Pianistic Ancestry: Schools of Influence?

     I can claim to be a pianistic descendent of Beethoven. Yes, it's true. Not only that, my heritage travels through Czerny, Liszt and Chopin. (Blush.) But I wonder how informative such a claim really is, aside from the fact that I totally identify with the great masters' music and play it all with pleasure and awe.
    I grew up hearing about a so-called Russian School of pianism, a

Heinrich Neuhaus
1888-1964

French or German school. I never really considered what those designations intended to convey or whether it was important.

Sviatislav Richter
1915-1997

During the Cold War, we undergraduates came under the influence of the Great Sviatislav Richter or Emil Gilels, two dynamic and wildly contrasting Russian exports. I remember gushing to my teacher, Muriel Kerr, having just come from a Richter recital. She sighed and said, "If you must have a Russian god, let it be Gilels." (You can hear Kerr playing Scriabin Op. 8, No. 10, at the age of 17 in the Listen Tab above.)
    Richter and Gilels, both students of the legendary Heinrich Neuhaus, could not have been more different in the impressions they made on the audience. Richter

Emil Gilels
1916-1985

seemed interested in projecting brilliance and virtuosity boardering on the eccentric (Chopin Etude Op. 10, no. 4), whereas Gilels (Brahms Op. 116) seemed the more lyrical and "musicianly." Yet, they both had spectacular technical skill. They were graduates of the same "school" of piano playing, so I concluded that a "school" had to do with the mechanics of playing. 

   

Rosina Lhevinne
1880-1976
(with husband Josef)

 During my time at Juilliard, Rosina Lhevinne was the reigning queen of the piano department, hailed as a remnant of the Russian school. And yet, my friends in her class told me that she did not teach technique. She said as much: "Dear, I don't teach piano." In fact, she had American assistants, Martin Canin and Jeaneane Dowas, to tutor students who needed technical help. I don't know their lineage, other than that they studied with Lhevinne. (?) So much for my theory that a "school" meant the study of mechanics.

Ania Dorfman
1899-1984

     A school, then, must be something more ephemeral. Distinguished pianist Stephanie Brown studied with Ania Dorfman, who was born in Odessa but studied with Polish pianist Teodor Leschetizky (student of Carl Czerny) and French pianist Isidor Philipp (studied with George Mathias [pupil of Chopin] and Theodore Ritter [pupil of Liszt]). [Click on the link to hear her play Chopin Nocturne Op. 62, No. 2, recorded in 1938. Notice the robust tone

Teodor Leschetizky
1830-1915

and absence of misaligned hands.] Leschetizky, according to information handed down by his disciples, developed a "method" of "agility, especially on the weakest fingers." Books are available purporting to describe his "method." According to Leschetizky himself, however, "there is no fixed method and [I] specifically catered to [my] students' individual needs." According to legend, "Leschetizky's students are said to have certain similarities when playing the piano, such as

Isidor Philipp
1863-1958

their sitting position/posture and tone of playing." Philipp, on the other hand, published numerous exercises.
   Brown says that "teaching is the passing down of traditions." I wonder if she means something as specific as taking a certain rubato in a particular passage, or phrasing a certain way, or perhaps a particular quality of sound. All of these seem to me to be so personally variable as to be untenable. (In the world of opera, the handing down of traditions has more to do with adjusting the score to suit a certain soprano's particular skill set.) One critic wrote of Brown's playing that she has a "sound of her own and a distinctive artistic personality to match." Perhaps today we have become so internationalized that ferreting out the particulars of national schools is no longer possible, if it ever was.

    My connection to a distinguished past, one of them, comes

Moritz Rosenthal
1862-1946

through John Crown, who had been a student of Moritz Rosenthal in Vienna. Click on the link to hear Rosenthal's recording of Chopin's B minor Mazurka Op. 33, no. 4, recorded in 1935. Notice the delicacy and flexibility—if I knew the steps to the mazurka, I

Karol Mikuli
1819-1897

would get up and dance. Rosenthal claims interpretive authenticity from his studies with Karol Mikuli, Chopin's most influential student. Rosenthal also studied with Liszt. 
     Another student of Liszt, Emil von Sauer

Emil von Sauer
1862-1942

, recorded Chopin Etude Op. 10, No. 3, in 1928. The style seems to me to be quite "modern," rather straight forward and unfussy. Again, the hands are well together. 
    I think it is difficult to impossible to trace particular performance style or techniques from our time back to Beethoven with any precision, as much as we may want to romanticize this or that detail. This is not to suggest that we don't study and listen and try to get to the composer's intentions as best we can. But descendants of a particular point of view, it seems to me, tend to become their own points of view. Light a candle. Pour a glass of wine. Moon over a Chopin Nocturne. Enjoy. Identify with pianistic greats. But is any one pianist's interpretative approach more authentic than another? Well, I'll let you decide that. 
   

Dorothy Taubman
1917-2013

As for me, despite my distinguished lineage, I credit pianistic knowhow to the work of Dorothy Taubman, which I acquired from her and her chief disciple, Edna Golandsky. Taubman is not a method. It is not a style. Taubman did not invent these movements. She recognized and organized  principles of movement based on what the body was designed by nature to do. Having charge of these principles gives me the freedom to play music of the masters, yes, under the guidance of pianists who were guided by earlier pianists, who were guided by earlier pianist, who were guided...
     And of course I listen to historic and modern performances, all of which combines in me a concept of style that is at least as much a part of me and from me as it is an amalgamation of all those distant influences. Being even a small part of this continuum is wherein for me lies the joy of making music

A few more historic recordings:

Moritz Rosenthal (1862-1946)

Chopin Black Key Etude

Nine Chopin Preludes (1929-1935)

Chopin Nocturnes Op. 9.No. 2 and Op. 27, No. 2

Emil von Sauer (1862-1942)

Liszt la Campanella

(Slower somewhat more labored)

Chopin Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2

Liszt Concerto No. 1

Practicing with a Plan: Repost

The eternal question of how to practice, how to best use time, came up again the other day. Here is a repost of my general thinking: 

   A prospective student came for an interview explaining that even though he practiced, he felt there was little or no improvement. This, unfortunately, is a common woe. For this student, practicing was little more than putting in time. It does take time to practice, of course, but for progress to be made, the time spent must involve the brain, not just the fingers. Mindless rote has no place in our work. 

     

    It's remarkable to me how many pianists set about practicing without a plan. Their thinking, and I use the word loosely, goes something like this: play the piece, have a problem, stop for repetitions, play the piece. Instead—and I discuss practicing in detail elsewhere in this blog—in order to use the time efficiently and ensure progress, the student should identify the problems first. Then decide on the nature of the problem and solve it before engaging in repetitions. What specific movement will make the passage feel easy? What is the best fingering that will produce fluency and serve the music? This approach will cut practice time, at the very least, in half. Probably more. I promise. Try it.

    Remember, every time we play a learning process is taking place, whether we play correctly or incorrectly. Thinking is easy when we train the brain.

Grieg Concerto Cadenza: He Doesn't Mean It

Edvard Grieg

       I offer this post here now as a reminder to myself, well, all of us, that nothing should ever be assumed. On the one hand it's great to give the benefit of the doubt and let students explore on their own to see what they come up with. Sometimes, though, a simple word in advance can save time and effort. Sigh. But I know this. Really.

  A young student brought in the cadenza to Grieg's concerto (1868), proudly showing that he had carefully worked out the complex rhythms at the In Tempo Primo, where Grieg demands we play seven notes in the left hand against eight notes in the right hand. Not really. The composer is only kidding. It's a shimmering effect Grieg wants, not a rhythmic tour de force. As evidence of this, notice the admonition to play piu facile. Legend has it that Grieg was called the "Chopin of the North" by the great pianist-conductor Hans Von Bulow, all the more reason to take a poetic approach here. 

Grieg Concerto Cadenza as Written

   This student had indeed worked out a sort of alternating hand version of this passage, but he complained, understandably, that it "wouldn't go." I gave him my standard explanation that the score gives us the sound of the passage, not the feel of it in our hands. So, I offered the following practical revision. Notice the slight adjustment in the right hand thirty-seconds, one instance in which I agree with pianist-editor Percy Grainger. The effect of the right hand tremolo with the left hand arpeggios creates a vague curtain of sound, a musical impression of light filtered through mist. It is not meant to be clearly articulated.

Grieg Concerto Cadenza as Played

   After a bit of searching through my score library, I found my copy of the concerto almost where it should have been. It was  dated, well, never mind the date. I was fourteen, about the same age as this student. I showed him my very large and very deliberate  self-reminder scrawled across the top of the page in deeply indented graphite: S L O W   P R A C T I C E. My teacher probably made me put it there. It's good advice.

Grieg Concerto: Again Those Pesky Small Notes

   

Edvard Grieg

My student brought the effervescent slow movement of Grieg's concerto. He complained of difficulty with the pesante passage at letter B (Schirmer ed.), where rhythmic confusion reigned. (This, of course, is not the effervescent part.) We pianists sometimes get caught between  note reading and piano playing. We become enslaved to the notation.  Here is the passage as printed:

Grieg Concerto, Letter B as Written

   First, I said, play the passage without those grand-yet-annoying grace notes in the bass—in order to sense the basic three-eighths meter. This is already a little unusual. (Here we wandered a little off topic, as it became necessary to notice the melodic doubling in the tops of each hand.) Then, as always, our job is to give the small notes a place in time. Remember, just because the composer cavalierly tosses in some rhythmically unregistered notes—unaccounted for in the overall scheme of things—doesn't give us license to throw ourselves at the piano willy-nilly. We always have to tell our somewhat delinquent hands where and when to play. Give the grace notes a rhythm. This means they will borrow time from their preceding colleagues. Pedal with these bass notes.

Grieg Concerto, Letter B as Played.

   In an unrelated issue, in the preceding passage, the effervescent part, my student had heart palpitations trying to leap from the extreme treble to the lower bass with his left hand. We relieved considerable stress by combining the treble notes into chords in the right hand, which gives the left hand ample time to make its leap. 

Grieg Concerto, Re-divide.

Say it with me class: The score shows us what the music should sound like, not how it feels in our hands.

   You can listen to my favorite recording here, Dinu Lipati.

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New DVD: Piano Technique Demystified iDemos (and More)

  

    Offered now for the first time on DVD, are the mini-lessons, the technique demonstrations heretofore available only on YouTube. Find them first at CreateSpace; they will soon be at Amazon. This re-imagined and re-recorded no-frills collection of technical illustrations gets right to the point of each of the indicated musical examples in the book, "Piano Technique Demystified: Insights Into Problem Solving." Plus, this DVD includes additional demos not available on YouTube, including illustrations of selections from Chapter 30, "Fifty Teaching Moments." There is also a bonus preview of the sequel, "Mystified No More DVD" on the subject of Chopin's Etude Op 10, No. 3, the treacherous middle section. Watch the entire 84 minutes through, or skip around by chapters. Finally, a resource to hold in your hand and store for future use. No more dependence on the fragility of the internet.