PIANISTS' PROBLEMS: Ask Questions, Part IV

    Now that I'm a teacher, I take pleasure in sharing my experiences with students, always mindful of what I experienced in those formative years. I encourage students to ask questions. A student came to me complaining of difficulty making these brilliant arpeggios sound evenly spaced in speed (Example 8). He had been organizing the 16ths in groups of four according to the pulses, as printed in the score, causing them to bunch together. His approach was further hampered by his tendency to isolate his fingers from his hand and forearm, forcing his much-maligned fingers to do all of the work. Technically, it is easier to group from the fifth finger, which occurs on the third 16th. It is often the case that notes moving in the same direction are grouped together and in this case, shaped slightly over on the way down and under on the way up as indicated by the dotted arcs.

 Visually, this shaping movement describes a flattened ellipse with no sharp edges. It is continuous and often mistaken for a wrist movement, though it is not initiated from the wrist. This shaping is a general way to get the forearm behind the finger that is playing, thus supporting it for maximum brilliance. Notice that the shaping is reversed in the left hand. These movements should be practiced slowly first and when mastered—that is, when they become second nature—gradually worked up to tempo. 

   Sometimes we have in our ear the sound of a work so entrenched that it is difficult to approach the score from scratch and find our own solutions, both technical and musical. The score is the composer’s message to us; it shows us what the music sounds like, not what it feels like in our hands. This means that we are free to re-divide between the hands, if it is more efficacious, or consider groupings that help us play with greater freedom. In Example 9, you can see how the composer indicates what he wants to hear. (The fingerings are from my student’s edition.) Notice the crowding of 5 to 1 (Bb to A) in the second measure, right hand:

  My student tended to rush measure 44, the alternating-hand figure, in anticipation of measure 45, which he had decided was impossible to play at the tempo he wanted. It is not unusual to experience this anticipatory hurrying, as if a lemming eager to leap over the cliff. I had to coax, beg and insist that he play that measure too slowly, excruciatingly slowly. Interestingly, when he played it too slowly from his point of view, what I heard was just about in tempo. 

   But first we asked ourselves if the fingering in measure 45 was the best possible choice. We considered whether, with a different fingering, the passage might feel freer with a regrouping into three groups of four 16ths, rather than the longer group of six. Here’s what we came up with (Example 10). Notice that we put the right-hand B-natural in the left hand:

   These changes made an immediate improvement in the execution of measure 45 and he was able to play it in speed. It would still have to be worked-in slowly and repeatedly, though, to make the changes secure. There remained the problem of rushing in measure 44, as that had been awkwardly worked-in at a faster than necessary tempo. We were reminded of the power of muscle memory. I convinced him to make a full stop at the end of measure 44 where you see the caesura. This made all the difference, saving the lives of countless lemmings.

  Here is a simpler example, a familiar piece so entrenched in the consciousness as to nearly obliterate its subtle technical requirements. Our pianist’s hands often find themselves called upon to provide melody and accompaniment, or part of an accompaniment, in the same hand, particularly in Romantic music (Example 11).

 The musical requirements are clear, but the techniques sometimes are not. If we think only in a linear fashion, as the lyricism of the melodic line demands, we can be hard put to organize that triplet fragment assigned to the right hand. So, if there's a problem—only if there's a problem—I separate the technique from the music by making a “line” out of all of the notes in the right hand, not just the melody notes (Example 12). Don’t be afraid to make a literal connection between all of these notes, yes, including the thumb, as if it were part of the melody. 

     

    Once this grouping is consistent, with an ever-so-light thumb, put it together with the other parts. Only then begin repetition training and gradually increase the tempo.

Next: Beware the Red Flag

PIANISTS' PROBLEMS: Your Playing is Dishonest, Part III

 Your Playing is Dishonest

      The distinguished Polish pianist Jakob Gimpel courageously agreed on short notice to take over Kerr’s piano studio that fall and most of the spring. Oblivious under-graduate that I was, his considerable fame had escaped my notice. Still, I had the opportunity to hear his powerful Brahms D Minor concerto in performance and derived profound inspiration from his class demonstrations. This is why when—in his most fatherly tone, mind you— he told me that my playing was dishonest, I shrank in shame. We had been preparing the Liszt concerto for performances with the Idyllwild Festival Orchestra on a tour in England and Wales and throughout our work to-gether he had been  supportive. He seemed to like my performance. What did he mean by dishonest? I left his studio in Clark House that day feeling like I had been accused of stealing the family silver. And of course it didn't occur to me to ask him what he meant.

It would be nearly a decade before I had gathered the information I needed to explain this and other questions from my youth. I became convinced that he was trying to tell me, in his particular way, to play more easily, to be in charge of the technique and not a slave to it. He might have had the following passage in mind (Example 4):

      Notice that here the right hand also seems to want to be in an extended octave position, and for a considerable period of time. Not only that, with the hand open, Liszt apparently expects the fingers to articulate downward, creating a pull against the octave stretch. I found this passage tiring and unreliable. But I could make it sound quite convincing—that is, on a good day with the wind behind me. 

      The solution is similar to that in Example 2. I change the grouping from the main pulses in the right hand to the “ands,” starting each group of four

on the third 16th, as indicated by the brackets. This keeps the hand in a relatively closed position, mak-ing the passage embarrassingly easy. Extra weight on the quarter note melody, along with an assist from the pedal, creates the melodic line. I am convinced Liszt knew all of this. He was no fool; he wrote this concerto for himself to play.

      Now look at the left hand in Example 5. I group from the thumb notes moving in the same direction, in a downward pattern, allowing the thumb to fall back to its next starting position. (Remember, the thumb falls naturally toward the body.) Now all that is left to organize is that pesky three-against-four pattern, which is neatly achieved by leading each unit from the left-hand thumb. 

      Had I known these techniques that fall, I would have slowly worked-in each bracketed unit individually first. That would have been the start of my repetition practice. Then I would have gradually increased the tempo, keeping the feeling of ease at each increase. Instead, in my ignorance, I beat the passage nearly to death with mindless, grinding repetition, hoping that it would all somehow come out in the wash.

   In Example 6 we have a simpler, more transparent version of the grouping principle. Here, too, lurks a danger of extending the hand—I have seen it often in the uninitiated—which can make evenness in speed difficult. Group the notes from the second 16th, ending the group on the next strong beat. (This, by the way, is also a musical grouping, per Bach’s notation.) When practicing, rather than stop on the thumb, allow it to nudge the fourth finger to land silently on the F-sharp, releasing the thumb from active duty. Then start on the F-sharp. Practice each unit this way, gradually increasing the tempo. This teaches the hand to let go and show it where it needs to be next. The rest of the groups enjoy the same treatment.

   Now look at measure three of example 6. Although the groups remain the same, execution of the group moving from beat two to three is much easier if, after the thumb plays A, it takes the angle indicated by the arrow. (Remember, the hand can be at any angle with the keyboard as long as it is straight with the forearm, not twisted.) This puts the thumb in the neighborhood of B, a place it needs to be in order to continue gracefully. Once these techniques become second nature at a slow tempo, they will gladly accommodate a gradual increase to performance tempo.

      Chopin also asks us to play groups of notes that do not conform to the metric pulse (Example 7). With Chopin, this is perhaps more usual than unusual in quick playing. Here, notes moving in the same direction gather together technically for ease of execution, beginning on the “ands” of the measure. The connection between groups—the last note of the first group to the first note of the next group—is quite easy, as it is always a neighbor.

   Notice that here too, as in the Bach example above, the angle of the hand figures prominently as a technical tool in order to accommodate the crossing of the thumb, which is crucial for the third finger as it moves to the thumb. As before, these concepts must be absorbed into the playing mechanism before repetition begins and the tempo advances. 

        I once played this etude for my teacher,

Gerhard Puchelt, at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. When I had finished, there was a long pause, after which he commented that “well, this is one of the easier ones.” I remember feeling a bit slighted at the time. He was right, though, because this—like all pieces—is easy when you know how.

Next: Ask questions

  

PRACTICING THE PIANO: Getting After That, Discovering the Mechanics, Part II

 Getting after that is more than throwing oneself reflexively at a difficult passage, repeating wild-eyed and muscle-bound over and over again with mindless abandon. (I exaggerate only slightly.) Perhaps I should say that "getting after that" is less than mindless abandon—or should be—because it is a calm and mindful process. 

Effective practice is always conscious, deliberate and anything but rote. Slow practice is essential; repetition is essential. What is missing, then, when the diligent student still finds the passage unreliable in speed? Why do some students instead of improving technically with repetition, even slow repetition, actually get worse, develop muscle tension or experience pain? The answer is simple: the student has not solved the particular technical issue. At a slow tempo almost any technique will work; in an adagio a broom handle will suffice. Nearly always in unsuccessful passages the student plays differently in speed than he plays at a slower tempo. The impediment to success is the lack of one or more precise movements that facilitate the passage in speed. We have to find out what techniques are required for speed and only then begin the working-in.

So, solve the problem first. Once the technical solution is clear, experience the mechanics consciously and deliberately. That is, repeat what is needed for speed at a slow tempo, gradually working into the desired tempo without losing the feeling of ease. Here is where Miss Kerr would have been at a loss had I asked her how to “get after” a passage—not because she failed as a teacher or lacked the requisite enthusiasm, but rather because most of these technical solutions were second nature to her from her prodigious childhood. Technical sensations for her were so familiar they would defy description. Imagine trying to explain the concepts of balance required for riding a bicycle or how to whistle. Can you describe how you walk or breathe?

I don’t remember now the exact passage, the one I was instructed to “get after.” Doubtless there were many. One of them might have been this section of the Liszt E-flat concerto (Example 1). This technical problem happens to be mostly about grouping notes to avoid an over-extended hand, as are most of the examples cited here. I remember drilling this over and over until, if it was a good day with the wind behind me, I could make it sound tolerably well. This occurs near the beginning of the finale and continues for many measures, pages even, virtually to the end of the concerto building momentum as it goes. Notice how the right hand seems to be in an octave position all of the time. Now consider the quick tempo. You are correct if you surmise that the danger here is the possibility, even the likelihood, that an uninformed, albeit eager, pianist might experience fatigue by keeping the hand too open for too long in an extremely extroverted finale. I call this enslavement to the notation, a phrase coined by Dorothy Taubman.

Now let's have a look at a possible solution. Notice that the hand will feel less open if each group begins not with the first triplet eighth, but rather with the second, the chord. I call this process technical grouping, which is not to be confused with musical grouping. The brackets indicate these groups. It is not necessary to cling to the quarter octaves, as the pedal can do that for us. If I had known all this at the time, I would have practiced those units individually before putting them in context and then worked up the tempo. Instead, all I knew to do was repeat—anything—over and over until, somehow it sort of worked, tired though I might be, as I loped amiably to the end. 

     In a potentially gnarly passage such as the one in Example 2, it is already an accomplishment to be able to identify groups of notes that keep the hand relatively closed. The next step in solving the mechanics of the passage is to decide how to move from one group to the next. I rarely use the word always, but, well, here it is. We always use the last note (or chord) of one group to propel us to the first note (or chord) of the next group. In Example 2, you can see that this involves moving from octave to chord or octave to octave. In order to illustrate the concept of connecting groups, I offer a simpler passage involving single notes (Example 3).

     My adult student brought Mozart’s “easy” sonata in C, K. 545, complaining of difficulty articulating 16^th notes evenly in the left hand (Example 3). He proudly indicated that he noticed these were just chords, which he could block together under his hand—five, one, five, one—but when he practiced for any length of time, his forearm tightened and the passage sounded “lumpy.” 

I gave him high marks for his theoretical analysis and then we moved on to the more practical matter of how to walk from one note to the next. By thinking only harmonically, which required extending his hand into an octave position, he placed all of his effort into fingers alone, removing the participation of his forearm. Noticing sonorities is an excellent first step, but he still has to play individual notes, albeit in manageable groups that don’t require the hand to remain extended. I showed him how to group from the second 16^th then allow his hand to fall back to the new starting note (see Example 3, in which the dotted arcs represent groups). Armed with this information, he was now ready to begin working-in the mechanics. That is, he was ready to begin repetition, gradually increasing the tempo.

Next: Your Playing is Dishonest

PRACTICING THE PIANO: Slow Repetition is Only Part of the Story, Part I

Get After That

Widney Hall USC, 1963

     It was my junior year of college, the first day of registration for the fall semester of 1963. I arrived early at Widney Hall eager to reserve my favorite lesson times with the great Muriel Kerr. The nineteenth-century clapboard house, normally throbbing with life, seemed eerily deserted as I waited outside the registration office. From behind the door I heard a chair scuff the well-worn floorboards and then came the sound of deliberate footsteps pacing. Just as I gathered the courage to knock—it was past the appointed hour—the door opened, tentatively at first, and then with a reluctant gesture the teaching assistant allowed me to enter. Without speaking, he waved at a chair next to the table where the calendar lay open, inviting, blank.

Muriel Kerr

    Always intimated by authority in those days, even by that of a lowly TA, I felt my face color as I pulled the heavy chair closer and silently picked up the pencil to begin studying miss Kerr’s offerings for the semester. When I considered later the events of that day, I wondered if the heat I felt at that moment, the coloring of my face and the slight tremble in my hand, had more to do with an intimation of what was about to happen than my inclination to be intimidated.

“We’ll do this later,” he said softly. “Miss Kerr died during the night.”

The TA continued to speak, but I didn’t really hear what he said. My mind flooded with inanities: I have counterpoint and orchestration every morning, so I need a later time; will the lessons be on the hour or half-hour; what had she meant when she said, “get after that?”

I adored and admired Miss Kerr. Her good-natured scolding could cheer up a downcast moment of perceived failure:  “What was that? Q-sharp?” For technique she assigned a weekly prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier. She was a musician’s musician, but she was a natural “doer” and not so much a “sayer.”

Her best advice to me if I fluffed a passage would be “get after that.” If you’ve ever heard the expression, “life is what happens when you have other plans,” that is exactly how I felt on hearing she was dead. I was shocked and saddened at the news, but I couldn't help making it about me. It had finally occurred to me during that summer, as the junior blues seeped into my consciousness, that now would be my opportunity to find out what she meant. I determined that this would be the semester I developed a completely reliable technique. What should I do to get after that passage? How should I practice it? Sadly, I never had the chance to ask her. I suspect, though, equally sadly, that she would not have known what to tell me, beyond what I already knew: practice the passage slowly and repeatedly.

Next: Discover the Mechanics

PIANISTS' PROBLEMS: That Mindless Lump of Flesh Known as the Thumb

    
    I know I sound like a broken record, harping yet again on the use of the thumb. (In the olden days, the days of my youth, a record was a disc made of PVC onto which sound was etched, and if it should be scratched, it would repeat itself.) But understanding how the thumb contributes to a fluent technique lies at the heart of our piano study. If I had to choose one aspect of piano playing to single out as the most important and most misunderstood, it would be how the thumb plays when asked to change hand location. This is often referred to as a thumb crossing, which is, sadly, misleading. Simply put, the thumb has two jobs when "crossing"—playing its note and propelling the hand rotationally to the new position.

     Have you ever heard young pianists attempt to play an even scale only to be thwarted by the crashing of a careless thumb into its note and causing a bump? The sound conjures the image of a wheel with a bulge on it—thumpety, thumpety. This is often a consequence of trying to tuck the thumb under the hand, thus pinning it to the palm and making it difficult to play without falling on it. 

        The thumb plays its note rotationally, the result of which throws the hand to the new position. These are of course tiny movements that in speed are virtually undetectable. (See above under "demos" for more about forearm rotation. Thumb crossing begins at about 4:35.) When practicing this movement very slowly, exaggerate the rotation. When descending in the right hand, rotate slightly past the desired note in order to turn back to it. Ultimately, there is in speed a gently undulating shape. Shaping is discussed elsewhere in these pages.

      This all sounds more complicated than it is. Do have a look at the demo.

PIANISTS GRIEG AND LISZT: Happy Meeting

      I came across this imaginative description of the legendary meeting of Liszt and Grieg in which Liszt sight reads Grieg's concerto. The meeting is documented in letters and was witnessed by students in Liszt's masterclass. Oh to have been a fly on the wall. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutOHXfD7kw