Chopin's Nocturne F#major, Op. 15, No. 2

Hello. This is my first post. I'm basically a self-taught pianist, 55 years old, who has recently re-discovered the joy of immersing himself in the piano. Because I'm mostly self-taught, my technique is a mish-mash of things I've observed from other pianists, things I've heard with my ears and tried to assimilate into my hands, things I've read, and far too few lessons from competent teachers. I'm rather self-conscious about my technique or lack thereof, and have tried to compensate in various ways, some of which are moderately successful, and some of which are disastrous. Even with my self-teaching, I've progressed rather far into the repertoire, and I can handle most Chopin Nocturnes with relative ease (for me, anyway). Representative repertoire: I play Rachmaninoff, principally the Preludes and Etudes-Tableaux; Chopin's Nocturnes along with the Op. 61 Polonaise-Fantasie, the C#m Scherzo, the Gm Ballade; Scriabin Preludes and Etudes, along with his Sonata No. 5, Bach's WTC, early Beethoven sonatas along with Op. 110, Mozart sonatas, etc. Right now, I'm working on Ravel's Ondine, Rachmaninoff Son. #2, Chopin's Fm Ballade (no. 4), Scriabin's Son. #4, and York Bowen's Toccata. I'm told I have a fine tone and good melodic sense, and that my playing evokes emotions in my listeners. I perform in public as a church musician, jazz pianist, and occasional recitalist (is that the right word??), and I actively seek opportunities to perform in public, believing as I do that the anticipation of public performance will encourage me to improve my playing, expand my repertoire, and enhance my overall musicianship. (Needless to say, I suffer from stage fright, but I've never abandoned a "gig" because of that alone. I've tried to make the stage fright an incentive to improving my technique, hoping that as I become more competent and self-assured about my technical abilities, the fright will lessen. However, that's not the reason for this post.) I recently purchased Prof. Fraser's Craft of Piano Playing and I'm slowly working my way through the early pages. I must confess to some initial confusion, but I hope that will clear up as I progress. I've run into one thorny technical problem in m. 51 of Chopin's F# nocturne, Op. 15. No. 2 that is not improving. The problem exists in the right hand, in the execution of the descending chromatic broken sixths, a quasi-tremolo (?). As near as I can tell, a breakdown occurs when I attempt to place the second finger on the black key--I lose pulse and my hand feels as though it's locking up and is unable to continue. I've attempted to resolve the problem by slowly down dramatically, but as I said I lose pulse and the resulting drastic decrease in speed is insipid, to say the least! Slow practice has helped somewhat, but is not a cure-all. I know the notes I'm supposed to play, so it's not a question of "learning" them better. My hand simply seems incapable of performing this particular movement! As I said, as near as I can tell, the breakdown is between the thumb and forefinger. An aside: For a long time, I was terrified of this type of fioritura-like quick passage in Chopin--my hands seemed slow, heavy and clumsy, incapable of leggiero legato playing. I've managed to begin (emphasis here!!) to overcome this, but it's been slow and very (psychologically) painful for me, as though my hands were my worst enemy intent on thwarting my attempts at musicality. Of late, I've been able to approach a "musical execution" of a similar passage in m. 52 of Chopin's Db Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 2., although I still tend to freeze up in the measure and even the beat before I must execute this famous passage. The psychological freeze up occurs first, then my hands duly follow my mind and freeze up as well. I'm not sure how much of this is a pure self-imposed psychological impediment (because I'm convinced my technique is inadequate), and how much results from the inadequate technique itself. I've been trying to separate the psychological and physical components for years, with little success. I'm struggling here for words to give a precise explanation of exactly what happens to me, but perhaps the foregoing will suffice for now. Regardless, the problem in the F# nocturne persists, successfully resisting my best attempts to overcome it. Any help, insight, advice, encouragement, instruction, would be gratefully accepted and appreciated. Thanks in advance for your valuable time and advice. I'd also be interested in hearing from other pianists on this particular topic.

Dear Alan, Welcome to the forum, it's nice to have a namesake on board (although at 2 years younger than you, I suppose it is I who is YOUR namesake)! The repertoire you're playing is all really top notch stuff and difficult, my hat's off to you for tackling it. Sorry to create confusion for you in my book; you might try skipping to chapter 10, I believe - the first chapter of the second section that begins to take a practical look at legato. Also the film presents a lot of the material that I believe will help you, without a lot of the "confusing" background rationale... The problem you describe is not psychological but physical. It is not your belief about any shortcomings in your technique, but the fact that they exist! But don't worry, you have achieved a tremendous amount and should not feel discouraged. It's just that I prefer to deal with real problems instead of psychological ones... The thrust of my film and book is to learn to stand well on a finger. This is probably the missing link for you. Most of the time you have gotten by extremely well without ever completely solving the problem, but often it is some seemingly insignificant little passage that uncovers a pianist's Achilles heel. Your 2nd finger is most likely somewhat collapsed when your finger/hand seizes up on you, the 'seizure' being caused by some other part of your hand exerting effort to help the flaccid 2nd. When you learn to place your hand in such a position that your 2nd can work like a fully operational, free-moving lever, with the other fingers and especially the thumb 'falling away' under it, you'll have gone a long way towards solving the problem... I believe a lot of stagefright is caused by an unacknowledged lack of technical security. I see it all the time, someone who says he or she has a problem with stagefright, and then when I see how insecure the hand is, I feel like, gee, I'd be scared too if I had to go out and play with no better technical preparation! But our training has gone so far in the direction of blanket relaxation that we don't even see the technical lack... So, get to work to improve your hand's arch structure and see if your stage fright begins to melt away... Thanks for your post! AFF

Besides a deficient arch, I bet this could also be caused by messed up rythm. In the copy of the score I have, this passage shows as 9 notes, arranged into a triplet of triplets, within a one beat. Try this: just play the first note of each "nested triplet" and try to fit them inside the beat. Then add the remaining notes, but play the notes you played before much louder, so that you can hear them kind of form their own melody within the beat. Then remove the accents.

This brings up a really great point. Many times I have found that a lack of pulse is the underlying cause of a perceived "technical" problem. Often it's as simple as, 'fix the rhythm and the physical problem goes away!'

Thank you, thank you, for the input and ideas. After I read Alan Fraser's reply on Saturday, I spent some time at the piano in very slow practice, looking very carefully at my structure, or lack thereof. I did notice a collapsing, though not totally collapsed, metacarpal ridge every time I went to the second finger. My initial response to this was to consciously raise the arch each time I went to the second finger, then allowing the wrist to fall when I went back to the thumb notes. This helps, but was not totally satisfactory. Whether there's more I need to do, rather than simply install all of this in muscle memory, is still being played out, pardon the obvious pun. Thanks also for the ideas on rhythm; my score also shows nine notes within one beat, and this is also what Konrad Wolff suggests in his chapter on Chopin in "Masters of the Keyboard." Nonetheless, it's easy to lose the rhythm when one is anxious about hitting the correct notes, so that's something else to examine carefully. So much to do, so little time. It's taken me 55 years to come this far, a few more weeks won't kill me. Thanks again. What a great forum, lots of useful ideas. AEB

Great that this helped. Further: there are a number of ways you could raise the arch. One is to put the hand in a position where the arch is higher, then let your 2nd fall into the key as a free lever dropping from the arched joint. Another is to make a conscious action in your 2nd finger that generates arch creation. One more thing: if you are lowering your wrist to return to the thumb notes, are you then playing on the flat of your thumb or on its tip, more or less on the nail? If the former, this might also be contributing to the problem, and if you stand up on your thumb tip as you play it instead of dropping the whole structure so far, it might to a long way in helping your 2nd finger arrive at and maintain its arch... In any case, slowly, gently: explore the finer sensations of these subtle adjustments; don't force your hand into any of these positions but try to sense the mechanical advantage in each of them (you'll feel a mechanical advantage when you feel you have power but this is derived from bone structure not muscular binding. The sense of movement becomes easy, smooth and light but not wimpy). AFF