Tchaikovsky Concerto: Help Please!!!!

October 10, 2010 at 02:15 AM ·

 Hello Brian.  I know exactly what you mean.  When I was studying this I dreaded the chords so much that I developed a partial mental block and would mess up unreasonably as soon as I got to that part.  I practiced it by slowing down the tempo and practicing each group of 3 sixteenths as one triple stop.  This made my left hand plan ahead and block in the chords fully.  I was trying to avoid unnecessary left hand movements and practice shifting between each one without having to deal with the string crossing pattern.  It seemed the most efficient way to make my left hand able to deal with the problems.  When that got better I  picked up the tempo a little (but not full speed yet) and practiced playing from the middle of the poco piu mosso that comes before it.  I gradually raised the metronome setting from that point so that I could stop thinking of the poco piu lento as a new section and not have a nervous meltdown when I had to play it.  Hope this helps!  Once you win some victories over the awkward parts and get past the fact that the first movement is almost as long as some etude books it's actually a very fun piece to play.

October 10, 2010 at 03:12 AM ·

I'd like to hear what people who have mastered this concerto have to say too, since I'm not one of them.   But if I were to prepare this section, I would:

1.   Practice it very slowly.  Listening to tune the double stops and being careful with bow placement and pressure so the chords sing.   At this stage it's like practicing Bach, except we're in a much higher part of the fingerboard - which is an important distinction since different mechanics like string tension, tone, spacing between strings and intervals come into play.

2.  Once I can play the notes cleanly and clearly, add some crunch and bite to the sound, but not too much.  Understand that there are certain liberties you can take with interpretation here.   I don't think you have to take it very fast especially with the music notated piu lento as being clearly distinct from the prior nondouble stop section.   I strongly recommend you listen to  Hilary Hahn in her new recording where she takes a very noticeable dive in tempo, which I think is very interesting and adds a certain ponderousness to the section, which is in keeping with the character of the double stopping.  

3.  Relax and enjoy it.  When I watched Hilary playing this concerto live last week in Portland she just appeared very relaxed and almost completely without tension.   She played this section almost like a country fiddler (an extremely gifted and virtuosic one, of course).   I am not saying that you should play without intensity, but it's easy to get too worked up over this section.  There are certain notes that are more musically important and need emphasis, and others that don't.  

October 10, 2010 at 09:57 AM ·

Best advice I've ever received about playing any kinds of chords is to break them up then put them back together again - but to always be thinking horizontally through the chordal sequence, rather than vertically which is kind of automatically what we do with chords when we see them on the page:

First - sort out your fingering for each note in chords.

Second - play very slowly through the chordal sequence, not in rhythm, just long bows - but ONE finger at a time, getting to know where each individual finger shifts to in the progression. So initially play the sequence of notes for 1st finger, then 2nd and so on.

Then - do the same with two fingers together, making sure you are playing fingering you'll use when performing the whole chord - you are learning the horizontal progression of the notes.

Finally put all the different lines together, still using long bows.

When the finger progression and intonation is perfect, start playing in rhythm, then tempo!

Always hard to explain things rather than show them but this "deconstructionalist" approach really really works for me, and was especially good for intonation too.

October 10, 2010 at 09:41 PM ·

 These suggestions have helped a lot!  Thanks, guys!

Anyone else care to chime in?

October 11, 2010 at 12:07 AM ·

I practiced this section for weeks to get it to sound right, and I realized that it wasn't so much the left hand, but the right. I'd practice the coordination by practicing the whole thing with open strings. Pay particular attention to the sound point, coming slightly closer to the bridge as you get into higher positions. If you can make the open strings double stops sound good you can do it with the left hand. Pretty basic stuff, but it works really well.