Challenging traditional practices at the piano

By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | June 20, 2022

There are certain habits of piano practice which are ingrained in us from an early age and which have become a form of “piano dogma”. As young piano students, we may accept these practices without question, trusting in our teacher’s seniority and greater knowledge – and the assertion that these activities are “good for you”, that they will make you “a better pianist”. These include scales, arpeggios and other technical exercises (Hanon, Czerny etc), separate hands practicing, slow practice and use of the metronome. Many of these practices come from theorists, lesser musicians, traditional teaching, and exam boards, who perhaps exert far too much influence on what is “good practicing” rather than actually listening to active musicians who have formulated their own ways of doing things which reflect the realities of learning and performing music today.

Scales, broken chords and arpeggios

These are generally considered an essential part of the pianist’s practice regime, still seen by many as the path to superior technique. By the time the piano student is approaching Grade 8, they will have learnt scales and arpeggios in all the major and minor keys, plus various permutations such as scales in major and minor thirds and sixths, octave scales and arpeggios, chromatic scales (also in thirds), dominant and diminished seventh arpeggios, and contrary motion scales and arpeggios. Scales and arpeggios have a use – they teach us about keys and key relationships.

But, like the technical exercises devised by Hanon et al, scales and arpeggios are generally mechanical exercises used to build greater finger dexterity, independence and velocity. Although one can practice such exercises in a musical way (fluctuating dynamics, different articulation or rhythms), in my opinion, they are fundamentally unmusical.

How often are you required to play a full four-octave arpeggio or scale in major thirds in a piece of music? Sure, we encounter many scale and arpeggio patterns within pieces but these are devices to illustrate the drama and narrative of the music or to create specific effects (a descending chromatic scale can be darkly, spookily dramatic, for example). You may have practiced octave scales in a book of exercises but the test is whether you can play them musically in the context of real repertoire.

Not scales, never. Exercises, never….. I worked on pieces. Then if that didn’t work, I’d work on individual passages.

~ Martha Argerich, in an interview with Charles Dutoit

Separate Hands Practicing

This is one of the “holy grails” of piano practice – perhaps the holy grail! – that we should learn the music hands separately first and then bring the hands together. This was how I was taught as a young piano student and many, many students have the benefit of separate hands practice drummed into them from their early years to conservatoire level.

There are many occasions when separate hands practicing is very useful; but there are also occasions when separate hands practice is less helpful or even a hindrance to learning. Sometimes it is necessary to hear the complete harmony of the music or to have the foundation of a bass line or melody to support the other hand.

Slow practice

Another holy grail of piano practice! Like separate hands practice, there are occasions when slowing the tempo right down can enable us to manage a tricky section, get the notes learnt and under the fingers before speeding the music up. Slow practice also allows us to hear details in the music (but only if you are actually listening while practicing – and you’d be amazed how many pianists, including advanced or professional pianists, don’t listen to themselves!). But if you always practice the same passage at below tempo, the procedural (“muscle”) memory will find it harder to cope with playing at full tempo. In reality, tempos should be able to work both too slowly (a musical challenge) and too fast (an efficiency challenge).

Practicing with the metronome

Tick tock tick tock tick tock…..The insistent tick of the metronome is one of the abiding memories of my childhood piano lessons; my teacher made me play scales to the beat of a metronome. It was pretty hellish, but I submitted anyway. As a result, my scales were fluent, accurate and even.

The metronome can be useful in helping you establish a clear pulse, but practice too much or too often with that insistent tick and your playing may become overly mechanical without the necessary nuance of tempo which adds ebb and flow to music.

I’ve observed a certain metronome addiction amongst some student and amateur pianists: nearly all exam repertoire comes with a suggested metronome speed – note suggested. Yet some people believe they will be marked down in their exam performance or play the music incorrectly if they don’t adhere exactly to the metronome marking. It’s often worth pointing out that the metronome wasn’t invented until 1815; before that time musicians relied on an innate sense of pulse and an understanding of what tempo was appropriate for directions such as allegro, largo or adagio, for example – and that’s what we should all aim for. By all means use the metronome to get a feel for the pulse in the music, but don’t become addicted to it!

A music-led approach

While I may employ all of the above activities in my own piano practice, I have found that a “music-led” approach allows me to practice more productively and, importantly, enjoyably. The first teacher I had when I returned to the piano as an adult after a 25-year absence encouraged me to create exercises out of the music I was learning – a far more useful tool than turning to boring, mechanical exercises. There is so much beautiful music out there for us to play and a Bach Prelude, for example, can offer far greater technical and artistic challenges than a book of exercises by Hanon.

Don’t be afraid to look for alternatives and to experiment with practicing. Fundamentally, it’s about finding an approach that works for you as an individual, rather than a “one size fits all approach”.

You should diligently play scales and finger-practices. There are many, however, who believe they’ll achieve all, by practicing daily on technique for hours on end, up till high age. It’s like practicing every day to enumerate the alfabet faster and faster. One would think one could make better use of their valuable time.

~ Robert Schumann

This article first appeared on my sister blog A Piano Teachers Writes….

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A Breathless Epic of the Great Romantic Pianists

By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | June 14, 2022

Guest review by Michael Johnson

International Acclaim: One Piano, Eight Hands is a factional novel by Michael Lawson told by an omniscient narrator who slips seamlessly in and out of anonymity as the action unfolds. Four generations of the talented but fictional Steinfeld family parade through the plot, performing in the piano’s golden age, the height of the Romantics. Many of the greats appear – Rachmaninov, Godowsky, Taneyev, Siloti, Hoffmann, Medtner, Moiseiwitsch, Friedman, Gabrilowitsch, Blumenfeld, Schnabel and one of Lawson’s own teachers, the “tender tyrant” Nadia Boulanger.

Readers must be on their toes as 68 characters rotate to keep the narration spinning. Lawson’s knowledge of 19th century Europe through his Polish ancestors enrich the story, notably with several scenes of terrible tragedy – fictional injuries in fires, psychological conflict, the near extinction of the family name in a Polish pogrom, and finally the death in public of the latest family star, Daniyal.

This novel is nothing short of a Tolstoian epic.

Author Lawson is up to the task. He is an accomplished pianist and composer, retired archdeacon of the Church of England and author of some 14 books. Rounding out his career, he is also a trained psychotherapist who has worked with several pianists, including child prodigies. He brings all these strands together in a breathless story.

“I am and always have been fascinated by the great Romantic pianists,” he tells me in email exchanges over several days. It shows.

Originally inspired by accounts of virtuoso Simon Barere’s death in 1951 at a Carnegie Hall recital, Lawson says he “knew how the novel would end but not how it would begin”. The story occupied his attention for some 40 years, the last six months of which were dedicated to non-stop research and writing six days a week. For easy reading, he has structured his story in five ”movements”, each consisting of several brief chapters, some only two pages long.

He takes interesting detours to fill in backdrop of the environment – the German bombing of London, the pogrom in Lvov (now Lviv) in 1918, Jewish family life, piano competitions and the history of the piano. The subtitle takes its name from the fictional four generations of virtuosi – imagining his main players, Abramczyk, Aleksander, Daniyal, and Kovi making music together, on one piano, eight hands.

Lawson brings in a sub-theme of exceptional interest, the phenomenon of the child prodigy, an accident that he estimates occur once in five or ten million births. He invokes his therapeutic expertise to warn of over-praise of prodigies from family and the public. “Can a child ever receive too much love? … We are now discovering that sustained exaggerations of esteem from parents or any circles of admiring approval can be harmful.” (It) can inhibit the growth of a healthy and robust, self-critical super-ego.”

The great teacher Leschetizky carries on, cautioning that an “excess of applause at an early age may help cerate unhealthy performance appetites in later life”. Audiences sometimes help create such the prodigy, and, adds Lawson: “ … some will flock to see a child perform as they might jostle for the best seat at the circus.” Aleksander’s parents stepped in to slow the process. They decided that he would not undertake public concerts until his seventh birthday.

Lawson’s career at the piano also translates into some of the more dramatic passages in the repertoire. Discussing Chopin’s Etude No. 11 op 25 (“Winter Wind”), he writes of the pianist’s intense concentration in the slow theme at the outset. “Then, like an exploding volcano, a tumultuous cascade of sixteenth notes erupted from the top of the keyboard; the left hand leaping in punctuation fury, driving forward the rhythm of the raging wind and sudden lighting flashes, and the final theme, bringing Chopin’s death-defying Etude … to its breathless conclusion.”

(performed here by Yulianna Avdeeva):

Lawson takes a swipe at pianists whose acrobatics onstage “let us know they have danced with death and prevailed”. “Their shoulders rise and fall with their heavy breathing, their hands run maniacally through their tousled hair (and) they practically swoon there on stage in front of us.” He adds that Franz Liszt was the inventor of this “bizarre behaviour”. Many of today’s prominent players have gone further. Lang Lang, for example, wears makeup and winks at the audience between swoons while bouncing on the piano bench.

Family life is enlivened with the joy of Jewish humour and culture. At one point, Aleksander receives in the post an invitation to perform with the New York Philharmonic. The family and guests burst into a singing, dancing version of the popular Russian folk song “Kalinka My Kalinka” gradually ratcheting up the tempo to breakneck speed.

The dance is performed here:

The text is peppered with tips on piano performance, one of which is the need to practice relaxing. “Remember that tension is the enemy,” Lawson writes. “It squeezes glue all over the keyboard and in all kinds of ways gums up your playing.”

Critical reception to the novel has thus far been favourable, as has reader reaction. One reader wrote to Lawson that the connections and convergences in the plot are “so beautifully written, it brought me to tears.”

I know of no other writer who can draw on such a varied and pertinent background and weave them into a single tale.

Why did Lawson set himself the monumental task of researching and writing this epic? This book might seen as swan song or a cathartic exercise, but Lawson disagrees. He considers it it as “a celebration of music, musicians, and the creative spirit that animates my present and future.” I totally agree.

International Acclaim: One Piano—Eight Hands by Michael Lawson is available from Amazon.

Michael Johnson is a music critic and writer with a particular interest in piano.

He has worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is a regular contributor to International Piano magazine, and is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux, France. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

Michael Lawson is a Psychotherapist, Composer, Writer, Film Maker and Broadcaster. His varied career began in music as a composer and concert pianist in the early seventies, having studied with the great French teacher Nadia Boulanger at the Paris and Fontainebleau conservatoires, with the British composer Edmund Rubbra at the Guildhall School of Music, and at Sussex University with Donald Mitchell, the leading Britten and Mahler scholar. His piano professors were David Wilde and James Gibb.

Repertoire in Focus – ‘Nocturnus V’ by Richard Pantcheff

By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | June 6, 2022

This atmospheric piece for solo piano, whose Afrikaans subtitle ‘Wind oor die Branders’ translates as Wind over the Waves, is by Richard Pantcheff (b.1959). It comes from ‘Nocturnus’, a suite of six pieces written for different instruments; the final work in the suite is ‘4th December 1976’, written in memory of Benjamin Britten on the fortieth anniversary of the composer’s death. Pantcheff was mentored in composition by Benjamin Britten in the last years of Britten’s life, and his music displays a distinct affinity with Britten’s soundworld, as well as that of earlier English composers including Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi and Elizabeth Lutyens.

A prolific composer of choral, organ, chamber and instrumental works, Richard Pantcheff was trained in choral music and composition from an early age, initially as a chorister at Ripon Cathedral, and studied music at Christ Church, Oxford, under Simon Preston and Francis Grier. His music has been widely performed and praised for its originality and technical brilliance, combined with intellectual and emotional depth.

I discovered this piece through ‘De Profundis Clamavi’, a recent recording by British pianist, and friend of mine, Duncan Honeybourne. Duncan is a keen advocate of English music and a champion of lesser-known repertoire, and his recording on which ‘Nocturnus V’ appears (together with Pantcheff’s substantial Piano Sonata, of which he is dedicatee) contains no less than eight world premiere recordings.

The piece is minimalist in style. Its title ‘Nocturnus’ obviously suggests a Nocturne or night piece, and although this work makes stylistic reference to Chopin’s Nocturnes in its flowing accompaniment (almost continuous semiquavers to suggest both waves and wind), it is perhaps closer to Britten’s ‘Night Piece’ (which also appears on ‘De Profundis Clamavi’) and ‘Night’ from Holiday Diary in atmosphere, harmonic language and some of its textures. But while the middle section of Britten’s ‘Night Piece’ is unsettled, full of curious nocturnal twitterings and scurrying, Pantcheff exchanges the fluid semiquavers for a rising chordal figure in triplets which climaxes in fortississimo (fff) chords high up in the piano’s register. The effect is hymn-like and joyful. The music then subsides and pauses, before the semiquaver ‘waves’ return, now in the bass, with soft, piquant chords in the treble.

Although not particularly difficult (I would suggest this piece is around Grade 5-6 standard), the challenge for the player comes in retaining evenness in the semiquaver figures and sustaining long notes in the other register. Sparing use of the pedal will avoid muddying the sound in these sections, while the middle section requires greater projection and brightness of sound. It’s a satisfying piece to play as it offers the player plenty of scope for expression and “sound painting” to portray the music’s inspiration.

‘Nocturnus V’ by Richard Pantcheff, played by Duncan Honeybourne

Buy the score

Guest posts are invited for this series. If you would like to submit an article about repertoire you are working on or enjoy playing, please get in touch

Music & Migration: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz in Scotland

By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | June 3, 2022

An exhibition at The Georgian House in Edinburgh, opening in June, will tell the remarkable story of Felix Yaniewicz (1762-1848), a celebrated Polish-Lithuanian violinist and composer, who settled in Scotland and co-founded the first Edinburgh music festival in 1815. Alongside the exhibition, there will be a programme of talks, lecture-recitals and musical performances.

Josie Dixon, Yaniewicz’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter and founder of The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz, says: ‘Putting this exhibition together has illuminated so many aspects of Yaniewicz’s colourful story, featuring a Polish King, his encounter with Mozart in Vienna, escape from the French Revolution and a lost Stradivarius. We are thrilled to be sharing with the public for the first time a remarkable collection of heirlooms reflecting his life and career, in celebration of his musical legacy in Scotland.’

After a cosmopolitan career in Europe, Felix Yaniewicz arrived in London around 1790 and eventually made his way to Edinburgh where he lived from 1815 until his death in 1848. It was the discovery and restoration of a historic square piano bearing his signature that led to new research on his career and a project to celebrate his role in Scotland’s musical culture.

The Yaniewicz & Green square piano was the subject of a crowdfunding campaign in 2021, in partnership with the Scottish Polish community, with donations from all over Britain, Poland, Germany, Norway, France, Italy, Switzerland and the USA. Its arrival in Scotland last year was celebrated with two recitals hosted by the Polish Consulate in Edinburgh. The exhibition at The Georgian House will be the first opportunity for this beautiful instrument to be seen in public.

The exhibition ‘Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz’ brings together a unique collection of musical instruments, portraits, manuscripts, silver and gold personal possessions, letters and autographs, many of them passed down the generations in his surviving family, and almost none of them seen in public before. Together, these will offer fascinating insights into the career of this charismatic performer, composer, impresario and musical entrepreneur, who left a lasting mark on Scottish musical culture.

This exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

Barbara Schabowska, Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, says: ‘The figure of Felix Yaniewicz, an internationally renowned Polish-Lithuanian violin virtuoso, is a perfect example of how remarkably universal the language of music is. The exhibition, celebrating his fascinating travel-filled life, is a chance to initiate transnational dialogue – not only between Scotland and Poland, but also with everybody who finds themselves moved by Yaniewicz’s music.’

The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events in Edinburgh, including illustrated talks, lecture-recitals and musical performances at the Georgian House, and an ‘in conversation’ event at Ghillie Dhu with critically-acclaimed writer and broadcaster Armando Iannucci on music, migration and Scotland.

The exhibition ‘Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz’, hosted by National Trust for Scotland and organised in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, takes place at the Georgian House, Edinburgh, from 25 June until 22 October 2022.

Events