There are several simultaneous technical challenges in Chopin's opus 66, and it's impossible to play the piece until none of those challenges is, by itself, challenging. It’s tempting to jump in and start beating your head against the wall (with occasional retreats in the more tractable middle section), but the result of this is not likely to be good, because you’ll pick up a lot of bad habits (mental if not physical) along the way. Better is to practice the piece decomposed in various ways so that when you begin practicing the whole thing for real, there is only the challenge of putting it all together.The most obvious challenge is playing three against four. If you’ve played dozens of pieces with this particular polyrhythm, the Fantasy-Impromptu probably won’t be such a hurdle. If this is your first experience with three against four, work on it separately first. A good exercise to start with is to do a 3-group finger pattern in the left hand while doing a 4-group one in the right. For example, put the 4th finger of your left hand and the 5th finger of your right hand on F#s a few octaves apart. With the left hand, do a triplet rhythm 4-3-2-1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-3-4... and with the right hand, do a 16th note rhythm 5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-3-1-2-3-4-5..., both hands in a B-major scale. The F#s and the Bs will happen together, and the notes in between will be out of sync. The contrary motion of your hands will make it fairly easy to keep track of what’s going on, but at first, you’ll find that one hand won’t be as even as the other. The thing to practice at this point is to be able to shift your attention from one hand to the other. To make this easier, play one hand fortissimo and the other pianissimo (or, at the extreme, so softly that the notes don’t sound at all). Focus on one hand (the louder one, if one is louder) until it is even. Once a hand is even, play it with different degrees of accent, different articulations, etc. Once you feel like you really have control of one hand, slowly switch your attention to the other. If you were playing one hand louder, equalize the dynamics before you switch your attention, and after you’ve switched, make the focused-on hand louder. If you can make one hand or the other smooth but not both, don’t worry, just go back and forth, telling each hand “you’re doing fine, just keep doing that” when you switch your attention to the other. Once the polyrhythm by itself is not a problem, start changing the patterns to which it applies. For example, do a major scale in one hand while doing an arpeggio in the other. If you improvise, play an accompaniment (e.g. Alberti-bass style) in one rhythm while doing a melody in the other. If you don’t improvise, then take a piece that you already know that has either continuous triplets in the left hand or continuous 16th notes in the right hand, and modify the rhythm other hand so to create a three against four pattern.Once you’ve gotten really comfortable with the polyrhythm (and I mean really comfortable; this will not happen in a day, or even a week, for most people), learn the hands separately in the Fantasy-Impromptu. If you typically memorize music, memorize the parts, but in any case, learn to play them without looking at your hands; either look at the score, or close your eyes. If you can’t play the piece up to tempo without looking at your hands, don’t worry, just play it more slowly. The important thing is for it to be comfortable and easy and not require a lot of attention.Next is to play one hand with a simplified version of the other hand. The first of these is to play the right hand as written, but the left hand in chords, one per quarter note, with the chord containing the notes of the triplet and fingered as you will finger them eventually. If the notes are too far apart to be played as chords, roll them. The second of these is to play the left hand as written and play the highest and lowest note in the right hand (this is typically the first and last note in the group, but not always). From there, invent whatever variants make sense to you. For example, you can break the left hand into an oom-pah style accompaniment (eighth notes) by taking the lowest note of the chord as the down-beat and the upper two as the up-beat.Finally, put the piece together. Because it’s not very melody-oriented, it’s possible to repeat measures, or pairs of measures, so that you can work on a small segment at a time, and get past the technical difficulty of putting the finger patterns together and focus on the evenness of the rhythms, the shape of the phrases, and the articulation.A few final notes:Chopin’s version of this (“Fassung nach der Eigenschrift” in the Henle edition) is somewhat more difficult than the version that Chopin’s friend Fontana put together from Chopin’s sketches (“Fassung nach Fontana” in Henle), and this difficulty makes the polyrhythm harder.The preparatory work I’ve suggested should not be thought of as exercises, but as compositions in their own right. Work on them as if you were preparing them for performance; don’t save the interpretive work for later. Being firm on a step before moving on will save work in the long run, and make the final result better.Abstain from using the pedal until you’re able to play the piece (and the preparatory versions) as a whole without pedal. Fontana’s version has pedal in it, but Chopin’s does not (except in the middle section); it’s just marked “legato.”Hope this helps!
I love Chopin's Fantasy Impromtu and have made it up to bar 12. I'm kind of stuck on how to play bar 13th-24th bar fast enought?
hey, i dont know if i can really help you, but when i practiced it a few months ago, i really had to stop for 2 weeks with my right hand, because the bar 13-24 had so unusual movments for my hands. 2-3 weeks later after the pause i picked it up again and didnt really think about making it faster. it just kind of flowed out of my hands and it wasnt a problem anymore. maybe this helps too: just practise that motion of the 1-5-2-3 everytime you can. you will get used to it and it gets faster by itself.hople this helps, simon
I've noticed that everyone's fussing over the polyrhythms- although they are difficult, remember that this piece is an impromptu. The rhythm doesn't have to be completely precise.