paul Barton’s video on this etude. He illustrates a practical way of playing this etude without the dramatic wrist/elbow movements. The piece itself is more a study of stretching the hands at varying intervals while still playing precisely and maintaining economy of motion. While I appreciate this video, I’m not convinced the technique you’re espousing is what Chopin actually intended for this specific work.
Two quotations from Chopin himself about this Etude (rough translations) 1. 'To play this you do not need so much a big hand as a very supple hand' 2. 'Play this slowly first thing in the morning - it will do you good'.
Thank you for blowing my mind 🤯 the turning points make it soooo much easier, I wondered why my wrist was getting sore whenever I tried playing it to speed, this has opened up a whole new method for me 😊
In today's opinion, it is very unlikely that schumann's paralysis of the hand was caused by the "training device". Especially since the paralysis later spread to the whole arm, one rather assumes a focal dystonia. Lots of love anyway!
Funny you made a video about this etude, I started learning it 2 hours ago and I have small hands (1octave and one note maximum) and for now I don't have the "small hand problem" :)
Yes, I have definitely thought of my hands being too small in the past. Liszt has so many tenths, Rachmaninoff has 12ths, and my hands can barely reach a 9th. So legato octaves as occurs in Op. 25 no. 10, aka Chopin's Octave Etude, are very, very difficult for me, as I have to do this when ascending: Stretch my hand out to max length to play an octave with the 1-4 fingering Slide first finger up while articulating with the fifth finger Change to fourth finger so that I can move my fifth finger up for the next octave etc. And this when descending: Play an octave with the 1-5 fingering Slide first finger down while articulating with the fourth finger Change to fifth finger so that I can move my first finger down for the next octave etc. And of course, the fingering reversed for the left hand. And I often have to tweak Liszt and Rachmaninoff so that the tenths and twelfths are either arpeggiated if they are important, or in cases like the Liszt transcription of Beethoven's Fifth where the tenths are doubled up an octave, shrinking the left hand to octaves.
I can reach a 9th quite comfortably. My only goal in life is to just play all chopin pieces. Will it be enough? What I mean is, have you been able to tackle (even with difficulty) chopin pieces, has there been an interval you can't reach?
@@d3l_nev Yes, tenths, I can’t reach tenths at all. Chopin doesn’t have as many tenths as Liszt has, but still, there are tenths in some difficult Chopin pieces, especially in the left hand. Figuring out what to do when I encounter tenths has always been a hard thing for me to do. There are some cases where it’s sort of set in stone for me though. Those are: 1) Playing Beethoven, be it sonatas or symphony arrangements -> Because Beethoven generally doubles the tenth in a convenient spot for my right hand and because it’s generally in momentous movements where I have to do something besides arpeggiation(cause in something like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, that would just slow me down way too much), I omit the left hand tenth and put the octave in its place 2) Slow pieces by Romantic Era composers -> If it’s slow already, I don’t have to worry about slowing down the momentum too much with arpeggios, so I arpeggiate the tenths But there has been some Chopin that’s been impossible for me to play because of tenths at a fast tempo(the very reason I omit in Beethoven, but I can’t omit in Chopin), or the fact that there’s a lot of leaps and I go too far or not far enough at tempo, or the legato octaves in the Octave Etude(particularly when the octaves are a third apart, those require the reach of a tenth to do legato), or the worst of the worst for me, the sustained 3:4 polyrhythm in Fantasie Impromptu.
@@caterscarrots3407 Wow, thank you for your insight, I do reach tenths a bit stretched, but I imagine I will have still a rough time playing them, again thank you so much!!
@@d3l_nev I find the 3:4 polyrhythm of Fantasie Impromptu hard, not because the individual parts are hard or because of intervals, but because every time I try to combine the 2 hands, the polyrhythm breaks after a couple of beats. And I feel like just estimating the polyrhythm with some rubato is not sufficient for a piece where that polyrhythm occurs throughout, it has to be more exact. But I can’t sustain that polyrhythm in an exact way, my left hand constantly wants to speed up from eighth note triplets to sixteenths whenever I try to do that.
That's a fantastic version and the way you sing the inner melody is wonderful! You're a fantastic pianist, a wonderful teacher, humble and funny and that's why, I think, we love you and your universe! Thank you so much! As a former horn player who stopped playing, I bought a piano and started learning the way I learned in university. I never had a piano lesson, but I work hard, listen to your tips and it pays! I always thought this pièce was way out of my abilities, but I'm working on the two first pages and that's really fun! Thanks again and keep going this way! 😀
I am studying this etude. I have small hands but through practice and movement as you explained, i feel my extension is more comfortable. In your interpretation, I do hear as you go down on the arpeggios, two notes been accented, It sounds lovely! This way you are not making the the octaves the main sound but also part of the arpeggios as well! I don't know if I explained myself on this!
I am unfortunately, not able to reach a solid octave. If someone's hand span is less than 8 inches but more than 7 inches you are able to play octaves but with different degrees of strains depending on the hand span. My hand span is barely 7 inches with thumb and pinky stretched to almost 180 degrees. When I play an octave (I can only reach on the very front edge of the keys) the arch of my hands is almost completely gone. I'm naturally very flexible and some of my joints even over extend a bit, so to a degree I find my way around some of the Romantic repertoire. I can't play octaves in succession. Any octaves actually create great tension and greatly affect musicality because most the energy is spent trying to reach. So I will have to say, yes, hand size is a HUGE issue and piano pedagogy should pay adequate attention to it. The current key size is too wide for most people to play Jazz and most advanced repertoire comfortably. It's about time to demand a change in piano design. If anyone is interested check out this video to know more about alternative sized keyboard: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Jn9-c8n0Q3s.html
Your ideas about changing the key size and manufacturing smaller key size pianos will never work. It's just the same issue with left-handed pianos (mirrored keyboard, low keys on the right side and the highest note on the left side). They've already been built - too expensive, and no one buys. The piano and all other keyboard instruments are the most discriminating instruments, as they are discrimination left-handed people. There are far cheaper solutions for left-handed drummers, guitarists etc. Let's keep this keyboard instruments discrimination alive and give don't even give our smallest finger to the woke fraction! (Left handed keyboard instruments wouldn't work anyway as the scores would have to be rewritten anyway, with high notes and treble clef upper system and bass clef below).
@@floriankurz4169 You use both hands while playing the piano, and especially in many complex classical repertoire, the roles of the hands are more or less kinda the same. This is in contrast to, say, playing a guitar, where each hand generally have specific roles (although there do exist some techniques that are sometimes done using both hands). All in all, it doesn't really make sense to have a left-handed piano, because the hands do fundamentally really similar things - in a sense, pressing down on the keys is all you do with your hand when you play piano, whichever hand you use. Btw you seem to hold the view that left-handed people's ears work in reverse direction to right-handed people, when it's actually not the case.
@@floriankurz4169I think if just more people would get aware of this and hence the size would have been adjusted, people even with larger hands would buy it because it means more relaxation in the hands. This again leads to/can lead to "better" playing.
I would have to say I don't agree with you with some points. Big hands definitely help with this etude. They don't even need to open and close like the way you described. At some point, everybody will have to use their wrist as a complementary tool. However, people with big hands will only need to move the wrist a little bit in order to complete the tenth or eleventh easily, which help speed up the play. Basic law of physics, more movements mean less efficiency to move fast. What I agree is there are workarounds if, unfortunately, you have small hands. And you will need to spend more time training you hands to play in a different way.
The whole point of the etude is to develop technique. Not just hit the notes. If you have big hands, you’re likely not getting the benefits of the etude.
I have very large hands, and I've heard people saying that I have "pianist hands" but I stopped having lessons when I was a kid, which is the thing I regret the most in my life =/ I see people struggling to make an octave with fingers 1-5 and I can go from C4 to E5 or maybe F5
God dropped chopin out of a helicopter and gifted him with great understanding of the instrument and human hand. I believe nobody can touch chopins ass or even come close with this great gift and understanding. Great job princess keep up the good work.
25 years of practicing this Etude, giving up and coming back, your video is inspiring! I’m very much an Amateur, and the number one rule with this etude is a avoid over practising too fast … this piece has given me hand injuries on two occasions! Wish there was This advice about the hand choreography and shape 25 years ago!
This tutorial is brilliant. Very educational. I've tried many of your tips and got effective results in a short time. For years, I had put this study on the "impossible" list until I discovered that hand size doesn't matter.
Search YT for "Piano's Darkest Secret" by Lionel Yu. Indeed it would benefit millions of pianists to have narrower keyboards available. I am a male with rather small hands and would instantly buy a piano with 5.5"/Oct. keyboard. Du tust niemandem einen Gefallen, Dir am wenigsten, indem Du den absurden Standard, der sich an riesigen Händen orientiert, verteidigst. Wenn Du keine Decime greifen kannst, sind die Hände zu klein oder die Tasten zu breit. Übrigens hat Chopin ein Piano bevorzugt, das deutlich schmalere Tasten hatte als der heutige Standard.
I actually learnt to play this way. My professor insists in me playing with my whole arm and barely articulating my fingers. I even did the Hanon exercises like this. My fingers are strong, but I know that the movement of my whole body will always be stronger. This also allows me to feel the music more. Great video!
The descending is harder than ascending -esp.if you haven't figured it out . Ive been playing this etude since I was ten (way before I had the technique or knowledge) around the age of 20 a teacher told me to think of the right arm and wrist flying and never think of the individual notes .Feel the movement of the hand in every hand position . Immediately ,I was able to play it super fast .Later I wanted evenness and strength in all 5 fingers .Now thanks to this video of Angellique I will learn more !
Ehrlich gesagt glaube ich nicht, dass du die Bedeutung der Handgröße beim Klavierspielen richtig nachvollziehen kannst, eben weil du so große Hände hast. Wenn ich das richtig gesehen habe, kannst du ja recht locker eine Dezime greifen, was für eine Frau eher ungewöhnlich ist. Ich bin selbst so alt wie du und spiele fast genauso lange, wenn auch nur hobbymäßig, und kann gerade einmal knapp eine Oktave greifen. Bei langsamen Stücken ist das kein Problem, aber schnelle Oktavenläufe sind für mich absolut unmöglich zu spielen, weil ich durch den extrem flachen Winkel meiner Finger immer die angrenzenden Tasten mit erwische. Zudem führen Stücke mit vielen großgriffigen Akkorden bei mir nach wenigen Minuten zu Schmerzen, weil die flachen Winkel enorm die Sehnen belasten. Eine andere Technik und mehr Übung können da auch keine Abhilfe schaffen, weil meine Spannweite einfach zu klein ist. Für Bach, Mozart und dergleichen wäre das kein Problem - dummerweise liebe ich jedoch Liszt, Chopin und Rachmaninoff. Ein Großteil von deren Stücken wird für mich für immer unspielbar bleiben, wenn ich mir nicht irgendwann einen Steinbuhler mit schmaleren Tasten leisten kann. Diese Probleme betreffen aber tatsächlich einen enorm großen Teil aller Pianisten und das ist sogar wissenschaftlich nachgewiesen: paskpiano.org/pain-injury-and-ergonomics/
Chopin played on pianos with narrower keyboard. He composed what he thought was playable and sustainable - with the background of playing on a narrower keyboard.
"Narrowed kb" OMG! Chopin and Liszt wrote these etudes for the best pianist with great technique. Nowdays every clown plays instead of learning 10 yrs Czerny, Hanon etc. every day!. THEN you should try with Chopin etudes. Reason: If you miss 10 yrs base, then these etudes will sound very soft (like little magic talent girls playing on YT), or like chainsaw - without dynamics. Or you play 10 minutes in tempo, and you are KO. Your hands must be strong enough to dynamics, playin long program on stage. Welcome to reality ;) Bonus tip - I see some bullshits, "rotating points" etc. op 10 no1 must practice very SLOW with metronome, then rytmize, then at half(students tempo 88), then at tempo 3/4, then full (in tempo 176 ONLY ONCE). Cincerely.
@@drakestorm4691 not What i said. But the idea that you should wait 10 years to begin developing arpeggio technique with 10.1 or beginning developing 3/4/5 dexterity with 10.2 is gatekeeping absurdity.
Your audio sounded fine to me. Your interpretation is very musical, almost mellow, compared to others who approach it more bombastically. It was a fun watching your wrist and elbow at the end as you played the whole piece.
Thank you for this! I think that I finally understand what people mean when they talk about "choreography of the hands." I can just reach an octave, and you give me hope. I love the suppleness of your hands and arms when you play. It's something that I can aspire to. (And thank you for the well-done filming of your hands while you play.)
I have small hand and struggled the with the A major descent and one E major ascending just because of hand size. Even so it is playable with small hand because you have to learn how to fly betwen positions and never closing the hand too much so you can have a good blood flow in the hand. If you close too much or strech too much the hand becomes white without bood to oxigen the muscles. So for Op. 10 nº1 it's important to play in positions with arm following every finger. Also important to relax arm in 5 th finger in every accent.
The problem I am currently having with this etude is the reach between fingers 1 and 2 at the bottom of the arpeggio. Above middle C, the pattern isn't too difficult, but at the bottom, my hand can't bend to connect the first two notes of the arpeggio with finger 1 and 2. Thank you for this video - your interpretation with the accented notes was beautiful.
Thanks Annique. Another quality video. I love these analysis/interpretation videos. Look forward to the next one. One small problem with the video editing. Your main dialogue audio is panned to the left channel. I'd say about 80-90% of your voice volume is on the left. It's a bit disconcerting to listen to when watching the video, especially with headphones. It wasn't a problem with audio recorded while at the piano, though. That sounded fine. Hopefully you can fix this for the next video.
Congratulation on going through the whole video without any sexual reference! Here it is for you: "in conclusion, size doesn't matter it's all about how you use your hands"
I stopped piano lessons 50 years ago...this etude was one of the last pieces I studied. My teacher lent me a book by Alfred Cortot that had several pages of exercises for each of the etudes. My recollection is that for this etude Cortot broke up the 4 note arpeggios in every conceivable rhythmic pattern and also blocked the 4 note arpeggios in different ways (i.e., grouped 1 note followed by 3 notes; 2 notes followed by 2 notes, etc., starting on each of four notes in the arpeggio). The result was that the fingers became independent and equal. I could see that the technique was working, but that it was going to take an inordinate amount of time to get to a respectable result, so I stopped working on it. The practice technique certainly did help me to deal with other, easier music.
I'm not a piano player -- just tapping around, I did find Yiruma pieces were "too big" for my hands. Otherwise, not enough experience. The video however, is reassuring, that in my dreams at least, I may yet play the piano.
Playing octaves for me is so difficult. I can play something standalone but if there is something like a scale of octave notes, then that is difficult.
It's only my guess but Rachmnaninov never recorded any Chopin Etudes which is odd given his proficient technique and many recordings of Chopin's music but this etude would have been problematic for his monstrous big hands. Totally wild guess but i suspect he was not able to play it and it motivated him to write plenty of music where his big hands is a definite advantage.
Annique - great info, but why did you mix orchestral music into the background? - it's unnecessary, costs you time to do and distracts the listener from your voice. (Have to admit it's one of my bugbears at the moment - documentaries on TV with random music, sometimes mixed in at the same level as the narrator.)
I have huge hands (can reach a 12th easily and a 13th with some "cheating") which makes this etude a bit easier for me since I can just grip all the chords, though this defeats the purpose of the etude a bit. I struggle a lot with op. 10 no 4 though since the positions are so narrow a lot of the time!
It would be much more helpful if you could show these principles on a really difficult passages in the middle, not the first one that is almost easiest one. In the mid section bigger hands definitely helps. Even you are switching fingers on the most difficult passage, as I can see.
Playing any Chopin (or similar romantic and later era composers) is like entering a totally different world after playing mostly only Beethoven and Mozart. Things are not as linear and direct and straightforward.
Thank you! this video is very inspiring and encouraging. I tried to practise this etude before, but it's too hard and my hands are quite small. However, your video makes me want to pick this up again. Thank you very much! love you channel
Very good, and bravo to show the harmonic life of this etude. When you come back near the left hand, your fingers are not clear enough. Of course this is not comfortable ( for all of us )
Thanks. When you talk about Schuman, and at the same time you show a musles and bones picture of hands, it's an anachronism, because it's this lack of anatomic knowledge at this time wich is the cause of his erronous training.
Thank you! I've tried to start with this Etude many times, but there was always something missing. I'll be trying out your tips, hopefully I get unstuck this time :) Also, your interpretation does sound different, I feel you bring a lot more life to the piece than the "standard" interpretation does.
Big hand really good it seems. Even as having bigger hand than she has,l must go in with left hand in right so it is something with technic that l wonder
I am 2 years into learning piano, studying for Grade 6 RCM in Canada, and I'm just starting to dive deep into the body mechanics of it all. I am AMAZED at how my sound has already improved! Great video.
Good video =) A tips to avoid tention that might be helpfull for people with smaller hands or people with not quite good enough technique for this piece is to also practise it more staccato with the correct hand position and wrist movement but without opening the hand at all. This will also help with alot of Scriabin, and pieces in general that tries to make you stretch your hand like La Campanella, etc.
Das Stück kann auch noch mit anderen Fingersatzfolgen rechts gespielt werden - was es für " kleine " Hände noch weiter erleichtern kann ! Kreativität im Umgang mit Spiel-Problemen gefragt !
My hand can't play 8ves fast only 8ves slow and can't do 9th. I can play quite "fast" works like op 64 n 1 (Chopin) but I can't do moonlight sonata mov 1. What!? I'm very sad lol. I would like to play anime songs but they all have fast octaves! I do everyday exercise for enlarge my hand but with no results. Can you give me some suggestions Annique? Tnx
@@audreyaviss2913 i know I mean there are smaller pianos, but I can't buy those and it would be useless in a competition. And I'm also a male I mean how can I have the smallest hands on earth ahaha
Hello, I wanted to tell you that you have inspired me to create my channel and even if I do it with a toy piano, the intention and the desire to learn count.😊
Result? More finger activity and more tension resulting in a faster technical decline with age and more chances of injury, look at garry grafman, horowitzs student, he caught a focal dystonia, literally lost use of his right hand, horowitz himself declined a lot in technique later in life when compared to rubinstein who did these movements so not feminine, that stigma will only get you closer to injury and no where near as good as you would if you did this Btw ashkenazy got an injury related to piano and had to limit his time at the piano daily after it
Thank you so much for the important pointers, Annique! They have truly made a great difference in the way I manage the piece ... have also greatly benefitted from your video on the A flat major etude. You have been so generous and helpful ... much gratitude from a struggling amateur from Singapore! :):)
Actually the rumours say that Chopin had very small hands and instead he just developed an incredible way to move his arms and by doing that having an incredible notespan!
