In this month’s practice clinic, Graham Fitch answers questions on fingering and executing trills, a Beethoven Sonata and creating a singing tone in Calme du soir by Moszkowski.
Practice clinic questions
Fingering for trills – In your tutorials you often recommend playing a trill using 3-2-4-3 fingering which I find difficult to get used to – I find using just 3-2-3-2 is much easier. Should I just practise the other fingering, till it gets comfortable or is it ok to use the 2-fingers-fingering? What is the benefit of the 3-fingers-fingering? I would also practise baroque ornaments in different scales, as a technique exercise. Is it a good idea? What fingerings can you recommend for playing / practising different ornaments?
JS Bach Sinfonia No. 1 in C, BWV 787 – I recently started this work having studied several of the two part inventions. I must admit to finding the trills a bit of a limiting factor with these pieces. E.g. It’s the execution particularly where the thumb is holding a note at the same time eg. bar 5 – I can only manage a triplet!
Beethoven Sonata in G, Op. 49 No. 2 (2nd mvt) – How should bars 67-71 (the one with the succession of chords with an interval of a sixth between the notes in the RH) be played? In my version, they look like they should be played kind of legato. When I play, they sound too rough, even with the suggested fingering on my edition. I listen to different versions on YouTube and many people play that passage staccato. Is it the right way to go?
Mozskowski Calme du Soir – In your recent workshop, you created a really lovely singing tone in Calme du soir by Moszkowski. Could you explain what you did to achieve this?
Next practice clinic
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Further information on how our practice clinics work is available here or please click here to find out more about the Online Academy.