Oh my gosh, such a WONDERFUL analysis!! I've never heard someone speak so funny and lovingly and passionately about a piece. You are one of a kind!😃 I'm just an amateur pianist, and not a good one, but I can tell you, I might take a chance. If you genuinely love the piece, and it resonates deeply with you, and you just keep being persistent, everything is possible. Years ago, when asking my teacher to help me with Fantaisie-Impromptu, she laughed and told me to just leave it to the pros. I ignored her (secretly of course) and kept practicing, and I'm quite satisfied with the progress. Maybe it's not even perfection and mastering being the goal, but the interaction with the piece, and becoming friends with its difficulties. The magic of this music won't leave you standing alone. :)
Tears come from my eyes during the performance of this piece. The melody of this piece is in the middle register, as if it is Chopin surrounded by a dark cloud of notes. The part that builds up to the first climax is so dramatic and emotional. I feel that it is one of the most beautiful moments in climax building that Chopin ever wrote. The coda is also extremely fascinating in how it plays with major and minor keys.
SO WONDERFUL AS ALWAYS!!!!! Thank you for my favourite Chopin's Prelude known as "Desperacja" in an excellent rendition and for your analysis/tutorial, this great video will be helpful for many pianists, lately we all Polish people are waiting for The International Chopin Competition, as every day my best regards, have a nice weekend. Joanna
Just visit you by chance. You are an extremely talented teacher and pianist! Never heard such great analyses of Chopin works in such a symphatic and convincing way! Keep on your fantastic work.
This prelude is unique and is definitely one of my favorite pieces. You played it beautifully and did a great job explaining and analyzing it. I started playing this prelude about a month ago and can play both hands individually slowly.The difficulty for me started with reading the right hand notes as you have to be extremely careful with the accidentals (# and b). Further difficulty is that the left hand becomes more complicated as the piece becomes more intense. I will certainly practice the piece for a long time until I can play it as freely and musically as you do. I will certainly watch this video many times. Thank you for this great video! 🙏😊
I sincerely respect you as the one of the greatest teachers of mine and thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and talent. I am sight reading this piece and yes, I find myself frowning while I play because of the ‘deep pain’ of the sound.
A marvelous presentation. I’m just beginning to learn this piece; I’ve always wanted to play it. I learned very many things from this video and the passion you bring to the exposition and performance. Maybe in a year I’ll be able to play it, but in the meantime I know I will return many times to this video. Thank you!
I like your points about the melody intervals of a second. If you think about vocal music, this is also true. One normally doesn't hear as many larger intervals jumps in music that is sung. So true to Chopin, even in his complexities, there is a voice that needs to be heard.
great analysis of this epic prelude i wish you had 1 minute to talk about the last 4 chords, one of my favourite parts of it, they sound so well picked for this ending
What a masterpiece! Thanks for bringing the left and right hands' story into this, this is an important perspective that can be only highlighted by a pianist (normally not by musicologists or composers), and this fact is organically closer to Chopin's way of composition, I believe. This piece could easily be an etude and I suspect that one of the few reasons he didn't put it among his etudes, is perhaps its position in a performing repertoire and its non-etude mindset, purpose, or conscience. Because from what I've read, Etudes at that time were still less performing repertoire in public than other forms. There is a question that doesn't leave my mind regarding this piece and the story behind it, and I'm curious to know your perspective. I've read in Franz Liszt's book on Chopin that this Prelude was composed during an incident in Majorca, when there was a wild storm and Chopin was by himself at home, worrying to death about George Sand who had long gone hiking and was terribly late in the night. He was scared to death and even imagined losing her in that condition. I gather that he must have had his extreme moments with this devastating agony, intense imagination, and hyper anxiety in that experience. So the situation that he composed this piece under the emotional blade of losing his beloved. Now, you mentioned that this piece had been composed much earlier and it was his finishing touch in Majorca. Are we sure of that? Or if not, what possibilities are discussible? I know that not all of Liszt's descriptions and comments are accurate, but in this particular one, all the other aspects that you also covered such as the emotional, structural, and mood make sense to Liszt's timeline. The content and theme are very much a life and death philosophy and the emotional loud cries and encountering a loss and it makes sense with Liszt's story, as he also adds that Chopin played this piece to George Sand frequently, perhaps a sign of the serious feeling of agony over losing her which of course she didn't appreciate as much as she should have at the time. I am aware that a clear answer might be impossible, but I am eager to know how much of a possibility you see in this timeline for the birth of this piece, rather than an earlier attempt that you mentioned in the video? Finally.... isn't this in the same mood and cosmos as Etude Op.10, no. 9? 😊 I would imagine this a Preludic sister of that stormy Etude, also very precious to me!
any advice for memorizing the inner voices of the piece? I can see the theory with the melody and left hand but the inner voices confuse me and I cant seem to find a consistent pattern for them all, thanks.
do you think this prelude is kind of the opposite of the first one? they have the same figuration of right hand with a melody and an "accompaniment' or less important notes and the left hand with arpeggiated chords. but this prelude is painful and dramatic and the other one is anxiously optimistic. also the left hand goes up in the first prelude, kind of pulling the piece forward and this one is the opposite.
Thanks for a great analysis, Greg! I am debating if I want to learn this prelude now, or later. I am almost finished learning Prelude No 19, and need a new challenge. :)
