Week 2: Your First Check-in

Alexander Weymann   RE. “Souplesse Avant Tout”

Alexander Weymann  How slow do you have to play the first 12 bars to play them well without "cheating" with the RH? Too slow? I'm sure you will be able to increase the tempo eventually, but it certainly doesn't have to be fast anyway!

Doug there is a lot of right pedal to be used in this piece (Vision), in the opening section and elsewhere, so my ambition is not to hold the quarter notes with my fingers, at least not for their full value; they usually have “get out of the way” pretty quickly to yield to all the busyness of the 32th note arpeggi. I hear them as bell strokes: touch and let go. So, in that respect, I would have had no qualms playing the fast figures with my right hand - it is easier because those figures are in closer proximity to the right hand chords than to the left hand bass notes, and you avoid those treacherous, fast 5th finger to 5th finger leaps in the left hand. 

Noel Nguyen well, we shall see soon enough, shan’t we? 😆

Doug 😂

Alexander Weymann said:
well, we shall see soon enough, shan’t we? 😆

I'm afraid so. Speaking for my part, not yours😂.

Context for our readers: Alex and I will have a practice run together on Saturday, not to be recorded!

Alexander Weymann Ah, I see. I suppose Liszt came up with that when he was teaching in Paris. 

I managed to scuttle a move to France. I never have been able to teach the French their own language. Apologies to Mark Twain.

I had assumed that your master was living. 

As a friend of my used to say to her husband, a physics professor, you’re spending too much time with your dead friends. 

Doug 

Alexander Weymann 

Alexander Weymann said:
“Souplesse Avant Tout” reportedly was his motto. 

 I thought it was Chopin who said that. 

Maria My search says you’re right. 

Chopin favored suppleness over force. 

Alexander Weymann As someone also working on the piece, that claim about the Right Hand is at best debateable. It exists in the 1837 version, which, though not much different, still has its notable differences. Such as: Largo Patetico is the Tempo Marking in the 1837 edition, whereas in the 1852 edition (which I assume is the one you're learning) it is Lento. A great deal of time spent studying Tempo Markings has shown that Largo is almost always slower than Lento (as a further example of such changes between editions, in the very first version of the etudes that Liszt wrote when he was 15, Paysage was an Allegro. An Allegro!) There are not a great deal of changes notes-wise between the 1837 and the 1852 in this instance, which makes the omission of the note to play left-hand alone even more striking. Furthermore, while I think it is quite impressive to be able to do the passage hands alone, I do not find the inherent difference between the two great enough to enforce playing it left hand alone. If Liszt truly thought that it was a necessary aspect of the piece, then it wouldn't have taken much to write "m.d. tacet" a second time. This is similar to saying that you must learn the C-Section that Schubert himself discarded if you want to learn his first Klavierstucke d. 946.

I did not get the impression that Alexander Weymann is saying there is a right or wrong way to play this opening - just that his teacher has advised he play it a specific way for his specific development (Alexander can correct me if I am wrong).

As has been mentioned, it is commonly understood that there are multiple ways to approach playing these pieces. In fact, the idea is that you transcend the technical barriers of the instrument; how you do this is left pretty open by Liszt on purpose.

Dustin Anderson Oh, I agree completely. My point was more about how Alex's teacher had said that left-hand alone was the only way to play that passage, something which I very much disagree with and find unsupported by the text. It irritates me when a teacher says, "This is the only way to do such-and-such" with no solid proof, and so I felt a need to point that out. 

Alexander Weymann said:
my piano teacher disabused me of the notion that some of the 32nd note figures in the first 12 measures can be played with the right hand. They cannot (must not)!

 Thurmond R you misunderstood. It is my fault since I tend to phrase things rather pointedly.  Dustin Anderson correctly read my comment as intending to say that my teacher wanted ME to play the fast arpeggi with the left hand, for the purpose of developing my technique, since I am using this piece as a study and am not preparing it for a concert performance. Noel Nguyen already listed several great pianists who play these figures at least partly with their right hand, very much settling the matter. 

Maria in fact, my last piano teacher did also claim that it was Chopin who said that, and I contradicted him - now I see that he might have been right, after all. I think I heard the quote attributed to Liszt either by one of his biographers or, possibly, by Heinrich Neuhaus whose book I carried around like a bible when I was a teenager and read countless times. In this day and age, it would be a matter of seconds to verify whether “The Art of Piano Playing” attributes this quote to Liszt, but it matters not; the principle expressed in it was very much valued, as historical evidence amply shows, by both Liszt and Chopin. 

Alexander Weymann Well, I think Neuhaus got it wrong, and Karol Mikuli, one of Chopin’s students, wrote it in his notes but I am trying to find you a source in French. 

Perhaps my French wife can find it for me.

I think Chopin’s compositions, lessons, and playing embody the motto and Liszt’s do not.

Larry K really? What about La legierezza, Au bord d’une source, Les jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, Feux follets, Ricordanza, La campanella, Waldesrauschen, Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude… plenty of suppleness needed, nay: demanded for these and countless other pieces by Liszt, I would posit. 

Alexander Weymann Liszt went in for gymnastics and power, the complete opposite of Chopin. 

I still haven’t recovered from the migraine Liszt gave me after attending a recital of the Transcendental Etudes back in my 20s.

I haven’t heard most of the pieces you mentioned but I detest La Campanella, in all of its pomposity.

Did Liszt change later in life? Perhaps, but most of his compositions don’t attract me. It’s strange that Liszt revered Chopin and so opposed his way of playing. 

I know this isn’t what you want to hear, sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I feel pretty much the same about Paganini and I spent a decade studying the violin.

I listen to music for the emotions it evokes. I find Liszt lacking in a way that I do not find Chopin lacking. 

And here is a reference from a book translated from the French of notes from Chopin’s students,

“General suppleness ‘Have the body supple right to the tips of the toes,’ [Chopin used to say]. 31 Franchomme/ Picquet/ Anonymous, 32 p. 39 Suppleness was his great object. He repeated, without ceasing, during the lessons: ‘easily, easily’ [facilement, facilement]. Stiffness exasperated him. Dubois/ Niecks, II, p. 182 On beginning a lesson, Chopin’s main concern was to do away with every stiffness and convulsive or cramped movement of the hand, in order to obtain the primary requisite of good playing: souplesse [suppleness] and with it independence of the fingers.Mikuli, p. 3”

— Chopin: Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by his Pupils by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger”