You, the Listener

Last night I played, for the first time in my life, Schumann's Scenes of Childhood.  I have never enjoyed listening to it, except for the live recording of Horowitz's last Vienna recital, which I tuned into by accident one afternoon.  So it was as much a test of my listening as of my playing.

Everyone here participated in the listening, most unmistakably.  In allowing those fragile sounds to penetrate fully, each on its own terms, I was sharing with each person the power of paying undivided attention to music at its purest--i.e., never before listened to, completely fresh, and not to be repeated.

In thanking the audience I was expressing gratitude that they would come into an intimate space and allow themselves to be absorbed in a performance that would be impossible in a concert hall, and that cannot be accessed by flipping a switch.

Save the Best for First

The general assumption behind piano lessons is that the notes have to come first--actually, the beat has to come first, followed by the notes, the right ones.  Only after laying down the law does "expression" come up as an extra-added-on, arbitrary aspect of the music.  By this time it more likely conforms to the teacher's idea of how the music goes than to the child's spontaneous feel.

It doesn't have to be this way: Touch, the most expressive aspect of piano playing, can be the starting point if finger technique (based on a generalized notion of the mechanics of the hand) is reserved for a time when the fingers are large enough to fit on the piano keys without canceling out the hand's sensitivity.

Busoni was right to maintain that technical exercises should be given out like toxic medicines.  This is as true for the beginner as for the advanced player. 

After a recent recital in California, I received some praise from the audience on my legato touch.  I believe that legato comes from ear sensitivity to overtones, directly reflected in touch.  This is a proper starting point for children and a source of lasting satisfaction to all who listen to them play.

Recital Schedule October - January

Continuing the in-house recitals celebrating now two things:

• Full recovery from hand surgery in 2007

• Newly rebuilt piano action restoring my Mason & Hamlin 2012 grand to its full magnificence

And celebrating also the affinity of Dvorak with Schubert:
Four programs each featuring a Schubert sonata along with Impromptus, Moments Musicaux, and
works by Dvorak: Dumka, Scottish Dances, Humoresques and miscellaneous pieces
Second Saturdays and Third Sundays
October 13             October 21      Schubert Sonata in E-flat, Op. 122
November 10         November 18                 Sonata in A minor., Op. 42
December 8            December 16                  Sonata in G, Op. 78
January 12              January 20                      Sonata in B-flat, Op. post.

E-mail me for more information.

Not for YouTube

Why don't I post a YouTube video of my students playing?  Interesting question.

It is impossible to video-tape what happens in a room when people are totally listening.  My students totally listen to one another; they totally listen to themselves; they command attention.   They grow in devotion to their own and to each other's playing out of knowing that they listen and that they are listened to.

It sounds so simple, yet the word "listen" is not easy to define.  I have had to learn how to do it in order to reach the creative core of the children I teach.  No two of them are alike; therefore I must learn to hear them as the individuals they are.

I recall asking an esteemed colleague when I was a young teacher why piano students were not taught to listen.  "It takes too long." 

For Children

Someone asked me a wonderful question yesterday morning:  What is the difference between a piece written for children and one written for adults?

The question is profound.  Good compositions for children open the way to fantasy, to fascination, to complex and rich responses touching the realm of dreams or fairy tales. Compositions for adults have, as a rule, some conceptual interface between composer and player--structure, perhaps, or historical context. 

With children sound goes right to the heart and no heart is more open, more vulnerable, more deeply involved than that of a child.

Scales, Touch, and the Ear

First a brief description of another long-time student: This young man is a graduate of School for Visual Arts, a distinctly creative computer animation artist who has been improvising consistently since the age of seven; he scores and performs piano in his films.

Recently we have been concentrating on Clementi's Preludes and Exercises: a brilliant compendium of studies in the sound and feel of the piano's tonal specificity.  Yesterday it was a question of exercises based on the E-flat major scale.

I do not teach scales as routine formulaic affairs--they are much too important to be relegated to the boredom bin.

It was moving to hear him unearth the expressive beauty of this scale, to listen as he found its awkwardness "interesting."

Reading Old and New

First a brief description of my very astute long-time student: Graduated from business school, employed in the fashion industry, no time to practice piano but deeply responsive to every sound, working on Bartok For Children Vol. I.

Today I showed her a facsimile of some Clementi and asked her to tell me what she sees.  Answer: A lot of information tightly packed onto the page.  Then she observed something I have been trying for years to put my finger on.

She said that a person reading at that time must  have been able to process a lot of information, unlike the reading that she is doing in the Bartok.  Then it hit me: An 18th-century player with sufficient keyboard skill to play Clementi would have had experience at the harpsichord on which single tones do not resonate, but on which many notes are required to give a satisfying sound.  On the piano, however, the reverse is true: A single tone gives off such an amazing array of information that a single symbol connotes infinitely more than the corresponding symbol on an 18th-century page.

This is why it matters so much that reading be learned in terms of to auditory experience.