Week 2: Your First Check-in
You’ve chosen your Liszt piece. Now the adventure really begins.
This week is all about getting inside the music without worrying about perfection yet. Liszt’s music can feel grand, poetic, dramatic, intimate, or completely overwhelming, sometimes all within the same page.
For this week, we’d love for you to share:
- Early practice clips
- First impressions of your piece
- Passages you’re struggling with
- Musical moments you already love
- Questions or discoveries from practice
- How Liszt feels under your hands so far
A few ideas to focus on this week:
- Finding a comfortable starting tempo
- Practicing smaller sections instead of full run-throughs
- Looking for patterns in the texture
- Identifying one or two “problem spots”
- Finding the main melody inside thick textures
Whether you’re working on a Consolation, a transcription, a Hungarian Rhapsody, a piece from Years of Pilgrimage, or a short excerpt from a larger work, we’re excited to hear your first steps into Liszt’s world.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone is discovering this week!
119 replies
-
I've spent a bit of time organizing how I will work on the Eroica etude. I have divided it into 7 sections (A-G on the attached .pdf if anyone wants to see the score and sections.
The piece is essentially an introduction, a short series of strophes leading to an apotheosis, and a coda. My practice sections align with this general form as follows:
Practice Section A - Introduction (mm. 1-18)
Practice Section B - Strophe 1a (mm. 19-44)
Practice Section C - Strophe 1b (mm. 45-62)
Practice Section D - Strophe 2a (mm. 63-74)
Practice Section E - Strophe 2b (mm. 75-86)
Practice Section F - Strophe 3 / Apotheosis (mm. 87-102)
Practice Section G - Coda (mm. 103-end)
My goal this week is to record practice clips of each of these sections. I'm not aiming for a flawless take, just a fairly stable run through of each section to ensure security across the piece and start moving toward memorization. Below I have included my recording for section A and will update as I record the other sections.
Section A - Introduction (July 11)
In this introduction, Liszt is playing around with diminished 7th chords and their chromatic flexibility. mm. 12-18 are surprisingly tricky as 12-15 and 16-18 are just the same diminished 7th being resolved differently; in 12-15 it chromatically resolves to a D7 chord whereas in 16-18 it resolves chromatically to a B7 chord. This slight difference is actually surprisingly disorienting to get the fingers around!
Section B - Strophe 1a (July 12)
Here the theme is introduced. This section can be played using the sostenuto to sustain the march themes notes while the staccato chords are played. I am not using it here though, partly because I'm not sure I want to and partly because my sostenuto needs adjusting as a few notes are not engaging properly at the moment. The challenge here is primarily the ping ponging back and forth accurately.
Section C - Strophe 1b (July 12)
Things start to ramp up a bit here. I am still deciding just how much pedal I want to use with the strum-like chords. The thematic material shifts to the left hand and the arpeggiations in the RH are challenging to play rapidly and lightly against the LH.
Section D - Strophe 2a (July 13)
The LH continues to play the theme but now in dramatic octaves while the RH quickly switches between short flourishes and extended arpeggiations. The layering here is quite challenging. The first two arpeggios fit the hand well but the last are somewhat awkward and require care.
Section E - Strophe 2b (July 15)
This transitional section proved surprisingly tricky for me. The triplet figures were easy to misfire on and are still not 100% but they are getting much better. The chromatic descent in the low octaves as the RH jumps registers with wide, rapid rolled chords. This is actually not too bad though. Finally, the diminished 7ths that resolved to two different dominant 7th chords return but are transposed and have a slightly altered rhythm. These really proved to be the hardest part to play with consistent accuracy.
Section G - Coda (July 16)
I've skipped over the F section because it's not cooperating today for recording (it is definitely the most challenging part)! Instead, I worked on the concluding section. Here the original form of the theme comes back and then builds to a dramatic cadential 6/4 before the final arpeggios. A B7 chord is first voiced as a German 6 chord and then again as a Dominant 7th chord, continuing Liszt's chromatic playfulness right up to the end.
Section F - Apotheosis (July 17)
With week 2 of the challenge coming to and end, I did not want to leave out the F section even though it is still ''in progress'. It is the most demanding section of a demanding piece with a page of relentless chords and octave arpeggiations in both hands. I had hoped to have this a bit more tightened up but one cannot really force this type of passagework without risking strain / injury so this is just where it is at now. I can play it pretty comfortably and dramatically but my accuracy of the arpeggiations will continue to be a main goal going into week 3. Even though this is the last recording I made for this week, I have added it in alphabetically below in case one wants to listen to them in the order they occur in the piece.
-
Thank you for this challenge. I have attached a video of the final page of the Prelude which is the most challenging. My piece is the Prelude and Fugue in A minor by Bach transcribed by Liszt. I am definitely playing the Prelude and possibly the Fugue.
I have also attached a very slow video of the Prelude
-
I had intended to post a practice video illustrating my current status of Vision, but I've had a very full day, musically speaking (a 1.5-hour voice lesson, a 2-hour piano lesson, and 2-3 hours of practicing), plus rounding at the hospital in the morning and being on call all day, so you'll forgive me if I say: I just can't. Not tonight. However: I can share some insights. First of all, the beginning of the piece is harder than I had anticipated since 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)! Much of the first half of this etude is intended to train the left hand. This makes for some very awkward leaps indeed. Oh, well. The other problem are the very wide arpeggi in the right hand: I mostly get them, except for the top notes. Even for my fairly large hands, those are difficult to reach with the pinky. More wrist flexibility and forearm movement will be needed here. "La souplesse avant tout!", to quote the Master. Then the choreography of it all: one is constantly tempted to just pay attention to whichever hand is the busiest in that moment (in other words, whichever hand plays the fast arpeggio) and not remember that in the meantime, the other hand needs to get where it needs to be by the next beat. To make those alternating movements fluid and evenly "swinging" takes some work. Finally, my section of the piece ends in an octave passage; it's not particularly hard, but it needs to be brought into a Lisztian tempo, with the proper bravura sound. So, I have my work cut out for me. I hope to post a practice video next week when I'm a little less sleep deprived.
-
Does your teacher know that many (most?) pianists, including Trifonov, Lim, and Berezovsky (!!), play some of those 32nd notes with the RH? Maybe it could be discussed on the next "difficult passages" live stream if there's one before the end of this challenge 😬.
-
yes, I am sure he does, but since, believe it or not, my level of technical and artistic proficiency STILL lies and languishes several levels below that of the great artists you have mentioned, I think he wants me to derive as much strict-adherence, tough-love, old-school, what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger technical benefit from this étude (which took a lot of gentle coaxing from me to convince him to even look at and work on in my lesson in the first place since it is not, ahem, cough, a piece of music he would have chosen or considered of value for me) as possible.
-
It boggles my mind that you can take on so many challenges. Bravo!
Is your master French?
My master is French. She is my wife, though, and not my piano teacher.
Flexibility above all. That does seem like a good motto.
-
RE: the first 12 measures can be played with the right hand. They cannot (must not)!
Alexander, how lucky you are to have a teacher who is instilling in you the proper way to play. I pray daily for such a teacher to exist and come my way.
Out of the handful of Liszt Etudes that I'm signed up to eventually learn, Vision is one of them. So I have already fiddled around with it already. When you mentioned you tried to use your right hand for the left hand figuration's, I was interested since I wondered if I was not seeing the trick or convenience of doing this as well. The quarter notes of the right hand though would be why I wouldn't go down that path.
I too sometimes have to bend the rules of convention to make something seemingly impossible work for my hands but these days my obsession seems to be on first trying to be as close as possible to accuracy (of what is written). But this is Liszt and so many things are beyond comprehension sometimes.
For instance, in bar 17 and beyond, my intellectual eye sees that top eighth note in the RH and would want to hold it for the full value that it is written for. But it is probably nigh impossible. I would even probably consider a LH crossover here to do so. We'll see?
I know that this is super tedious to some. Absolutely, I understand. Most listeners would probably not care or give this the time of day of concern. I know! But I know, and that's all that matters. ;-)
And this is probably a good reason why I'm concerned that my stated goal for 2 decades (2046) is now worrying me if I will have enough time to work all the details out ;-). Ha ha.
Thank you for your updates and comments about your progress on these works. I find it all very interesting and applaud you and others for taking on these challenges.
-
RE: For instance, in bar 17 and beyond,....
Sorry, scratch this comment about using the LH at top. I misspoke here. The reason is the LH quarter note. Here, I believe you can't actually hold the RH eighth but it is possible to highlight the note.
-
😂 no, with “master”, I was referring to Liszt himself. “Souplesse Avant Tout” reportedly was his motto.
-
RE. “Souplesse Avant Tout”
-
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!
-
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.
-
well, we shall see soon enough, shan’t we? 😆
-
😂
-
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!
-
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.
-
-
-
My search says you’re right.
Chopin favored suppleness over force. -
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 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.
-