Chopin Evolutionary Etude

How can I gain speed with my left hand? I would say my right hand is a lot faster than my left.

Generally the best way to build up speed is to work on very small units, which I like to think of as the minimal gestures out of which a passage is made. For the opening take a group of four notes and play it at full speed with a sense of the gesture or basic impulse. Then you realize that the basic shape is sequenced once and then repeated across two octaves leading to a rumbling over a dominant pedal. So just focus on the sequence within an octave and try to get the right feel for that group. Then once you get to the accompanying passages again just think of it as a C minor arpeggio with an added note and then work on the gesture within each octave. So play the notes CGCD and then C G C D E flat G C D E flat and so on. The chromatic passage that transitions from the first statement to the repeat was used by Beethoven in the Emperor Concerto. It is really just chromatic major seconds. The passage with the syncopated right hand leading up to to the cadence into B flat major is pretty tricky. Chopin uses the exact same figuration in the second theme of the first movement of the second piano sonata so this could be useful preparatory work. It helps to think of groups of three notes, so D B flat and C flat is one group and then the B flat octave is another group. The middle section is just arpeggios with a leading tone so work on say F double sharp G sharp B and D sharp and then the next combo. Then there are scales prefaced by a falling leap. Also practice these passages slowly with varying dynamics and articulation. The dynamic shaping of the passage is written in the score so work on getting the right shading so that it sounds like a meaningful musical utterance rather than fast sixteenth notes. I think it is better to approach this in terms of the than the speed because that is what the left hand accompaniment really is. It produces a very different sort of gesture from the right hand. The right hand is more declamatory while the left hand swarms and whooshes and occasionally like in the B flat major 6 4 chord, adds a counter melody. I hope this is helpful. Fraser does have a section about the left hand passage in the opening of the etude in his book Honing the Pianistic Self Image.

The main barrier to playing the left hand at speed is the constant tendency for there to be collapse between thumb and forefinger. The problem is, you have to avoid collapse not by creating a secure structure but by moving your fingers, especially your 2nd, like the dickens. AFF