The Most Difficult Chopin Etude? "Winter Wind" Op 25 no 11

0:00 Intro/Musical analysis
9:48 Technical advice for practicing
17:14 Full performance of Op 25 No 11 "Winter Wind"
Artwork in thumbnail: Wilfrid Constant Beauquesne, Battle Scene in Winter
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[@Tylervrooman]

You deserve more subs... I'm a guitarist and I study and transcribe piano music. I love your interpretations analysis and commentary. Always happy when I see a new video. Bravo Sir.

[@Chopin-Etudes-Cosplay]

Love the way your left-hand leads into the piece in the opening, at 17:35. I think I might steal that idea if/when I record it myself! Great video, and looking forward to seeing the other Chopin etudes :)

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Thank you! I was proud of that little touch myself, so I'm glad you noticed. And feel free to steal it of course!

[@la_princesse_des_beauxarts]

Your channel is splendid; I always look forward to your videos! Thank you ❕

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Thank you so much!

[@grahamtwist]

What a stunning performance, Cole: bravo! This is such a wonderfully pianistic composition, supporting the view that Chopin was really the first to define the boundary between piano and orchestral music as the score would surely be impossible to transcribe. This Etude demands incredible stamina (the right hand alone has to cope with 2,000 tumultuous cascading notes!), as well as great dexterity and technique. Both hands are certainly presented with considerable challenges - the left shaping the melody and the right occupied with scales and arpeggios - requiring a sort of polyphonic mindset as the piece is like a duet, but for one performer! (You often tease me (!) that you learn something new from my comments. Well . . . there is a little more to the story of the introductory bars that were added to this Etude. Although published in 1837, I have heard the Polish concert pianist, Grzegorz Niemczuk, tell the story of how this Etude was possibly written in 1831/32, nearer to the Warsaw Uprising. At this time, Chopin was living with his friend, Dr (Charles) Alexander Hoffmann, who was very musical, and Chopin would ask him for his reflections and advice concerning his compositions. According to Hoffmann's widow writing many years later, it had actually been her husband who had suggested revising the way the Etude began with a contrasting softer introduction. Chopin had initially not agreed, but after thinking about the idea, he woke up one night and wrote down the new opening bars. Whether this is true or not does not detract from the awesome impact of the piece! In his preface to the Schirmer edition of the Etudes, the American musicologist and critic, James Huneker, famously asserts of this study: ‘Small -souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should not attempt it”! Well, Cole . . I must therefore conclude that your soul is that of a colossus!)

[@peterchan6082]

Greg Niemczuk is a very good Chopin player. I love to watch his KZbin analyses on all the works of Chopin profoundly. And oh, forget about James Huneker. He had made some of the most inept comments - especially in his commentaries on the Chopin's scores published by Schirmer's Library.

[@LioMcAllisterMusic-sw4vj]

You played this beast of an etude very well. I like how you slowed it down so the piece would not sound rushed. Like you said, most pianists want to blaze through this piece. But when you slow it down, I hear somebody struggling to drive home from a blizzard in the middle of the night. Well done!

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the slightly slower tempo.

[@LioMcAllisterMusic-sw4vj]

@@TheIndependentPianist You're welcome. Any chance you might be doing Gaspard de la Nuit or Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel anytime soon?

[@CyrusandAurelius]

Thank you so much for these! I always go to your channel first before I learn a piece to see if you have a lesson! I was wondering if you can for all these types of lessons say which recordings you enjoy of these pieces.

[@stefanhaffner]

A lot of the etudes sound great at slower tempos, but also at faster tempos. Usually I am forced to choose the slower tempos due to technical limitations anyway :). In a lot of Chopins works i find playing fast you skip over all these wonderful details. On the other hand, sometimes it's a pretty cool effect philosophically to have a kind of fragment, a whisp that just appears momentarily and then is gone and you wonder if it was an inner line or just something you were imagining. Playing at a faster tempo you hear those little snapshots of something interesting and then they are gone. In end end, it's a balance and you always lose something and gain something in your tempo choices.

[@sumikot5448]

This etude wasn’t particularly my favourite but now I am liking it! I also really like your slightly slower performance!

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Thanks Sumiko!

[@CatkhosruShapurrjiFurabji]

19:35 this bit sounds very impressionistic

[@neilkilleen3911]

On the tempo question you may enjoy Bernhard Ruchti’s A Tempo project (on KZbin) where he explores how some of the literature sounds at significantly slower tempo (motivated by the possibility of double beat theories). This includes the Chopin Etudes.

[@RanBlakePiano]

Hope you ll do survey of porgy,Bess interpretations

[@peterchan6082]

Bravo, well-played ! Even the monumental Artur Rubinstein commented on this 'A minor etude' as the 'most difficult Chopin etude.' I do think so. I also think that this piece should be played at slower tempo like yours. And by the way, to err is indeed human, so worry not about those insignificant false notes 😂

[@arturkranz-dobrowolski2959]

👌

[@anthonyc6017]

very nice performance, but how come you play the ending melodic minor scale an octave extra?

[@haijunliang6698]

I believe this is harder than thirds, you can see lots of people who can master thirds, but not this one

[@user-jj8kg5ef2t]

i thought double thirds (25/6) in G minor is technically more difficult.

[@peterchan6082]

The Etude in Thirds is surprisingly easy to learn, acquire, and memorise. But it is devilishly difficult - the very most difficult, in my opinion - to polish and mature. It's almost as difficult to polish as Liszt's Feux Follets. I find the Winter Wind, however, harder to acquire than the Thirds (and perhaps even Feux Follets) to acquire but not as hard to polish as the other two. The stamina required for Winter Wind is formidably taxing, and that's what has been deterring me from playing it in public, although I've played both the Thirds and Feux Follets in public.