Chopin-Godowsky Étude No.1 “Waterfall“ (Caleb Hu)

Chopin’s No.1 has always been my favorite Chopin etude. It takes the simple chorale beauty of something like Bach’s C Major prelude and adds a bit of technical capsaicin. By extension, the Godowsky version is the same thing except with rocket fuel. I have to admit that I don’t think all the Godowsky etudes necessarily sound great (and that could be because many of them don’t have stellar recordings), but the very first one in the set has always struck me as brilliant. I think this is due to the fact that conceptually it’s very sound—you have the left hand mostly playing the right hand of the original, and then the right hand playing the same thing except in retrograde. And when the octaves come in at 0:47, isn’t that just glorious? This piece is absurdly difficult—I’d say around (8 ), or (8 ) if you choose to do all the octaves. Funny thing is that Godowsky writes in the footnotes that the measures starting from 1:05 “would sound more brilliant with octaves“ but he doesn’t actually write octaves in the score or even the ossia. I think Godowsky (with his smaller hands and lack of technical physicality) assumed that sustained octaves at tempo would be impossible, or at least too tiring on the hand. Another challenge is actually keeping time. There are ways to fudge those insane two octave jumps at the start of every measure (most performances do), but if you really want to keep a sense of the rhythm going expect a lot of work just to nail the second note. Luckily, the vast majority of difficulties are physical—it’s the pianistic equivalent of track and field rather than a more nuanced or strategy-driven sport. And there are some elements of this version that are easier than the original; not every note has to be crystal clear, since the effect here is this grand wash of sound rather than a flowing stream of notes. If we want to talk waterfalls, then the original would be Angel Falls while Godowsky’s is more like Niagara.