How to play Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu C# Minor: analysis, tips, masterclasses Opus 66

Chopin's Fantasie (or Fantasy) Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor Opus 66 is one of the most popular pieces for grade 8 and above musicians to play. In order to play this piece effectively I have found the most suitable
masterclasses and tutorials from youtube and summarised them.

Firstly, Paul Barton gives the background, inspiration and form of  the Fantasie Impromptu, and inspiration from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Moschelles.


Paul Barton Tutorial summary

Introduction, analysis, origin and influence of the Fantasie Impromptu C#m  [0:00 to 6:12]

• The term Impromptu was first used by a musical publisher in 1817, so a Romantic period invention, and can be defined as freestyle. 
• Fantasie Impromptu is in ternary form - or A-B-A.
• Chopin didn't publish it in his lifetime
• The fantasie impromptu has a lot of similarity, therefore likely to be inspired from Moscheles' Impromptu in Eb [2:30] (similar in character and tempo, and form) and third movement of the Moonlight Sonata [3:00] (similar in key - C#m and form) with one of the same runs.

Paul Barton's Practical tips (excerpt) [6:12 to End]

• The right hand plays semiquavers against triplets in the left hand, if you have trouble fitting the notes together, Paul suggests accenting the notes that fall on the beats and the other notes will fall in place.
• Play all the notes legato, clearly and even as you can, which takes lots of slow practice and try not to overpedal.

Katsaris Masterclass
In 1992, French Pianist Katsaris, first Prize winner of the  International Cziffra Competition 1974,  gives a masterclass on the Fantasie Impromptu for Japan's NHK TV (part 1 of 4)


Katsaris Masterclass Summary Part 1: 

• Impromptu is defined as unexpected or improvised, the piece is an elaborated improvisation [and should be played as such.]
• The fast right hand melody is in two groupings of semiquavers (cut common time) so you could practice analytically and slowly the right hand melody dotted crotched (dotted 1/4 note) to build up speed.
• Mood of the piece: The piece should be played more feverish, trembling, like leaves and trees in the forest quivering and trembling. 4 notes in the right hand against 3 notes in the left hand.  Think of a whispering wind blowing. 
• Broken chords with accents: Play into the In this section, play the piano deeply (more weight) where the accented melody is especially when the thumbs play on the accent marks. Play them as chords to find the right balance with the thumb on the accent marks. Take time between the long phrases (this is demonstrated in part 2) by waiting a little bit at the end of each phrase. You can think of a bell sound effect for the accents. 

Katsaris Masterclass Part 2: 




Katsaris Masterclass Part 2 Summary: 

• Turn your hand into the direction of the accented notes, in effect adding more weight to the accented note. Practice the accented note repeating it four times. 
• Different colours in these phrases and this section - think that you are on a horse which runs in the wood, and your beautiful long hair is against the wind. So in effect a feeling of total freedom. [2:50] and at the end of this bridge, play pp pianisimo, to create a nice transition effect (perhaps a calming of the storm)

Katsaris Masterclass Part 3: 




Katsaris Masterclass Part 3 Summary: 

• When Chopin played the same piece two or more times, or a repeating section, he liked to play it in different ways. So you can try with pedal and without pedal, which creates a different colour.
• Or play a little bit slower
• Some of the colouristic emotions you encounter in this section are: lamentations - which becomes revulsion which becomes anger (end of the section), [hmm sounds a bit like the Yoda mantra!] add weight in the keyboard.
  Section B - Major Key [5:30] - Largo and Moderato Cantabile Section
• The new colour effect is a sunny spell as it's in a major key. It's a new sound world.
• Communicate the emotion but same time reserved, but it must always sing, each finger sings, think of the Bel Canto. Sing, even if it's not forte, sing.
• Listen to the sound, control the sound, use the ear to control the sound (right hand melody).
• Be aware of the tenor countermelody, [8:00] and also remember to make these sing.
• Think of a little secret, something you haven't told anyone, communicate this here.
• Bring out the following colours: Hope [9:30], delicacy and elegance.

Katsaris Masterclass Part 4: 



Katsaris Masterclass Part 4 Summary: 
Section B - Major Key [5:30] - Largo and Moderato Cantabile Section (continued)

• Colouristic effects: Abandon yourself [1:15]  
• In the pp pianisimo sections think of a 'telling your secret' motif as mentioned earlier.
• Each note must sing with phrasing, think of the bel canto, or even a violin to make the piano sing and sound more than a mere percussion instrument [5:05 - comparison with Chopin Ballade #1 in G minor]

Finale - A Section [5:40]

• When restarting the finale A section, start PP pianisimo not very fast and without much pedal. So in effect you are carrying over the mood and pianisimo effect from section B.
• Think of the leaves trembling but in the night, not loud, very light. 
• Bars 116, 117 and 118 Accent on the little finger, the upper part (right hand)
• [7:42] Tortured and Suffering [bars 119-122]
• Bars 130-137 Melancholic remembrance - phrase melody,  pianisimo and singing which dies and becomes almost nothing.

Further Resources

• Alternative versions: Final version that the most performed version of the Fantasie Impromptu in C#m is the first draft, here Artur Rubinstein plays the final version which has differences

• Video tutorials from the Arioso7 blog
• Sheet Music  (IMSLP)
• Fundamentals of Piano Practice (Chuan C Chang) Fantasie Impromptu  Practice tips (page 61-63) 

Chopin Ballade No.1 in G Minor Tips, Resources, Tutorials, and Masterclasses (how to play) Opus 23

Overview

Score (Everynote.com)

Chopin's Ballade #1 in G Minor (op.23) is a LRSM (Licentiate Royal Schools of Music), LTCL (Licentiate Trinity College of Music) level piece which is the same graded virtuoso level as Liszt's La Campanella, or equivalent to the final year recital for a Bmus degree in a specialist music convervatoire. I've found a collection of masterclasses from the Internet as well as academic resources as well as broad resources on how to approach and analyse this particular Ballade.





Before the masterclases, let's first listen to the Ballade by the great Krystian Zimmerman, winner of the 1975 Chopin Competition



Josh Wright from Utah giving suggestions for the Coda of the Chopin Ballade #1


Josh's tips - (Coda section) Presto con fuoco (fast with fire)

• Don't just focus on the technique, focus on the artistry and the artistry will help the technique.
• Voice the top hand melody and stay light
• Feel the phrasing
• Don't play too fast but focus on producing the artistic resolutions, colours,  images you want to portray.
• Keep sensitivity at the core of your practice.

Oleg Stepanov Masterclass, who studied under Lev Vlassenko at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, won the Liszt International Competition in 1956 (Stepanov has dedicated a piano competition in his memory) gives a masterclass starting off with the Chopin Ballade #1

Masterclass with Oleg Stepanov

• Chopin Foundation: How to Play Chopin's Ballades by Professor Regina Smendzianka (Chopin Foundation, USA)
• Chopin and the G Minor Ballade by David Björling, Luleå University of Technology Abstract The purpose of this work is to make a general presentation of Chopin, the age in which he lived, his G minor Ballade and selected editions of the Ballade. I will also compare five recordings of the G minor Ballade, and make a presentation and a recording of my own interpretation of the G minor Ballade. This work discusses his life up to the time the Ballade was published, Chopin’s development as a composer, and the period in his life when the Ballade was composed. Background material on the history of the Ballade as a genre and its development is included to give the reader an enhanced contextual understanding. The issue as to whether Chopin had a literary model when composing the G minor Ballade and his relationship with the Polish writer Adam Mickiewicz is discussed. This work considers the issue of form in the G minor Ballade, Chopin’s personality, how Chopin played, his use ofthe term ‘tempo rubato’, and how he used improvisation and composition.
• Chopin Ballade #1 in G Minor Opus 23 Sheet music (IMSLP) -
• Wikipedia overview of the Chopin Ballades
• Descriptive analysis of the Chopin G Minor Ballade (La Folia Online Music Review)
• Brief Music Analysis of the Ballades (ourChopin.com)
• Full text of the translated text of Konrad Wallenrod, poetry by Adam Mickiewicz, which is said to have inspired the Ballades.(Gutenburg Project)
• Frederick Scott on the Chopin Ballade in G minor (Thetutorpages)

Master Piano Technique: Pearly Sound - a lesson from Utah

Utah's Josh Wright has some great piano tutorials for advanced pianists on Youtube. For such a young pianist he is very aware of technique and getting a great sound. In this Youtube tutorial, Josh discusses Pearly sound. Josh's inspiration's for this Pearly Sound is the playing of pianist Murray Perahia.  I think this term is fairly common in North America, I don't hear this term used in the UK that often, only by my previous Canadian teacher postgraduate from the Royal Academy of Music.

 Josh defines Pearly Sound as a light, clear, beautiful, fleeting sound as opposed to a heavy and muddy sound. Josh demonstrates this concept with a Chopin nocturne, and illustrates the difference and technical approach to achieve Pearly Sound. Enjoy, practise and share!

Tamas Vasary - Masterclass - Lisztomania 2011

77 year old pianist Tamas Vasary, won the Franz Liszt competition at the age of 14 in 1948 gave a masterclass at the Lisztomania festival, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Liszt - at the Royal College of Music. I summarise his main points below.

Tamas Vasary giving a masterclass in Hungary

A good pianist requires

1. Hands
2. Head
3. Heart (most important)

Poetry - music as art therapy
The pianist as artist aims to express feelings, emotions, and the poetry of the music. Strive to find the poetry, story behind the musical notes. Your ultimate aim in music is to make your audience forget about their daily lives, their troubles. In essence, then you become a channel for messages [from the composer] to make people forget their sadness. Art you cannot teach, but what you do is you open doors to the art through insights. On artistic and emotional integrity -don't just imitate another performer; be true to how you feel with the music, also if your teacher tells you an emotional approach to piece of music and its something you don't feel, forget about the teacher!


Playing the piano as a keyboard instrument - know how your instrument works or you may loose the conceptual connection of your playing with the instrument: the piano is one of the few instruments where you don't actually see where you play (as opposed to the violin, flute) the keys basically works like a see-saw, you depress the key and the hammers strike up. He compared playing a key on a keyboard to a tennis raquet for a tennis player. Another analogy used is when you strike a piano key, it's hitting a ping pong ball without seeing where the ball goes.

General picture of Tamas Vasary lecturing

Technique
Technique vs. Expression Tamas has ajudicated throughout his lifetime on over 300 competitions. Of the attributes accuracy/precision vs emotion, poetry and expression; he clearly chooses the latter. A criticism Tamas of purely technical players who lack expression- is that they make you fall asleep. Competitors are so concerned with accuracy of the notes in competitions that they can't relax and therefore lose the expression.

• Pedalling - Horowitz was a master of it! 
• Making the piano sing - by slow attack upwards and forwards of the hand, never a sharp downward attack.
• Gestures -make your hands act out the character required - like in the example of a storm or lightning - this requires a fast attack, get the musical character gesture right (without worrying too much about accuracy initially). 
• Tension in the fingers is detrimental for playing because all the energy is directed to the fingers and not into the piano. 
• Hand position - ready position should be like a cat or lion ready to pounce onto the next note, or attack. 
• Staccato playing - it's still a melody, but separated
• On pianisimo (pp) like a whisper
• Rests - playing rests are difficult

Entendre la différence! Hear the Difference! Active Listening (Aural Masterclass 1)

Piano pedagogue Sylvia Yee recommends developing active listening. And I agree that
one should always strive to develop a finer ear, which will inevitably benefit your playing. Afteral, if you can't hear the difference in nuances, you will not be able to play the difference! So listen to the same piece performed by different pianists. And here is where active listening comes in.

For this explorative excercise, I've chosen the Beethoven Opus 13 in C Minor Pathetique Sonata - adagio cantabile performed by 3 different master pianists (Glenn Gould, Wilhelm Kempff, and Vladimir Horowitz).
You can either listen to a segment if you really want to focus on a piece (say 30 seconds) or the entire piece.


Glenn Gould

Stage 1 Listening
1) Listen generally without any preconceptions. Make notes of what you think about the music.
2) Listen to the melody line, usually in the soprano line
3) Listen to the bass
4) Compare the dynamics - loudness and softness of the piece. Also listen to crescendos and decrescendos. Does the performer build up to a climax effectively?
5) Character of the piece? What is the essential character of the piece. Is it one of playfulness or humour, or sadness and longing?

Stage II Listening

5) listen to the sensitivity or emotional content of the piece - is there a central theme to the feeling evoked in the piece?

6) What's the tempo like or pacing. Does the pianist employ rubato (ebb and flow) effectively?

7) Phrasing - listen to the musical phrases, just like musical sentences. How do they differ? Are they very legato or very short. Do the phrases connect to each other and transition to other phrases to evoke a cohesive  

story? How are they different, what is the difference?

Wilhelm Kempff

Stage III Listening

8) Colour/Color - using harmony - or different chords create color, how the pianist brings out these textures creates mood or sound colour. 

9) Context, now compare this piece to other similar pieces by the same composer or another composer. For example for Nocturnes, you could not only listen to other Chopin nocturnes, but also listen to John Field and Poulenc's nocturnes

10) Artistic license: What is the pianist doing to bring out his own unique style or playing into the music. Does it sound Glenn Gould, for instance, sound like he's playing Beethoven in the style of Bach?  

Vladimir Horowitz

Youtube's Top 5 Piano Artistes

In my piano journeys around Youtube, in search of inspiration, a performance as a starting reference to a piece I'm learning, or even merely for enjoyment. I come across, some great piano videos. The videos are quality in terms of playing, sound recording, video production and clarity and are active. So I'd like to share them with you below. They are listed in order of video upload views on Youtube. As a youtube pianist myself , I find their videos a source of inspiration and a standard to aspire to.

Valentina Lisitia (Chopin, Rachmaninov and many other composers)

http://www.youtube.com/user/ValentinaLisitsa
Video Index: her video uploads.

Video Views over 17 Million times! 

Valentina is an Ukrainian Pianist based in the US. Here's one of her early videos performing La Campanella.

Cubus (Mozart, Chopin to French  [Duvernoy] and Russian romantic period [Vladimir Rebikov*])

Video Views: 4.3 million
Video Index: http://www.youtube.com/user/cubusdk#g/u

I found Cubus' youtube channel when I was searching for the keywords "Chopin Playlist" in youtube. He plays well on his digital piano, but just Watch his luminescent hands! What a true piano artist in every sense! Enjoy.

*Who is Rebikov, I wondered....

“Rebikov was already a forgotten figure by the time of his death at age 54. He was bitter and disillusioned, convinced wrongly that composers such as Debussy, Scriabin, and Stravinsky had made their way into public prominence through stealing his ideas. Ironically Rebikov is best known by way of his insubstantial music in salon genres. Rebikov's role as an important early instigator of twentieth-century techniques deserves to be more widely recognized.” (Uncle Dave Lewis, Allmusic) [Source: Wikipedia]

Anderson & Roe Piano Duo (classical creative reinterpretations) from Star Wars, Piazolla, Saturday Night Fever.

Video Views: Over 3.2 million video views

Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/gnanderson

Bach Scholar
Video Views: 3 million
ragtime, classical, blues (Bach, Scarlatti, Scott Joplin, Czerny, and others). Also has some interesting video tutorials on how to play ragtime. It looks like he's also performed every Scott Joplin piece too!
Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/BachScholar
Video Index: http://www.youtube.com/user/BachScholar#g/u


Tzvi Erez (Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven and Bach)
Video Views: 2.5 million
Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TzviErez
Video Index: http://www.youtube.com/user/TzviErez#g/u
I found Tzvi's Erez version of the Chopin Military Polonaise as a guide for when I was learning it for the Kemble Chopin Competition. Here, however is Tzvi playing a Satie piece.




Josh Wright Piano - Advice on piano technique from memorisation, phrasing, to getting that pearly sound.
Video Index: http://www.youtube.com/user/joshwrightpiano#g/u
Video Views: 7000


Let me know if you find any other quality Youtube Piano Artistes out there!

Piano virtuosity tapas? Kaleidoskop, and what a Kaleidoscope!

Wow, I discovered this video recently performed by pianist Jennifer Lin in Monterey, California in 2004, and wasn't sure what the piece was -

It contained so many familiar elements, but seemed to change as if you were switching tv channels from one to the next,  it wasn't until pianist Jennifer Lin at the end mentions that is Josef Hofman's Kaleidoskop, which happens to be opus 40, #4, which makes sense, it's a mixture of virtuosic works and perhaps favourites of Hofman. 

If you can identify all the influences in the pieces do leave a comment!?

"Everyone can be moved" - Benjamin Zander on music and passion

US based conductor, Benjamin Zander, a student of Benjamin Britten, illustrates music and passion, how classical music is for everyone, and that everyone can be moved by classical music.  Benjamin uses an example of
Chopin's Prelude in E minor opus 28, no.4 [which starts at time index 7:00].

Andras Schiff Beethoven Sonata Lectures (podcasts)

There are some great resources on the Internet if you can find them that is. In September 2008, Andras Schiff gave lectures on each of the Beethoven Sonatas at Wigmore Hall. You can download these podcasts as MP3s, or listen to them streamed through your web browser.

 The lectures an essential resource for the grade 8 or pianist preparing for a performance diploma because they bring great insight into the character and context of each sonata, and also give ideas for interpretation and musical expression for each sonata.

These lectures are great to prove a point in interpretation, and a good starting point in your studies of Beethoven. And as a last resort, an ally if you're up against an examining board as was in my case last year. In my performance diploma exam, I contested a point made by an examiner on the Pathetique Sonata, which stated that the repeat in the first movement should go to the Allegro section (as is convention) and not to the grave (beginning section). So according to Schiff, this interpretation of repeating back to the grave gives the first movement a larger sense of scale and proportion which Schiff was inspired by the performance style of the great Rudolph Serkin (also Freddy Kempf advocates this interpretation too).



 This point is raised in Andras Schiff's lecture, which I referred to with full reference to the Guardian newspaper website.  My appeal was upheld affording me the professional dignity and confidence to write this blog today, sparing me any further condemnation of arduous repeats.