Beethoven’s iconic Fur Elise is the second cleverly selected piece in Book 2 of Melanie Spanswicks Play it again Piano series. This is a series of books aimed at pianists returning to the piano after a break.
Introducing Play It Again Piano
I recently released a post and a video giving my initial impressions of ‘Play It Again Piano’. That initial post introduced the overall level and format of the books and used the first piece in Book 2, ‘CPE Bach’s Solfeggietto in C Minor’. as a worked example of how pieces are presented.
This post looks at the second piece she has chosen – Fur Elise by Ludvig Van Beethovan. I’ve also embedded the video at the bottom of this post if you’d like to watch it.
Why Fur Elise?
I have to admit that, when I first learned piano, I didn’t actually want to learn this piece properly … like most teenagers (or was it just me?), I was keen that people would think me much cleverer than I actually was. In my teenage mind, Fur Elise was too ‘simple’ to sound impressive and therefore I didn’t want to take the time to learn it. Often of course beginner books have an abridged version of Fur Elise that younger students learn rather than the full version. This also gives the impression that it is extremely simple. At the time, I could pretty much sight read most of it and fluff my way through the two or three challenging parts.
However, with the benefit of age, I now see I was very wrong to think like this.
- First, it’s an absolutely iconic piece that can be wheeled out whenever you feel like it
- Secondly, since most of it is relatively straight forward, you get a lot of bang for your practice buck – you’ll not need to relentlessly drill the entire piece so should be able to learn it quite quickly
- Finally, the challenging areas are absolutely worth spending time to focus in on as they will definitely improve your overall technique for other pieces
That’s why I think Melanie’s choice of this little gem is a very judicious one.
Practice Advice
Let’s have a look at Melanie’s advice for picking up this piece.
First, as it’s in A Minor, then refamiliarising yourself with the A Minor scale is a good starting point.
Next, Melanie says that this piece will help with Articulation, Note Repetition and Rhythm. Therefore, she proposes a set of exercises aimed at helping you to improve each of these areas. These are nicely detailed out in her book.
In addition, she recommends is concentrating on getting a legato line without using the pedal. I had never really thought about this myself. I guess I’ve always been a lazy pianist and rely on the pedal rather than focus on efficient fingering quite often. Don’t get me wrong, I know all about finger substitution and use it almost subconsciously quite often when I can’t rely on the pedal.
I found that following her advice here substantially improves the overall quality of the melody line – especially in the repeated notes section.
She also gives some useful advice on avoiding tension in the repeated notes section … some stepping stones that I hadn’t thought about myself.
So, not only a great choice of piece but superbly helpful advice on how to approach it – so, full marks so far for Play It Again Piano.
Problem areas for me
Of course, as I said with the Solfeggietto, we all have different challenges with our piano playing so there are some of areas where I’m having to work much harder than perhaps many might.
My major problem areas are :
- The 32nd notes (demi-semi-quavers) (bars 30 to 34)
- The repeated notes in the left hand (from bar 59)
- A minor arpeggiated figure in the right hand (bars 77 to 79)
32nd notes (demi-semi-quavers)
For the 32nd notes, as I’ve said before, my basic passagework has always been pretty poor and here is no exception. The 32nd note section has two main elements:
- The ascending part of the scale punctuated with the g above.
- What’s little more than a descending c major scale that, rather than finishing on the C, jumps from the D back up to the G.
Ultimately, this little passage needs to be played quite quickly – double the speed of the main theme which itself shouldn’t be too slow. If an 8th note is at 132 bpm, then that’s a lot of 32nd notes to fit into a second!
I’ve always found this little portion tricky to pull off … and in fact it’s one of those bits that I would always ‘fluff my way through’ when I played it all those years ago. I’m also quite convinced that for some strange reason, my fingers can ‘remember’ that they don’t play this part correctly. So they seem to ‘fluff’ it on purpose.
To correct this, I implemented the use of different rhythms and touches. I’ve mentioned rhythms before and also my theory on Can Staccato Playing Make Me Faster at Piano . Here it’s a different type of touch recommended. Melanie advises using ‘strong’ fingers to practice – so very deliberate articulation. I had never really thought of doing this before. Effectively, you play something quite loud and deliberately in practice that you want to be light and airy in performance. So far, this practice technique really does seem to help.
Repeated Notes
For the repeated notes, I opted for slightly different fingering (4,3,2,1,2,1) but otherwise just followed Melanie’s practice suggestions. In practice I would basically alternate between Hands Separately moving from white to black keys on the repeated notes and then slow practice adding the Right Hand.
A Minor Arpeggio
Finally, for the a minor arpeggiated figure, I’ve been experimenting with something a little different (for me). I was always taught when playing arpeggios, to bring the thumb under the palm to keep some semblance of legato. However, I’ve seen recommended in a few reputable places that in fact you can play equally well by shifting your hand and using a slight rotary movement of the forearm to bring the thumb up the keyboard and then drop it down. I’m still not 100% convinced by this as at first it is extremely difficult to prevent the arpeggio from sounding jerky … however, it is becoming smoother over time so I’ll persevere for a while with this approach.
Definitely to be added to your shopping list
In short, so far, Play it Again Piano has not disappointed. I can feel that I have made definite improvements just on these first two pieces and actually either of them would be great to play when that ‘play something for us’ request comes. I’m still at the stage in my relearning journey that unless I have specifically prepared a piece to play publicly, I rarely have something ‘under my fingers’ that I’m happy to play even for friends.
Here’s the video to go with this post:
I’m now also working on the Song without Words and the Study which are the next two pieces. I’ll write up my experiences with these two in the coming weeks.
