IC 76003 Booklet - Ivory Classics

note, the right hand in No. 5 plays exclusively black notes, giving it a pentatonic
character. One of the easier pieces, the elegiac melody of No. 6 nevertheless
places musical demands on the performer. A toccata with repeated
notes in the right hand, No. 7 alternates thirds and sixths, the lower note of
which requires changing fingers. With simple chords in the left hand, the
right hand in No. 8 is a study in arpeggios covering the spread of four
octaves. No. 9 is a turbulent study in repeated notes, with arpeggios of a
tenth or more in the left hand. In No. 10 the alternating sixths and broken
octaves require a flexible wrist in rhythms of two against three. Von Bülow
said of it that “anyone who can play this etude in a really finished manner
may be congratulated on having climbed to the highest point of the pianists’
Parnassus.” No. 11 is a study in harp-like chords covering the range of twoand-a-half
octaves in both hands. The only etude known to have been
inspired by events in his life, Chopin is said to have composed No. 12 after
learning that Warsaw had fallen to the Russians. It involves tumultuous
arpeggios in the left hand, and a forbidding melody in octaves in the right.
The opus 25 etudes were published in a single volume in 1837, and are
dedicated to Liszt’s mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult who bore his children.
Robert Schumann heard Chopin play No. 1 and wrote: “Imagine an
Aeolian harp having all the scales and the hand of an artist combining them
with all kinds of fantastic embellishments, but always with an audible deep
tone in the bass and a softly singing melody in the treble, and you will get
some idea of Chopin’s playing. When the etude was ended, we felt as
though we had seen a radiant picture in a dream which, half awake, we
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