Étude Op. 25 No. 11, "Winter Wind"

ComposerF. Chopin
Notes3,172
Length3:07
Peak density20.6 notes per second
Average16.9 notes per second
Hand split66% right, 34% left
Tempo74 bpm
Difficultytier 4 of 5, bigger chords, no rapid shifting
In Klavieropaid
Piano roll of Étude Op. 25 No. 11 "Winter Wind": all 3,172 notes plotted over 3:07, right hand in cyan and left hand in magenta.
The actual chart. Time runs left to right across 3:07, pitch bottom to top, right hand cyan and left hand magenta.

You need a MIDI keyboard and Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Opera on a desktop or laptop. Not Safari, not iPad, because Apple does not support Web MIDI. Full requirements.

One hand does two thirds of the work

3,172 notes over 3:07, peaking at 20.6 notes per second. The number that tells you what this piece is, though, is the split: 66 percent of those notes are in the right hand.

That is the most lopsided distribution of the twelve pieces with a page here. Compare Clair de Lune, which is close to an even split, or the Turkish March at 54 percent. Chopin wrote this as a continuous chromatic gale in the right hand over a march in the left, and the arithmetic says exactly that.

You can see it in the piano roll without being told. The cyan band across the upper half of the picture is dense and unbroken. The magenta underneath it is sparse and regular, a steady tread. Two completely different jobs, played at the same time.

Why the hand-split mode matters more here than usual

On most pieces, learning one hand at a time is a convenience. On this one it is close to the whole method, because the two hands are not two halves of one problem. The left hand is playable early. The right hand is the étude.

So take the right hand alone and let Klaviero play the march underneath. You get the harmonic context you need to hear whether you are in the right place, and you spend all your attention on the only part that is hard. That is not a shortcut, it is what an étude is for.

The tier is 4, not 5

At 20.6 notes per second Winter Wind is denser than the Fantaisie-Impromptu and nearly as dense as Flight of the Bumblebee, yet it lands at tier 4 rather than 5. The chords get large but the hands do not have to leap between positions the way La Campanella does. It is fast, not scattered.

If this one lands

Un Sospiro, Liszt4,144 notes · 4:08 · peak 31.4 n/s
Étincelles, Moszkowski2,914 notes · 2:30 · peak 22.9 n/s
Fantaisie-Impromptu, Chopin3,050 notes · 4:31 · peak 18.3 n/s
Play Winter Wind All 315 pieces