Help with Rachmaninoff's Moments Musicaux no. 4?

Question

Since first starting to learn the piece, I've been having trouble with the end of the first run on the left hand, specifically the first 3 notes of the last 6 notes (C# C B C Bb B). For those notes, I use the following fingering: 2 - 3 - 4 - 1 - 3 - 2.

The trouble I'm having is with the 2 - 4 - 3 bit, where my 4th finger feels really week when I play it fast, and I have to focus a lot to make the note noticeable.

So my question is: are there any "tricks", drills or techniques that I can use to overcome this?

Answer 1

If you don't like using your 4th finger, don't use it!

Finger it like what it is - a chromatic scale. So the last two groups would be

    E | D | C# | E | C# | C | C# | C | B | C | A# | B   
    1   2   3    1   3    1   3    1   2   1   3    2
or  1   2   3    1   2    1   2    1   2   1   3    2

You will probably find 3 on all the C#s feels better than 2 - if you have practised your scales enough!

Personally I would probably use 1 on the final B, not 2 - but the first thing I do with all fingering instructions that were written by an editor, and not the composer him/herself, is ignore them! I find it's much 1 - 3 to play "powerful" passages like this (presto and ff) with 1 and 3 rather than 1 and 2.

EDIT: for some stupid reason, the forum sometimes converts my "unformatted block text" into guitar fingering diagrams! In case it keeps converting, here's the fingering as an image...