As a pianist with dyslexia and ADHD, cadenza's tend to fill me with panic. I know that my fingers can probably play the notes... if I can just figure out what the notes actually are!!! Cadenza passages tend to be written in tiny notes all squished up together, making them extremely challenging to read for neurodiverse pianists!
In this post, I'm going to tackle the 2nd cadenza passage from Liszt's Liberstraum No. 3 and describe how I figured out how to play it, in the hope it saves my fellow neurodiverse pianists many hours of pain trying to figure this thing out!!
Liberstraum Cadenza 2:
The first thing you notice looking at this is that there are just so many notes!! Whilst you can see that there is a descending chromatic pattern going on in line 1, keeping track of where you are up to feels like it will be an impossible task. Lines 2 and 3 look a little less daunting, although still an awful lot to try and remember!
Let's split into two parts to start figuring it out!
Part 1: the descending chromatic pattern in line 1
In trying to learn this, I read lots of advice about learning it as patterns of descending thirds which made sense, but I couldn't get it to stick in my brain! I decided writing out the whole thing in letters and learning it by rote was the only way I could do it. As I began writing it, I spotted another pattern going on that was far easier to remember: if you look at the notes in pairs, they make a dominant 7th chords!
Let me show you what I mean. Draw a line after every two notes going through both staves. You get groups of 4 notes, 2 in the right hand and 2 in the left.
The notes in group 1 are: E C G Bb
The notes in group 2 are: Eb Cb Gb A
The notes in group 3 are: D Bb F Ab
Group 1 is clearly a chord of C7, and group 3 is Bb7. Group 2 doesn't seem to fit the pattern, until we re-write it using enharmonic equivalents:
Eb Cb Gb A is the same as D# B F# A
It's a chord of B7!
The pattern of line 1 is chromatically descending 7th chords, each in the 2nd inversion, over two octaves. This I had no trouble remembering!
This is the top line re-written, using enharmonic equivalents to show the progression of descending 7th chords.
When you get to Db7, you repeat the pattern and continue descending. The only difference is that when you play the Db7 notes for the second time you use a D natural instead of a Db.
So now we know the notes, what fingers should we use?? I've seen a few versions of this, and I'm sure there are far more sensible choices than the one I made. I prioritised memorability over practicality, and played 4-2 / 3-1 in both hands for the whole thing. It worked - I remembered it! Because I chose to do it the way I could remember it, I found it fairly quick to memorise it and build up the speed!
The best thing to do is to break it down into 4 smaller chunks and memorise each one, then try and put them together.
Part 2: lines 2 and 3
Now we've dealt with the really difficult part of the cadenza, it will start to feel quite a bit easier! It's certainly much easier to read, and there are a few finger pattern tricks that I found which made memorisation much easier!
This first part isn't too difficult, but I found playing the D and Eb at the start of the first ascending phrase, and subsequent Eb's with the left hand helped it flow really smoothly.
The next part is a repeating pattern of 8 notes, but it helps to think of them as pairs:
C - Db A - Bb F# - G E - F
Playing the F# - G pair with the left hand means your right hand can use a 1 - 3 finger pattern all the way down this run!
And that's it! You should have no trouble with the final notes of line 3. I hope this has helped save a few headaches!!
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