Mazurka Op.39 No.10
Mazurka Piano solo ~3 min
In brief

This mazurka feels like a slightly springy dance, with irregular accents that alternate between brisk gestures and brief moments of melancholy. You will need to focus on phrasing (4.3/5) — here that means shaping the melodic line with micro-accents and subtle connections, using finger pressure and wrist rotation to give each motif its breath — and on dotted rhythms (4.3/5), which require a clear short-long separation achieved by precise wrist release and adjusting the finger durations rather than blunt articulation. Within Tchaikovsky’s output it sits among his short piano pieces, more in the salon-dance vein than in the large-scale concert repertoire. I do not have a reliably identified reference performance for this specific mazurka, so I will not name one.

MusicCoach difficulty
20/100
Beginner
Likely range : 10–29/100
Confidence : 65% · fair confidence
BeginnerIntermediateAdvancedVirtuoso
Exam grade
On the syllabus: Grade 2 ABRSM

Official level, taken from the exam syllabus.

Other syllabi : Trinity_London Grade 1

Difficulty estimate by MusicCoach on a scale of 1 to 100.

Where this work sits
050100

Most works cluster between 45 and 65: a small score gap often marks a real step. The highlighted bar shows this work among those for the same instrument.

The MusicCoach difficulty measures a work's overall demands (technique, reading, stamina) on a shared 0-100 scale, consolidated from editorial and pedagogical reference points (Henle, exam syllabuses, curation) and our own analyses. It measures neither musical value nor the practice time YOU will need: two musicians of the same level can experience the same work very differently depending on their strengths (hands used to octaves, quick sight-reading…). The confidence reflects how many reference points sit behind the score and how well they agree — a lightly documented score is flagged “to validate”. For a truly personal bearing, the diagnostic and your space compare each work to YOUR estimated level, which the score alone cannot do.

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Difficulty sources
ABRSM (syllabus)
Grade 2
20/100 normalised
Combined exam syllabi
Grade 1
12/100 normalised
Relative difficulty
4%
Among Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
9%
Era
40%
Genre
Estimated skills
Interpretation
Phrasing
1
Rhythm
Dotted rhythms
1
Rhythm
Tempo rubato
1
Technique
Legato
1
Technique
Staccato
1
What to play next?

Each suggestion combines difficulty gap, risk, confidence and skill overlap. The first two cards in each column are the most useful pedagogically.

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