Solutions concerning technique and interpretation
Chopin - Etude in F Major, op. 10 n° 8
1. The upbeat trill

I performed this Etude in public for the first time at the age of 15 or 16. Professor Woytowicz taught me the trills with three (1323) and four fingers (1324 or inversely 4231), but I do not remember if he gave me precise advice for the fingering of the upbeat trill of this Etude. He himself, on the other hand, played this trill as a classic five-note grupetto, or turn, (you can hear it using the player below), but such a simplified version is not at all satisfactory for me personally. On the other hand, the brilliant execution of a seven-note trill was devilishly difficult at the time.
It is possible to listen to the complete interpretations: those by Bolesław Woytowicz on YouTube (you can listen to each Etude separately: to show the list, click on “More” in the YouTube window - help ) and my versions here - tracks 1 and 2.
After spending several days testing all kinds of fingering, the simplest to the most complicated, I finally found one that is absolutely infallible: 2314321. I applied two sure and easy formulas to play one after the other:
● the mordant 231: before beginning, fingers 2 and 1 must be
BOTH
almost “glued” to the C key,
and
● the grupetto, or turn, 4321: as soon as the 4th finger presses on the D, the thumb must remain above the C so as not to waste any time.
After adequate practice, this fingering is so easy to perform that the trill will “play itself”, even without warming up!
Cf. Liszt - “Feux-follets” (1. Allegretto + leggiero).
2. Other types of fingering
Aleksander Michałowski (who had Woytowicz as a student, thus he is in a certain sense my “grandfather” in the pianistic genealogy) proposes the fingering [...]
Among the various editions I have seen, only the fingering of Ignaz Friedman (from 1912) indicated [...]
This is why I counsel using the fingerings [...]
