10 years ago by
A Pianist
I to play #3 with excessive tension! It suits the character of the music! I lock my hand into a claw-like shape and then use those hard, statue-like bones to make an obsessive, machine-like half-staccato. Much of my arm is also stiff, to keep a sense of tension in the repetitions.
However, to get a sense of how to do this in a well-organized way, begin by just shaking your hand as loosely as possible - in the rhythm of that accompaniment figure. Shake everything out.
Then continuing to shake, press your five fingertips together. Notice what changes, which parts of your mechanism get firmer and which ones continue to stay loose. Try to play the chords like this, stiffening the parts that need to be firm while allowing the rest to continue to move.
For the opening chords of #5, begin by playing the chords with the highest possible metacarpal-phalangeal arch. Stiffen your hand totally as it holds one of these chords while moving your arm up and down slowly and freely. Make the basic differentiation: moveability in the arm, immobility in the fingers and hand. This gives you a clear sense of your hand's healthy, standing arch structure attached to an arm that's still functional.
Next, play the chord with your hand in that state, hold the keys for a second and then vigorously draw your fingertips together while you whip them upwards off the keys. Now your hand's arch has become moveable without losing any of its vitality. This is what will give you the biting sarcasm these chords need - you need to be, in a way, "artistically brutal!"
Have fun with that!
AFF
