My Latest Fad

I got my Chopin-Godowsky CDs (Godowsky: The Complete Studies on Chopin's Etudes) in the mail on Monday. Actually, it came a lot faster than I expected. I ordered through Amazon, along with a bunch of other stuff, but I found that some seller was offer the same item for a lesser amount. And what do you know, I ordered last Wednesday and the CD is already here. Meanwhile the rest of my stuff, ordered through Amazon-proper, was picked up by UPS just this afternoon.

I first heard about the Chopin-Godowsky etudes about 2.5 years ago, through some music forum online, where people were talking about some of the "hardest" piano pieces. Even after all this time, I haven't been that successful in finding MP3s of Godowsky's stuff. So, while I was making my big order on Amazon last week, I decided to get the CD set for Godowsky's transcriptions of Chopin's etudes.

What's so interesting about these CDs? Well, basically someone (Leopold Godowsky) took Chopin's 24 etudes and created his own etudes off of these. [FYI, etudes are basically studies for people who are excellent already.] He was a real fanatic about keyboard fingering and tried to make these exercises "better". In fact, 22 of the 57 Godowsky etudes are written for left hand only. Godowsky was crazy enough to take Chopin's two-handed etudes and rewrite them for only the left hand. When you listen to these pieces, you'd think that two or three hands are playing the music! I don't think I'll ever be good enough to play one of these suckers with both of my hands. Anyhoo, now I'm just rambling like a maniac. =P

For a really detailed biography of Leopold Godowsky, check out:
http://www.godowsky.com/Biography/bio.html