Piano Fingering for Mirrored Phrase

Question

I have encountered a piece of music wherein a phrase that is played in the right hand at the start of the song is played in the left later on.

The phrase in the early part of the song is:

Then, later in the song, we see the bit that was in the treble clef in section A now in the lower of the two treble clefs in section D. There's a new motif being played on top.

Is there some technique to map fingering from right hand to left, to make it easy to play the music in the left hand once you have learned it in the right? Or in this piece would it be recommended to cross hands and continue to play the original phrase with right hand, and now play this new motif on top with left hand?

It's a fairly simple piece, so relearning the phrase with left hand fingering wasn't difficult. But I have encountered far more challenging sections where the same thing happens, and I am curious to know if there is some more efficient way to approach it.

Answer 1

This question and its answer is pointing out a crucial point, why making music and especially playing piano is so beneficial for the independency of the two hemispheres of our brain!

You should practice figures and ornaments or melodic motifs in both ways, parallel and opposite movement that the fingers and the hands know what to do that you just can switch a “button” that tells them which direction they should play.

You can practice this playing scales and triads in parallel and opposite movement, also as canons, also playing songs or motifs in canon or in different keys, e.g. C-major and F-major.

You can also try to male a drawing with both hands guiding parallel or opposite: mirroring horizontal (symmetric).

Even when our hands and fingers are not symmetrical we can train our mind and fingers that we can profit from the fact that one voice is mirroring or imitating the other. I always try to find fingerings that use analogies of the fingering of the other hand, sometimes there is just one point or one pattern that serves as bridgehead or as anchor to remember the progression of the motoric movement.

The final aim is that the fingers find the keys and the notes find the fingers just when we mind a specific movement thinking or singing a certain tune. But your questioning is a milestone on the way to this goal.

Inventions by Bach or a fuge of any composer will train this advantage and profit of this skill. Also in your example you’ll find a solution (or more than one) that will affirm your supposition. (e.g. using the fingers 1 and 5 for the highest and lowest notes of the phrase, or mirroring passages 12345 and 54321 or triads 135 and 531 aswell as the fingers 2 and 4.

A simple technic would also be to play the identical passage with both hands unisono: Section A: r.h. bars 1-3 together with l.h. bars 4-6. It is possible to play this phrase parallel using the fingers r.h 1/5 and l.h. 5/1 interchangeable as well 2/4 and 5/3 with 1/3 etc.

Answer 2

I'd stick with r.h. for the tune, and cross arms. That way, it'll sound the same both times more easily, and will look quite clever too! The l.h. part is only octaves on the same note, so not difficult crossed. You could probably learn it both ways - it wouldn't hurt.