Phone: open this video in a new window.
1. Regrettably, in the Western world, this Etude has been named “Sadness” or “Tristesse”.
Poor Chopin who so hated all these descriptions added to his compositions…
2. Exercise for chords (bar 16) - Chopin and Bach examples - Waving wrist exercise for well balanced Motor Apparatus (MA).
3. A frequent and important error (bar 46)
Example 1
The transformation of the chord on the 1st beat of bar 46 from sixteenth note to quarter note (example 1 above) results in a shift of three sixteenth notes over 8 bars. As a result, Chopin’s entire precise construction falls apart: the forte or sforzato (depending on the edition) at the beginning of bar 54 is moved from the 1st beat to the 4th sixteenth note of the group, the weakest one, and bar 54 thus counts 11 sixteenth notes instead of 8... This is a truly trivial rhythmic distortion, very annoying (comparable to the l’Etude op. 25 n° 2 played at 6/4) and so common that even very good pianists play it this way.
To play bars 46-53 you have to use wing movements.
To play bars 46-53 you have to use wing movements.