Chopin's Sixth Prelude: Dream Cello

     Yesterday I found myself demonstrating for a student Chopin's dreamy "cello" prelude, number 6 from opus 28. The challenge here for pianists lies in the disparity between the two hands, coordinating a vertical, gently throbbing right hand with the long horizontal lines in the left, perfectly encompassing the cello range. 
      "Show me why it's a cello prelude," he demanded.
     

Man Claudiu cello from Stringworks

"I just did," I responded glancing up from the piano in time to see him pointing toward my cello in its cradle at the foot of the piano.
      "No, show me on your Strad."
      "Shhh," I responded. "Don't say that out loud."  I often referred to my Man Claudiu cello from Stringworks as a Stradivarius, sent to me by mistake, and I didn't want them to take it back. This cello has become such an integral part of my daily routine that I couldn't bear to part with it. Claudiu carved my cello himself in Italy from elderly spruce and maple, to which he added a light antiqued oil varnish. I'm sure he harvested his materials from the same Italian Alps as did the great Cremonese master.
      My student had a point. Why not show him what we as pianists try to imitate. My Claudiu has a very complex, rich sound, but as I began to play I saw on my student's face an expression very near a scowl. I couldn't have been that bad.
      "I can't even come close," he said. "It's such a singing sound, and when you change registers, well it's all of the same fabric. And legato!"
      Ah, yes. There's the rub. On the piano we can only create the illusion of legato by carefully placing each note in dynamic relation to the preceding one. I told him not to despair. We make up for our deficiencies in the legato department by getting to be the complete orchestra. 
     This was a lesson well-learned; there's something to be said for imitation. When he finished playing he looked longingly at the Claudiu. "Do you think Stringworks would send me a Strad by mistake, too?"

Looking Back: Jakob Gimpel

     If you have been following this blog, you will know that I hold in high regard artists of the past. It is on their shoulders we all stand. If nothing else, we can sometimes amuse ourselves by making connections, discovering stylistic trends or just enjoying remarkable playing—marveling at great facility captured before modern recording techniques began to homogenize taste. 
     

Jakob Gimpel

Polish pianist Jakob Gimpel studied with Eduard Steuermann, who was a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, and Alban Berg. Berg! He made his debut at the age of 17 performing Rachmaninoff's second concerto in Vienna with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Monteux. In the 1930s he emigrated to America for the usual reasons, settling in Los Angeles. In addition to concertizing and teaching, he  recorded tracks for classic films such as "Gaslight," "Possessed," "Letter from an Unknown Woman," "Strange Fascination," "Three Stories of Love," and, in his later years, "Mephisto Waltz." There were also two classic cartoons: "Rhapsody Rabbit," in which he played a comically disrupted version of Liszt´s Second Hungarian Rhapsody, and the Academy-Award-winning "Johann Mouse," in which a virtuoso Tom played Gimpel's paraphrase of the "Blue Danube" while Jerry danced. 

Franz Liszt

     In the link below Gimpel plays Liszt's "Waldesrauschen" and "Un Sospiro." Oh, did I say? He was one of my teachers at USC, and an inspiring one at that. His performance of Brahms' D Minor Concerto with the University Symphony was definitive. He took over Muriel Kerr's class after her sudden death the night before registration for the fall semester of 1963. One of my lessons occurred on the day JFK was shot, at the time news had just made it to campus. I found Gimpel in tears, beside himself with anguish. Needless to say, our lesson fell to the side, and  Gimpel began to relate his personal experiences of extreme politics, which included a hair-raising account of how he and his brother, the noted violinist Brontislaw (student of Carl Flesch and one-time concert master of the Los Angeles Philharmonic), escaped from Europe at the start WW II. 
    I find these Liszt performances notable for their directly expressive, no-nonsense approach. Notice how his hands move with fluidity and flexibility, a practice I now refer to as shaping. Notice, too, that with such large hands he could get away with fingering octaves, a practice I don't recommend—ever, for any reason. Period. I never heard him complain of discomfort, although in those days performers didn't speak of such things. His technical advice to me was to play honestly, which I now realize was his way of telling me to work for technical ease, in addition to precision. He had about him a certain warmth of expression, and in his manner what I would describe as old world charm. One doesn't find that much these days.

Gimpel Plays Liszt

Hands for the Piano: Chopin, Liszt and, Alas, Schumann

Chopin's left hand

     I've written before about hands. We all have the same construction, assuming there's been no unfortunate accident or disease. We all have the potential for careening laterally up and down the piano keys by means of the physiological components of our limbs. There are both advantages and disadvantages to larger or smaller hands. The larger hand may grab wide intervals more easily, but at the same time it can feel crowded among the black keys. In contrast, the smaller hand, though interval challenged, feels like a Volkswagen Beatle, darting in and around traffic.

Stephen Heller (1813-1888), pianist,
teacher, composer and student of
Carl Czerny

     There is, however, one possible genetic advantage worth mentioning as a matter of interest, although without this advantage we can still achieve virtuosity. Chopin famously possessed a certain skill often described as flexibility. It seems that his fingers lacked webbing at their base. According to Maurice Hinson, who had in his possession a plaster cast of Chopin's left hand, "I cannot detect any webbing between the fingers...[and] the most extraordinary feature of the hand is the wide spaces between the fingers, especially between the second and third fingers and even more so between the fourth and fifth fingers." The hand otherwise appears to be of average size. According to Adolf Gutmann, one of his students, Chopin's entire body was flexible. According to Hinson, "Stephen Heller spoke of Chopin’s slim hands—how they would 'suddenly expand and cover a third of the keyboard. It was like the opening of the mouth of the serpent about to swallow a rabbit whole.'" This is an image we can use, even without the genetic advantage, because we must open—and especially close the hands—in order to avoid the feeling of extreme exertion in extended passages.

Edward Dannreuther
(1844-1905). 

   

Liszt's hand

      Liszt's hands are likewise described as "long and narrow... [with] fingers that were famous for their connecting tissues starting absolutely below the base of the fingers, therefore making his hand like the 'opposite of  webbed feet.'" This according to the descriptive wording of Edward Dannreuther, German pianist, writer, piano manufacturer and student of Ignaz Moscheles.  Liszt's fingers were apparently slim but not pointed, and the size of his hands was described as average. The image shows a decidedly wide space between fingers four and five.
     Everyone at the time seemed inspired for virtuosity by the violin playing of Nicolo Paganini, the ill-fated Robert Schumann among them. Rumors abound even now regarding the attempts he made to

Dactylion, the sort of device Schumann may have
 used for "strengthening" his fingers, resulting
 in the end of his piano career.

improve his technique. One such attempt, well-documented, included attaching his fingers to an improvised device using a cigar box and some wire. It was intended to prop up his fingers while practicing, the idea being to strengthen them and develop independence. But instead, two fingers on his right hand were permanently injured. Schumann knew Chopin and Liszt and perhaps noticed the lack of webbing between their fingers. One study suggests that the cause of his irreversible hand-injury may have been the sepsis that occurred after performing surgery on his own hand, cutting the webbing between his fingers. 
     So, dear colleagues, we must endeavor to make the best of our genetic predisposition. If you have webbing between your fingers, don't despair. We have other means of achieving flexibility; we use our limbs according to their design and avoid extremes of motion. Besides, with bad genes we have yet another issue to blame on our parents. Take joy in that.

Chopin Étude Op 10, No. 1, My Favorite Fingerings: But Is This Cheating?

     

F. Chopin

Étude  is a French word meaning study. For pianists, this conjures the horror of hours and hours spent on mindless rote repetition, as in Czerny or Hanon and their international accomplices.   Over the years—centuries, even—this has come to suggest a means to an end: do this and it is a sure bet you will be able to do that. Torture your mind and body for awhile and we, the above-mentioned gang,  promise you will develop the skills required to play actual music. I'm not a betting man. Can you sense my skepticism? I hope so.
     Chopin's études are not studies in the above-referenced sense. They are instead concert pieces designed to showcase skill; they are not a pedagogical canon. It goes without saying, of course, that any technical issue in a piece of music is a learning experience, a study, if you like. So this begs the question, when I play a concert piece called étude, am I supposed think of it as a stepping stone to some other piece that I may or may not play later on? Am I to follow the fingerings imposed by the editor—even those offered by the composer, who has a very different skill set? I'm glad you asked. The answer is no.
     This reminds me of a passage I once read in an essay by the distinguished 

Sir Donald Francis Tovey

musicologist (and pianist) Sir Donald Tovey. He wrote apropos of Beethoven's gnarly Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106, that it is a technically difficult piece and is meant to sound that way, or words to that effect—his point being that one should not seek to make it feel technically easy. Sorry, Sir Donald. If the piece must sound difficult, I will find an easy way to do that.
     The sound of Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 1, is that of cascading arpeggios. The difficulty, if there is one, is that the cascades cover wide open spaces, encompassing a tenth or more at the outer edges. Standard triad fingerings are not always possible for the average hand, as these fingerings often feel like awkward stretches. The over-all technical approach to this concert piece has to do with an understanding of shaping and grouping. But some judicious re-fingering can make all of the difference.
     Here are some of my favorites:

Chopin Étude Op. 10, No. 1 MM 33-39

     

Many more similar opportunities for expeditious fingering exist. Look for them. This is not cheating.
     

Forearm Rotation: Just a Tool

     

     My student had experience of forearm rotation before coming to me and understands it quite well. He is an advanced pianist with considerable facility, though he is not happy with the way passages feel as he careens laterally up and down the keyboard.
     As I watched him play, I could detect what seemed to me to be extra movement, though it was very slight. When we discussed this, he explained that in speed he reduced the rotation to the smallest movement possible. Here lies the difficulty.
     There is often misunderstanding about this very easy, natural and essential gesture, a gesture that underlies all of our playing. When teaching rotation, the first concept I explain is that it is an underlying tool; it is not how we move—it is not what we think of—in speed. Its purpose is to teach the finger/hand/arm alliance what it feels like to complete each note in succession as if walking—transferring weight from finger to finger. The result is the sensation of being at rest at the bottom of each key. Notice I didn't say relaxed—some effort is required in order to stand on a particular note, just as it takes some effort to stand upright on our feet, though we can do both without feeling tension.
     Forget the rotation. Yes, in speed we no longer attempt to

exaggerate the rotation, particularly when moving stepwise as in a scale passage. We use a more general way to support fingers with the forearm. This is called shaping. We rely on the playing apparatus to remember the sensation of transferring weight, of walking note to note. (Look for demos in the tabs above.)

Reading About Piano Technique: Where to Start?

     A pianist in France wrote asking for suggestions on which of my books to read first. I was of course flattered that she had some interest. It occurred to me that others may have similar questions, now that I've exceeded my original plan and flooded the canon of rhetoric on piano study. Lest I be accused of deliberate obfuscation, I wish to register here that my intentions are in fact to illuminate.

     In order to learn about a natural, effortless way to play the piano from my point of view, you might find Piano Technique Demystified: Insights Into Problem Solving useful. If that seems compelling, then the new book, Mystified No More: Further Insights Into Piano Technique, would be a logical continuation. If you want to put into practice some of the ideas,

particularly that of practicing technique in repertoire instead of using exercises, then you could have a look at The Pianist's Guide to Practical Technique and The Pianist's Guide to Practical Scales and Arpeggios. And for those readers with a shorter attention span, I have a new feature article in the January/February issue of American Music Teacher titled "Practicing the Piano."