Étude Op. 10, No. 2 (Chopin)

The Etude Opus 10, No. 2, composed in the key of A minor by Frédéric Chopin in 1829, is one of the most famous classical etudes for piano. It lays emphasis on the exercise of the right hand, the chromatic scales are to be played in a bound presentation legato and fast in tempo Allegro. However, the composition is like all Chopin's Etudes not just a practice piece. Your romantic musical character and their high demands on the technique makes it one of the most famous piano pieces. Chopin dedicated it like the other etudes from op 10 to his friend Franz Liszt.

Publication

First published the A minor Etude, Op 10 in June 1833 in Paris by Adolf Martin Schlesinger, the German first publication appeared in August 1833 came with Mrs. Kistner in Leipzig and in England the work in the same year at Wessel & Co in London out.

Fingering

Chopin's Etude No. 2 is to strengthen the weak fingers of the right hand by the rapid games chromatic scales and make them independent. This is especially the third, fourth and fifth fingers ( middle, ring and little finger ). At the same time the first two fingers, so the thumb and forefinger of both hands with short chords and single notes accompany the chromatic runs. Chopin wrote even one note at a fingering which extends over almost 800 notes. In addition to its original fingering there is a Ignacy Jan Paderewski in Kraków's Edition by Instytut Fryderyka Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne Chopina and one of Paul Badura- Skoda in the Wiener Urtext Edition.

Musical structure and stylistic elements

The work is written in or 4/4-time and includes 49 bars. In a copy of Chopin's autograph manuscript of his fellow students Warsaw Józef Linowski however, is the time signature or 2/2-Takt ( Alla breve ), where this term but was not related to the other issues, the first editions of the French, German and English Edition other hand, have the designation 4/4-time. As tempo Chopin sees an Allegro ago (Italian for fast, lively, cheerful, cheerfully ). As Metronome he gives an = 144. That is, the quarter note will be struck 144 times a minute. At this rate the piece takes about one and a half minutes. The most later editors of the piece stuck to this value, the German piano virtuoso Hans von Bülow, however, suggested the value of MM = 114. As a presenter statement returns the composer a legato semper (always bound ) for the right hand in front and remind the players in the notation still six times that. This is important for the finger exercise Legato is in stark contrast to the staccato of the accompanying chords in the left hand.

The melody consists of quickly played chromatic scales that sound to be played only by the outer three fingers of the right hand. The left hand accompanies the melody line with short- stricken chords. Like most other etudes by Chopin also follows this three-part song form ABA, the first part of A is sufficient to bar 18, the second part B seen up to the 35th cycle and the last part A to the beat No. 49 consists of harmonic first part of chords in a minor, e major and a minor. But the sound contained in the chromatic melody C ♯ ( Cis ) as position, together with the harmonic minor give the piece a strange light strange disharmony, which will obscure the clarity of the key and create a mysterious sound, which end up in a Neapolitan sixth chord in measure 15 opens.

The middle part of the Etude leads to a slow rise in the musical dynamics. He starts with a (Italian: piano for quiet), but should then an ascending volume to produce the necessary dramatic receive. Chopin calls a poco a poco crescendo [ endo ] ( gradual increase ). Right in the middle of the Etude, in measure 25, then there is also at the peak. It is achieved by a continuous approximation by two-bar sequences of chords, first in F major, then G minor and A major in a brilliant ( forte, strong). The each of these sequences to adopt resolutions dominant leads on to a fallacy. The longer and thereby asymmetrically acting second part of the B- section then leads, but with shorter sequences, but with a similar harmonious progress, back to A minor part A of the etude. The final bars of the work are then very similar to the first part, but shorter and as a coda with an initially increasing but then falling scale in a Picardy third.

Character of the work

The musicologist Hugo Leichtentritt denotes the Etude as a musical Perpetuum Mobile The transparent musical texture consisting of uninterrupted strung together sixteenth notes and accompanied by a kind of easy dancing bass, has its antecedents in the Prelude No. 5 in D major ( BWV 850) from the first part of the well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach, similar to other pieces of music from the first half of the 19th century, Niccolò Paganini's Moto Perpetuo as for Violin and Piano, op 11 by Robert Schumann in New journal of Music was in the article the Pianoforte etudes in the edition of 1836 of each piece of Chopin's Opus 10, awarded a star as a sign of a poetic character, but with the exception of the number 2, in A minor. However, Hugo Leichtentritt describes the sound effect of this piece in his analysis of Chopin's piano works as the whispers and pangs of a slight wind. The French pianist Alfred Cortot mentioned in his edition de travail the moving and fragrant character of this etude. The Italian composer Alfredo Casella talks about the swift character, airy and intangible mystery. The American music critic James Huneker (1857-1921) finally noticed that the whole composition with its marbles, meandering and its chromatic character is a precursor of whispering, Wehens and its moon -like light effects in some later works by Chopin.

Technical difficulties

The game technically Novel this etude is in the chromatic series of notes to be played exclusively with the three outer fingers of the right hand at high speed and in -bound manner. The first two fingers of the right hand to complement the accompanying chords in the left hand with the intervals of third, fourth, as well as individual tones. The difficulty consists in the simultaneous demand by Chopin's legato, tempo and low volume. Piano composers before Chopin, as Ignaz Moscheles in his Etude Op 70, No. 3, G Major, already related chromatic scales with accompanying sounds, but which should be played with the same hand, not with the three weak outer fingers. Hugo Leichtentritt, a renowned Chopin expert believes that in this etude, not to use the old habit of fingering the thumb to play, from the time of the clavichord before JS Bach, revived. Since the 17th century this technique was now outdated. The technical meaning of this etude for Chopin is by the detailed comprehensive fingering, which he added to the piece itself, occupied. In no other work once he made this effort.

An analysis of Chopin's fingering shows that, as in the normal usual chromatic fingering ladders, the long third finger strikes the black keys. The second finger, which normally passes R and C is replaced by the fifth. The thumb (1st finger), which abuts the other white keys generally, is here replaced by the fourth finger. While it is fairly easy to cross the third finger over the thumb, a crossover of the third on the fourth finger with some acrobatic skill is connected. Continue to play a plausible possibility is the stretching of the third, but the bending of the fourth and fifth finger.

Alfred Cortot notes that the first difficulty to be overcome in this piece is to cross over the third, fourth and fifth fingers and achieve the resulting elongation of these fingers by continuous games. Introduced by Cortot, the Austrian pianist Gottfried Galston and Alfredo Casella preparatory exercises before a performance of the work always start with the chromatic scale in the upper voice, without the other voices. Cortot divides the hand into an active and an accompanying element and consists, first, to play the chromatic ladders in all their changes with the three outer fingers. Galston is advisable to keep a small object with the first and second finger and press, while the other fingers play the chromatic runs.

Cortot recommends the sounds as pizzicato notes to pluck, not to strike. Casella compares the three outer fingers subtly with a sidecar, the sidecar represent the first two fingers. The Australian pianist Alan Kogosowski (* 1952) recommends keeping your thumb and index finger completely relaxed during the game, the upper voice. The first two fingers that play the little two-note intervals of the average votes on each of the four beats, should, as soon as they are posted, to break away from the keys. The thumb should not be performed vertically to avoid overexertion and sounds extremely easy, as light as a feather to play as if they were hardly available. Hans von Bülow determined that the middle harmonies are too clear but fleeting play anywhere. Galston suggests, chipped to accentuate the right-hand lesson the upper tone of the two-note intervals of the second finger.

Perform this work to the public, especially immediately after the first Etude ( Opus 10, No.1 in C major ) is, with its large stretches a physical and mental effort. Kogosowski reported that even the impressive Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter powerful, who had an awesome technique, trembled before playing the Etude in A minor. When listing all 12 etudes op 10 in a passage he hesitated and sometimes skipped this second small but dangerous piece. And he was not alone. Gottfried Galston believed that anyone who wanted to play at the tempo MM 144, must be able to control it at home ( in the more quiet closet ) at the tempo MM 152, or better yet 160.

Preview

In this recording, the pianist Martha Goldstein playing the work on a piano by Sébastien Erard of 1851.

Arrangements and Arrangements

Three years after the appearance of the Etude Opus 10, No. 2 of the Austrian piano pedagogue Carl Czerny, Chopin published often to be invited to Vienna, in 1836 in his School of the Virtuoso a piece that looks like a parody of Chopin's Etude. During this lesson song chromatic melodies appear simultaneously with its two-part support in all versions for the left, right hand and both hands. The Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni presented in his piano practice an extensive exercise that is reminiscent of Chopin's Etude. In the 53 studies on Chopin's Etudes of the Polish pianist Leopold Godowsky, there are two versions. The first is for the left hand alone, while the more familiar second version Ignis Fatuus ( Irrlicht ) a polyrhythmic impressive exercise in which Chopin's part for the right hand is transposed to the left, while the right hand accompanied with two sounds. The piece appears 120 to 132 of the German pianist Friedrich Wuhrer published a version that combines Godowsky study with an accompaniment for the right hand faster than the specified speed MM. The Canadian pianist Marc- André Hamelin combined in his Triple Étude (after Chopin) from the year 1992, the Etudes, Op 10, No. 2, in A minor with the numbers 4 and 11 from the Opus 25 and thus tries to emulate Godowsky, whose Tripeletüde has been lost.