Hello, I’m Paul Barton.
This video is a viewer’s request tutorial for Franz Liszt’s famous Romance in an overhead keyboard view for left hand fingering suggestions, mainly for the quicker second half of the piece.
Liszt’s Romance is, like all his music, so perfectly written for the piano that it fits comfortably and naturally under the hands, even in his most difficult pieces.
So, if you want to play Romance but have so far been put off by what sounds to be a very difficult left hand second section, I hope this video will demonstrate and reassure you that you can play the left hand arpeggios, purely technically speaking, quite effortlessly, that is, if you think of the arpeggios, not so much in individual notes but instead as chords that happen to be broken.
I’ve divided Romance into 8 practice sections for you. Let’s start with the opening section, which, as it’s slow, I will play just once. Notice Liszt indicated it to be played with the una corda pedal - also known as the soft pedal.
Now the quicker section begins. Notice how some notes half way up the arpeggio repeat so we need to change the fingers in order to do this. Notice also how we can move away from the bottom bass note and fit the hand straight away into a chord shape. Once we have the pattern for these chords up and down you’ll find the arpeggios feel comfortable to play.
I’ll play each section twice, once at tempo – bare in mind the tempo can of course be slower that I play if it suits your taste – then I’ll repeat each section very slowly for those looking for fingering suggestions. I won’t say anything about interpretation, instead show you how to make a comfortable fingering which will free you to play Romance from to your own imagination and experience of life.
Performance
Jun 7, 2016
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