Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4

I must have the entire text of Chopin's Prelude in E Minor represented in all the clips I took. I think they amount to ten. Of all my blog posts, I think these ten pics are the most I've felt the need to include in any one, at least so far. It's telling that this is probably one of the simplest Chopin pieces, and yet so many areas stand out to me as being particularly interesting, very likely because of their complexity and/or difficulty. 

I absolutely love this song and I'm so happy that it's within my capabilities. It actually might be slightly above me, but I think it not too forward to try my hand (or cut my teeth) on Chopin using this piece. The heavily chorded left hand in conjunction with a minimalist melody is perhaps its most distinctive characteristic. I'm pretty used to playing chords from my play-by-ear days, so the main challenge (and learning opportunity!) this piece presents me is the non-quotidian progression of these chords. The other challenge, more apparent in this opening, is the requirement to play these repeated chords delicately enough to support the understatement and pathos of the right hand without overpowering it. I'm not doing this at all correctly yet, and I anticipate it will give me stuff to work on for years to come.

The chords progress by semitones and play with the dissonance of adjacent notes to create a delicately shaded accompaniment to the C-B of the right hand, one that brings out an alarming number of their possible nuances and interpretations. It's as though the left-hand were a critical analyst saying: "C-B can be read in this way (Em), in this (Fm7), and also in this (E7)..." It's amazing what a brilliant composer can do with 12 notes. 

I'm using this (among other things, including the John Thompson series) to prepare for Chopin's Raindrop Prelude (Op. 20 No. 15), which is currently playing in my ear and also wringing its own brand of pathos from its repeated note(s). Unlike that one, though, this prelude only deviates from its minimalist melody on two distinct occasions, the first of which occurs here. All the bursts of melody in this text are pretty similar, which can be sensed just by looking at the shape of the notes. For this one, the left-hand accompaniment is pretty static—meaning the chords themselves don't change, though they're not held but repeatedly struck. I think this erratic melody line, the constant jumping from high to low, is pretty typical of Chopin. It's beautiful to listen to, and probably only becomes really obvious if you try to sing the melody. It's hard to switch registers with the voice, and even though in this section the text remains in one octave, the way it jumps around in there gestures toward that kind of octave skipping done later in the song and also in other Chopin works.

The second half of this melodic section occurs here, and notice the left-hand settles down and is sustained for a full bar. The triplet that ends this section isn't sped up at all in the version I have, which Walter Klein performs. I like the way the extra note doesn't even try to sneak in but just brazenly occupies the space it needs, and if the bar has to expand to accommodate it, tough! The phrase leads to a repeat of the song, but in variation of course. The chords, which took their time progressing by semitones, now double up their changes and proceed to the next melody explosion twice as fast.

 And here it is. That ornament (the turn) in the centre of the bar pictured left was difficult for me to execute in the time given. It was fast and required more control than I've yet developed, especially with the fingering I used (3-4). I actually think the whole thing would have been easier with 2-3, but the book I consulted to explicate the turn must have had that fingering. Maybe not. But somehow it turned out that I thought 3-4 required. Here, too, the left-hand chords are more mobile than before and very interesting. They didn't present me nearly as much of a challenge as the right hand, but were quite a learning opportunity—one I've still yet to take full advantage of. The fingering for those worked out pretty well. I like the way the first and fifth drop from C# and A# onto their respective naturals and, in the right hand, the way the third finger that strikes the final E here switches to the second immediately after that. 

This switch happens in the top-right picture, which is also where the real octave hopping begins. This happens both in the right and left hands. The left jumps way down to hold B in octave  and then back up again to that amazing F#-dim inversion. And granted, D# to C in the right hand isn't quite an octave, but it's close. Later it does jump an octave to strike Es at both ends in that rubato triplet section pictured (lower) right.

This piece also turned out to be good sight-reading material. I haven't quite memorized it, but I know it well enough to read my way through it at a decent percentage of the appropriate tempo. Maybe even at tempo, since it's a slower piece: the tempo indicated is largo, so the notes are stretched and swollen in a certain sense. The lower-right picture shows a point where the left hand takes advantage of the plasticity of the prescribed tempo by slipping a chord between the second and third of the right-hand triplets. This requires some finesse with the timing, and I have to admit I've been slowing the pace a bit to get it to work. I plead rubato...

Left is the final tapering down to the chord finale after that melodic crescendo discussed above. To the right are the final chords. At first the ones in the right hand were hard to hold, especially the first of the three pictured here. Eventually, I got the hang of it, though it still feels a little awkward: my fourth finger feels kind of cocked and out of place. The middle and final chords are much less awkward. In fact, the final chord is (appropriately) just an Em with an added E. The left hand chords are mild in comparison.

Odds and ends:

Main Melody :)

C-C7-Am Switch & Smorzando