Pianist Puzzler: What Was Bach Thinking?

     

Bach's Reaction to Schnapps

     Bach was a genius. Bach was a prolific genius. But I wonder if perhaps he and Anna had been sampling the Schnapps when he wrote this example.
     Here are your questions: What is it? Why did he write it? How do you play it? As soon as I get your answers, I'll be able to finish my book. (Just kidding.) Really. What was he thinking?

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     Puzzler answers will follow soon.

Bach On the Piano: What? Damper Pedal?

     

J. S. Bach.

It is rarely, if ever, necessary to use pedal in Bach. It can sometimes be a convenience, though, especially if you share my predilection for physical ease.  In this example from the Sinfonia No. 7, it is quite possible to 

Don't Do This.

simulate a reasonable legato with the fingering I've supplied. Fingerings by some editors suggest an even more extreme finger legato, requiring contortions usually reserved for circus performers. As much as I enjoy the circus, I prefer to leave it under the big top.

Sinfonia 7, M 5, Legato Sixths.

     You may have noticed  that when a finger is repeated, finesse is required to keep an illusion of legato. This can be accomplished by remaining very close to the keys and minimizing each gesture. However, this passage is an ideal example of how we may use the resources of the piano in order to produce an even more convincing legato. Yes, I speak of the damper pedal, but I’ll deny it if you tell anyone. 

Bach Sinfonia 7, M5, Syncopated Pedal.

     

It's the One on the Right.

Here are the uses of the pedal in Bach: add warmth or accent to a single sonority; provide a connective link in a leap. We must always be diligent in our efforts to avoid blurring sonorities. With this in mind, we may use a syncopated pedal to enhance the illusion of legato in this passage.

     The arrows indicate the direction of forearm rotation. For example, the second finger G-sharp in the alto sends the hand rotationally rightward, so that it may turn back into the sixth with four and thumb.

     When playing Bach on the piano, use the piano's resources. Don't try to imitate the limitations of the harpsichord. Expand. Grow. It will still sound like Bach. I promise.

Pianist Puzzler: Chopin Ballade in A-Flat My Solution

     

Chopin

When I was a college freshman, my teacher, Muriel Kerr, assigned Chopin's A-Flat Ballade. I was glad to play it, but hadn't a clue how to "honestly" negotiate passages like this. So, I just threw myself at them. Somehow I passed muster, but never felt really sure of myself. How did you do with your solution?

     In this particular passage, we have to ask ourselves first how the composer intends for us to play the small notes. We know from notations he made in students' scores that appoggiaturas are to be played on the beat. (See Howard Ferguson, Keyboard Interpretation.) Personally, I sometimes find this idea not aways the most musical of solutions. Here, however, it makes perfect sense. I play this as indicated below.

Chopin Ballade in A-Flat

     As always, when the composer gives us a group of small notes that are not accounted for in the overall rhythmic scheme, we have to decide what that rhythm will be and how to place those notes with the adjoining parts. This goes for arpeggiated chords that are indicated with a symbol, as in the left hand. Side note, the thumb

notes, the A-flats, may be taken with the right hand. This becomes even more of an issue later, when the intervals are more extended. The tied-over melody note will have decayed to such a point as to be inaudible anyway. Test this theory on your own piano to see if I'm right.

Pianist Puzzler: Chopin A-Flat Ballade

Chopin

Here's an easy one with at least two parts. But beware, there's a bit of a trick. (Hint: Howard Ferguson.) The solution will appear in these pages as soon as I figure it out. ;-)

Chopin A-Flat Ballade

Losing the Audition: A Road Not Taken

     

My student failed an audition. Failed was the word he used, but I tried my best to point out that it was just one lost job opportunity and that he was not himself a failure because of it. And just at that moment I understood yet again why it is important to study poetry in high school. Robert Frost's, "The Road Not Taken" popped into my mind. You know the one I mean. It begins:
  
         

Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
          And sorry I could not travel both

 and ends:              

           I shall be telling this with a sigh
           Somewhere ages and ages hence:
           Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
           I took the one less traveled by,
                                  And that has made all the difference.

     Frost relates his poem "with a sigh" not because the road he took was the wrong one, but rather because he could not take both. As we all know that's life. When choices are made—or in the case of a failed audition, made for us—we have to accept that something must be given up. The road less traveled, the one less fathomable, shall we say, turned out to have made all the difference.
     In summer of 1969 I was just out of the army and sending out feelers for work. One afternoon Gwendolyn Koldofsky, the accompanying teacher at USC, called to let me know that the great Jascha Heifetz was looking for a pianist for his violin class. I hadn't touched the piano in months, but, I thought, why not? His assistant gave me instructions to the effect that I should arrive exactly at the appointed hour at the entrance to his studio, not the front of the house, which I did. Needless to say, I was somewhat apprehensive, as we had had encounters before—pleasant enough—but I thought of him as perhaps just a touch on the severe side.
     

Jascha Heifetz

The master received me himself with reserved politeness and indicated I should take a seat at the piano. No small talk. First we played the exposition to Brahms' G major sonata. "Who have you played this with?" he asked. I told him I had toured a great deal with a German violinist. "They play too slow," he said. Then he put his transcription of Jamaican Rhumba on the rack and asked me to sight read it with him. This seemed to impress, as he quizzed me again on whether I was really sight-reading. (I was.) Next he pulled out the Tchaikovsky concerto and asked me to start with the orchestral tutti. I arrived at the violin solo entrance, which he played all the way up to the top, where he stopped suddenly. Then Heifetz, perhaps the greatest violinist in the world, looked me straight in the eyes and said, "I never could play that." 
     I didn't get the job. If I had, I would not have been free to accept engagements in New York the following January and my first professional tour. These engagements were the beginning of not only an unimagined road, but also an unimagined redevelopment of my craft. The road I chose—the road that chose me—turned out to have made all the difference. I didn't get the job, but I got a life—not to mention a nice little anecdote.

Pianists in Performance: What Should I Think About?

     Have you ever experienced in performance what I call mind

chatter? This is an interruption in the logical flow of musical thought. It can occur without even noticing; the focus of the playing seems intact, but there is some peripheral distraction. This is akin to being in a theater thoroughly entranced by a film, yet at the same time aware that someone has come in and sat down next to you.
     
     This concept came up the other day during a lesson in which the student found herself caught somewhere between reading the score and playing from memory. I pointed out that memorizing was the surest way to make the music a part of her psyche. It does not matter in performance whether the score is present or not. But if it is present, the player has to know when and where to look, where on the page is the passage in question. This, then, becomes part of the thought process. 
     The great harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, a musician who many thought had a direct line of communication with Bach in the great beyond, was once being interviewed by some eager young

Wanda Landowska

admirer. "Oh, Madame Landowska, when you play I feel the presence of Bach himself. The music speaks to me in such a special way. Tell me, please, what do you think about when you perform?" To which the great lady replied, "The notes, dear, the notes."
     Well, yes, first the notes. But probably not in isolation. The notes are connected to an idea of their relationship to one another and to some concept of how smaller ideas add up to the whole of the piece. When we sit down to play, we must start with the big ideas. In speed, it is impossible to conceive of individual notes. It is better to be like the orator who speaks off the cuff, who embraces his audience with his full attention and speaks warmly and enthusiastically of the big ideas he finds compelling, rather than the public speaker who, not really wanting to be there, reads with precision from a printed speech. Of course, in addition to being inspiring, we pianists are required to be precise, too.
     Once when performing the fugue in Beethoven's Op. 110 sonata, I became aware, suddenly, that in addition to feeling the mounting excitement of the passage, I heard an inner voice chanting, "come on, Beethoven." This was a sort of cheering section, encouraging me on to victory. This had never happened before, but I suspect it had to do with an underlying apprehension of playing a fugue from memory, even though I had already done it many times. I'm happy to report that we were victorious, Beethoven and I.
     Every performer is different, just as each occasion can inspire different results, I think it comes down to this: Whatever we can latch on to that keeps us in the groove, that keeps us focused on the expression of the music, that is fair game; whatever works. But beware the voice that asks what's for supper. Slap him down and get back to the matters in hand.