Question: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CMehB.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CMehB.png)

I am trying to play the accompaniement of a song but the last two bars seems impossible to me. I can reach an octave with each hand and no more. I don't think I should maintain the pedal either because otherwise the quarter notes get too long. What should I do?

Thanks in advance!

Answer: 
You have two options: ignore the quarter notes being too long and use the pedal, or don't use the pedal and let the octave Gs stop sounding immediately. Of course, there's actually a third option, which is to release the pedal sometime after the second beat, and this is probably what you'll do.

Whether you hold the pedal past the third beat will depend on your piano and probably to some extent on your soloist and the room in which you are playing. Decide when to release the pedal after experimenting enough that you can form an opinion about *what sounds best.*
This is where use of the **sostenuto** pedal comes to the fore. On a lot of pianos, there is a middle pedal - in Europe, it's often the *practice* pedal, which won't help, but in U.S. it's more likely to be a sophisticated damper control.

Rather like the sustain pedal found on just about every acoustic piano, it moves the dampers away from the strings, allowing them to continue sounding when the fingers are lifted. Except - it applies this *only* to any notes being played at the time of pedal press.

This means you can hold the dotted minim with the sos. pedal, and all other notes will get their own values.

Failing the existence of the sostenuto pedal, it won't really hurt to use the damper pedal (on the right) to hold those dotted minims anyway. Easier than getting an other hand(s) to hold them down for you!