18. Prelude in B Minor

That word assai doesn't seem much like an Italian word. Why not molto. Is it French? It's about as inelegant as any word from a Teutonic language. Anyway, Chopin's Prelude in B Minor is to be played very slowly, and I guess if this is the case, it indicates that the piece is to be played with the utmost grace and fluidity. And pathos. Apart from the left-hand melody, repetition characterises this piece. The right hand's job is to accompany and tap out a steady(ish) rhythm upon which to build the melody. My RH fourth finger is perpetually en garde. An interesting thing happens at the hiatus between pedals. I had to develop a special rhythm to get the left-hand finger off the D in time to get the right-hand thumb onto it without a hiatus in the actual melody. It has to do with getting the pedal down again just before lifting that left-hand off the semi-quaver (D). Practice made almost perfect, but even that'll improve before long. 

Pictured right is an interesting passage with a lot of chromaticism going on in the chords. They change by semitones one at a time. The sound is a bit difficult to learn, but very compelling because unusual. It teaches you about tones and the way harmonies can be squeezed out of unlikely (too-close) tonal associations. 

The continuation of that passage moves a tiny bit faster down the keyboard, as the note changes are a bit wider at times and sometimes even double up. It requires some rigid fingering and subtle wrist/palm movements to get it just right. The triad in the middle of the first bar is built on F#. It moves from the dominant to the subdominant with a minor 7th added. Then it's got a difficult acciaccatura that crushes into two notes (F# and C#), not just one, as it was in the good old days. I'd been getting some practice with that in Hungarian though. Still working on that bit as well. 

This long, long arpeggio is really a C-Major chord inverted and dragged out for two octaves. I like to play it. It feels cool moving my hand with ease such a far distance across the keyboard. And I get to do it twice! It's interesting that they modulate to C from B minor. I could hardly tell anything strange happened, as you usually can. But I guess all those weird, narrow chords in the earlier phrases prepared me enough so that C doesn't seem too far afield. I really need to analyse that modulation. 

Then the fun begins: an intricate manoeuvring of chords (and repeated high-notes) in the right hand with the most lugubrious part of the melody in the left. I try to play it especially lento and make it all dramatic, but there's nothing but piano and sostenuto indicated. Does sostenuto grant the freedom to do all that? Perhaps.

The ending is a return to the beginning that adds a couple extra notes at the end. Forlorn.