Franck: Prelude -- hindsight

I did not think much of this prelude since was the easiest piece, but knew many masters play this with deepest seriousness. Learning of this piece turned out to be quite difficult as usual. I found that the pedal can be used at the timing of the second finger of right hand, which was in charge of the melody rather that of bass (left hand). This can produce clearer melody line with more control over the first tip of each note. If I had known this I would have experiment the pedaling in the "reminiscent" part in the Fugue. Similar to the choral, this prelude offers the problems of pedaling. I went for the blurred chords, arpeggios, ... Almost. There is a stretta passage in h minor near the end. I could not resist the desire of showing some agility by using a very thin pedal. Katchen played as if something was bursting out. Rightly Cortot anticipated the urge of pianists and wrote against showing virtuosity at that part. My version, I hope, is decent. For this great piece of work, I studied backward from Fugue. Fugue is the core of the piece, which is however, the easiest part to start with because of technical nature. If you know fugues by Bach, you can disentangle the counterpoint in Franck's fugue also and play anyway. I was adjusted to vague colors of chords in Fugue, and then moved to choral and prelude. If this preludes sounds right, it is owing to my bitter struggles with the other parts of this masterpiece.

I am happy about this achievement of (at least) studying Prelude, Choral and Fugue. Let's continue!