Chopin Polonaise, Op. 53, Part I

So I took a little break in my daily piano practicing, but kind of came back to it this week, after for some strange reason I'm compelled to play Rachmaninoff's Little Red Riding Hood Etude.  Plus a slew of show pieces that I can just perform in front of an audience when I need to.  These include Debussy's L'Isle Joyeuse, Ravel's Albarado del Gracioso, Schumann's Toccata, and the Chopin Heroic Polonaise Op. 53.

The Polonaise is surprisingly easy to get through.  As a kid, I tried to learn it after hearing Horowitz play, but it was out of my reach, but I did learn the famous left-hand octaves in middle section.  Later on, I learned the chromatic fourths in opening page.  As it turns out, those were the hardest spots.  A few days of practicing ~30 minutes a day was sufficient for me to play in a class and get some instructions.

There are a few difficult spots I need to fix, some subtle, some not quite so.  I might as well document them:


1. Chromatic in fourth runs, third time through, switching from 2/5 to 1/4:

Chopin Polonaise Op 53, Measure 9

  The rest of the chromatics runs are all result in natural finger positions.  This is the only exception.  I find the fingering for the notes highlighted in cyan slightly annoying.  I can still do it pretty fast, but it becomes more detached than I'd like.  A little pedal solves the problem entirely, but obviously, I'd like to avoid that.  I might be paranoid--it could be the kind of thing only the pianist would notice in his own recording.

2. Pinky Mordents.

Chopin Polonaise Op. 53, Measure 26-27

The mordents in Bar 27 are tricky.  The second one is easy, using 4-5-4 and it comes out just fine.  It's the first one that's tricky, going up from a white key to a black one.  Still figuring out the best fingering here.  3-5-3 for the mordent, then jump to play the suceeding octaves?  Or should I practicing 4-5-4 for this.  My 4th finger is unusually long compared to my pinky, and it's quite awkward for me to pull off 4-5-4 here.  Maybe 3-4-3 even?  To be decided.

3. The scale.  Four of them to be exact.  The B flat melodic minor run.  If you know the piece, you know which ones I'm talking about so I'm gonna save myself some trouble and not make a figure out of it.

  Well, Julia Jordan said they shouldn't be pedaled.  All the masters on youtube agree, so I just really need to make them absolutely even, without an unevenness whatsoever.  I think mine's ok as is, but it needs to be much better to sound impressive.  Like Rafal Blechacz's rendition of this piece.  Of course, he won the 2005 Chopin Competition so maybe I'm aiming a little too high here.  But better aim for the moon so if you miss, you might hit the stars.