By |

14246578708947

Style

 Getting all the notes of a piece under our fingers is only the first step on the way to performing. It’s what happens after this that engages the listener and makes the performance memorable. Of course, we naturally want to be different and make our playing stand out from the crowd, but it’s no good if we go a little overboard and play in the wrong style. Style is very important, and can be quite subjective. It’s something that we can always look into at a greater depth, and just one reason why musicians are always students.

Style is often dictated by the period in which the music was written. You wouldn’t expect a character in ‘Downton Abbey’ to come into a scene wearing a pair of skinny jeans, would you? Similarly, you wouldn’t want to play a piece in such a way that the listener is no longer able to understand how it could have been written in a certain period. The tone we use has a huge bearing on style. Recently, I played the beginning of the Prelude from Bach’s Partita in B flat major (BWV 825) to one of my teachers, and his first comment was that I needed to alter my tone. The sound I was producing would have been far more suited to the work of a romantic composer such as Brahms, so I needed to lighten my touch in order to make my style more appropriate for the work. The same principle can be applied to flexibility; a performer may choose to pull the tempo around in a Chopin Nocturne to a degree that would be out of character in one of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas.

A good way to implement style is to think about the instrument for which the music was written. Yes, you’re probably going to be thinking “erm… piano”, but remember that our instrument has come a very long way from the first pianos of Cristofori in the 1700s. Of course, the music of Bach and Scarlatti would have been written for harpsichord, an entirely different instrument indeed! This does sometimes throw up disagreements over certain aspects of playing, such as the use of sustain pedal, but as long as you think generally about the instrument, then you will be far better off than if you’d disregarded the matter!

However, to play a piece stylistically doesn’t mean that you are to play in a certain way when it comes to interpretation. This is what brings originality to your playing, and makes the music as current now as it was when it was written. To demonstrate my point, below are two famous recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (BMV 998), both recorded by Glenn Gould. The first was recorded in 1955, the second in 1981: both are examples of style fitting to Bach’s writing, but both recordings differ dramatically when it comes to Gould’s interpretation. You only need to listen to the opening few bars of the Aria to see my point:

Lewis Kesterton is a pianist currently studying at Birmingham Conservatoire. Read his blog here

img_4583
Schubert’s glasses

Schubert. This entry on the letter S would not be complete, for me at least, without a mention of Franz Peter Schubert, a composer whose music I have loved and lived with all my life: as a young child hearing my father play Der Hirt Auf Dem Felsem (‘The Shepherd on the Rock’) on the clarinet, my own LP of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, my first encounters with the Impromptus and Moments Musicaux for piano in my mid-teens, as a precocious student who could play the notes, but who understood little of where this music came from or its emotional depth. Returning to the piano in my late 30s after an absence of some 20 years, it was Schubert’s music to which I turned first, revisiting the Impromptus initially, and then the late piano sonatas, with the benefit of musical maturity (the result of a lifetime of listening and concert-going rather than playing at that time) and life experience. As an argumentative teenager, often to be seen at weekends on CND marches, the old radical Beethoven had been my hero, a composer who wore his heart on his sleeve and whose life-affirming music declaims his existence, at once full-bodied and triumphal, but also other-worldly and philosophical especially in his late works. Schubert speaks more quietly: his soundworld is introspective, and intimate. He takes us into his confidence, and he is often at his most tragic when writing in the major key. His music packs a vast emotional punch – the range of emotions expressed within a piano miniature, such as the Impromptu in f minor D935/1, are startling, their unexpectedness underlined by his daring use of harmony and his expansiveness (which Schumann described as his “heavenly length”), underpinned by an innate sense of musical geometry and architecture. As a consequence, there are many interpretative possibilities in his music.

If Beethoven is notable for his musical structures and energy, Schubert is the spinner of beautiful melodies, music which speaks of his life in Vienna, of socialising and music making with friends, country rambles and joie de vivre (think of the joyful holiday moods of the  ‘Trout’ Quintet), but always shot through with darkness and heartbreak. He had plenty of intuitions of mortality during his brief life: he contracted syphilis in 1822/23, at that time an incurable and shameful disease, and lived in a city on a continent wracked by revolution and war. These were turbulent times, both personally and politically, and his music reflects this in its emotional voltes faces – all those layers of feeling and chains of emotions – perhaps most strikingly expressed in the slow movement of the Sonata in A, D959 or in the Fantasy in F minor, D940.

Frances Wilson – pianist, writer, teacher and author of The Cross-Eyed Pianist blog.

By |

If there’s any excuse at all for making a record, it’s to do it differently, to approach the work from a totally recreative point of view… to perform this particular work as it has never been heard before. And if one can’t do that, I would say, abandon it, forget about it, move on to something else.
– Glenn Gould

R is for “robbed”. R is also for “rhubarb”. And, aged four, sat on a plump cushion, on top of my teacher’s piano stool, having just played the Minuet in G from the Associated Board’s edition of Eighteen Selected Pieces from ‘A Little Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach’ with about as much feeling as the Honda production line in Swindon,  I first came across what I initially thought was a portmanteau of the two. (By the way, I wouldn’t have known, then, what a “portmanteau” was, either. And I still have the very same music perched on my piano, today: such is the rustiness of the current state of what I laughingly refer to as my “technique”.)

“Technically, that’s excellent,” said Mr Bury (or words to that effect); “but it could do with some rubato…” – and then, of course, he went on to explain and demonstrate, beautifully, what that was.  And, although I have hunted it ever since, Snark-like:  at such a tender age, my emotional range was narrowly-focused. All I could see were Boojums.

My personal definition of the word Rubato is aural; rather than written or visual. Listen to the two (fantabulous) recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations which (the fantabulous) Glenn Gould made at each end of his career. The first, from 1955, <https://itun.eslasts 38:34, and is a demonstration of pure technical genius. The second, from 1981 – at 51:18 – lasts exactly one-third longer – and transforms each variation from what could easily be a mechanical Baroque exercise (see above) to something of a romantic, yet contrapuntal, serenade: particularly the opening (and closing) Aria. The difference, I believe, is not in the time taken – although there is a definite contributory effect from the time taken between making the two recordings. Subtract the first from the second – although I have to admit, given my word limit (and being, ahem, robbed of time), this is a little simplistic (and may be over-egging the pudding a little): there are a few more repeats, as well… – and what you are left with (IMHO) is the very essence of rubato.

The tempi are not so much “robbed”; as generously donated. Or, as Michael Kennedy so wisely states in the 1980 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (which also sits atop my piano), rubato is…

A feature of performance in which strict time is for a while disregarded – what is ‘robbed’ from some notes being ‘paid back’ later. When this is done with genuine artistry and instinctive musical sensibility, the effect is to impart an admirable sense of freedom and spontaneity. Done badly, rubato merely becomes mechanical.

…and I’m sure you can easily evoke your own guilty parties with regards to that last comment. In fact, I wouldn’t be too surprised if you disagreed with my exemplar, above. (I’m sure Chopin would.) But, surely that’s what rubato is really all about – the individual, “instinctive” subjectivity (hopefully dredged up from your very soul, and bypassing most of your mind) that you can bring to any piece of music: whether it be from your emotions; or even from a desire to stress a melody hidden deep within a morass of complex notes (see, for instance, Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto).

In other words, rubato – whether applied to one note, or a thousand – is simply a symptom, an expression, of one’s own interpretation.

Stephen Ward AKA The Bard of Tysoe

 

sergei_rachmaninoff_loc_33969uUp, up in the highest echelons of the pianistic pantheon sits Sergei Rachmaninov….

Regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, Rachmaninov had legendary technical facilities and rhythmic drive, and his large hands were able to cover the interval of a thirteenth on the keyboard. Today, his piano music remains amongst the most well-loved and widely-performed in the standard repertoire, yet in the 1950s the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians dismissed it as “monotonous in texture….. consist[ing] of mainly of artificial and gushing tunes….”. He was composing at a time when music was undergoing huge sea-changes (atonality and the development of the 12-note tone row, for example), yet he remained true to his own compositional vision and his music is unashamedly Romantic, full of sweeping melodies and rich textures. Even in his miniatures (for example, the Preludes, Moments Musicaux, Études-Tableaux) his music seems to express the vastness of the Russian landscape. It has a visceral and deeply honest quality.

“A composer’s music should express the country of his birth, his love affairs, his religion, the books which have influenced him, the pictures he loves…My music is the product of my temperament, and so it is Russian music”

Sergei Rachmaninov

Here is Sviatoslav Richter in the Prelude in G-sharp minor, Op 32, no. 12

Many of his piano works enjoy legendary status, and are performed around the world by the famous and the lesser known, such is their beauty, appeal and scale of challenges. Take the Third Piano Concerto, by his own admission his “favourite” of all his piano concerti – “I much prefer the Third, because my Second is so uncomfortable to play”. Due to time constraints, Rachmaninoff could not practise the piece while in Russia, and instead he practised and memorised it using a silent cardboard keyboard that he brought with him while sailing to the United States. It was premiered in New York on 28th November 1909 by Rachmaninov himself, and was dedicated to the pianist Josef Hofman, whom Rachmaninoff regarded as the greatest pianist of his generation, though Hofman never actually performed the Third Concerto.

760px-rach3_beginning
The opening theme of the Third Piano Concerto

Monumental, treacherous, gorgeous, its fearsome technical difficulties reflect the composer’s own transcendent prowess at the keyboard. For the pianist it is forty-five minutes of almost continuous playing, the equivalent in energy expended to shovelling three tons of coal just to move the keys – and this excludes the emotional and intellectual energy used. For the audience, when played well it, it encompasses the full range of human emotions in its towering virtuosity.

 

By |

Quietude

Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me.

– Arvo Pärt

0e9a4e9b60bf60fa96f5a0a69bf97e1dWhy pick ‘quietude’ rather than simple ‘quietness’? Principally because I think the word has more resonance, more depth: it has a physical component, as well as one of simple silence. It is almost meditative. It is the deep breath (exemplified by Jessye Norman, perhaps) before the opening notes; and – if you’re fortunate – that precious, eternal, ethereal stillness between the final lifting of the fingers from the keys, the release of the sustaining pedal, and the subsequent applause. In both cases – even in a minimal amount of time – there is (can be, or perhaps should be) reflection, absorption, of the music in between.

Sometimes, music itself contains quietude (the most logical culmination of this being John Cage’s 4′ 33″) – although this may not necessarily mean indicated rests or pauses. Before I began to lose my hearing (which, for me, was not the descent into silence that some may expect – as Cage said, “what we hear is mostly noise”: and I experience almost constant tinnitus and occasional “musical hallucinations”), I was obsessed with a short piece, Secret Song No.6, by Peter Maxwell Davies: which, initially, appeared to begin with just a random selection of slow, sustained, intensifying, single tones. Even sitting on the settee, simply staring at that page for long periods of time – in all-consuming stillness, apart from the melody weaving through my mind – trying to understand its implications, its meaning, how one could possibly interpret it – was liable to drive me crazy. It was only a sudden realization (an emergence) that “the silence between the notes is where the magic lies” which led me to some sort of comprehension, and the confidence to return to the piano, to let the music sing for itself. (Technically, it is not a difficult piece. Emotionally, I found it extremely challenging – if only because of the self-examination it provoked. (Which one could argue is the purpose of all art…. Discuss.))

Q is also for Quakers, of course; and, although I am by no means religious (except perhaps in my addiction to creativity), one of their most inspiring qualities (even for me: someone whose tastes evolved in large, echoey gothic buildings resonating with Byrd, Tallis, Howells…) is the silent worship – listening for that “still small voice”. Sitting in true peace – whether alone, or with others – can be a truly overwhelming experience. It is therefore not for everyone.

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

– TS Eliot: Little Gidding (Four Quartets)

Reading this back, I appreciate that some may find hints of mindfulness. To me, though, quietude is almost its antithesis – a momentary letting go; an untethering – although not ‘mindlessness’, per se. It is an absence of intrusion of both internal and external forces. It is a caesura – but one that you may only recognize when immersed in its fragility, its transiency, its elusiveness. What follows must be sound. The rest is silence.

Stephen Ward, Writer in Residence for the Orchestra of the Swan, and blogger at The Bard of Tysoe

Quasi – As if…..

Perhaps the most famous work for piano which utilises the word “Quasi” is Beethoven’s piano sonata Opus 27 No. 2, the “Moonlight”. The first edition of the score is headed Sonata quasi una fantasia, a title the work shares with its companion piece, Opus 27, No. 1.

This is extraordinary music, this “Sonata like a fantasy”, with its first movement of delicately veiled sounds, hushed melodic fragments, those peaceful, certain triplets, the slight hesitancy in the dotted figure in the right hand, the suggestion throughout of improvisation, the pedal markings, senza sordini, indicating that the dampers should be lifted only fractionally away from the strings to allow a slight blurring between the new harmony and the old. A twilight first movement, shimmering, shifting, hinting at the tension between the forward pull of Beethoven’s revolutionary vision, and the solidity and simplicity of the classical ideal, the use of thematic material and texture beautifully demonstrated in the construction of the initial melody. A prophetic theme built on a single note, G-sharp, this the composer’s core idea. A single note, repeated six times, proceeds to A, then returns. A single note, reharmonized on its return, not by the initial C-sharp minor chord, but with luminous E-major. A single note forms a single theme; there is no second subject in the first movement, only that the triplet accompaniment assumes a more melodic role, only that tension rises as new harmonies are initiated. A single note, a single theme, now heard for the first time in the left hand in the coda. A single note, foreshadowed in the opening measures, recollected at the close. A single note, a simple triplet accompaniment, a crescendo and decrescendo first in the right hand, then in the left. The movement ends as quietly as it began…..

Frances Wilson

By |

il_570xn-375692039_r8tt

A plethora of P’s PP’s and PPP’s by three guest writers for this entry in A Pianist’s Alphabet

Piano……Whisper it softly, everything we do as pianists is indicated in advance by the letter ‘P’. If we play the piano as a piano – which is to say play it piano – then we are simply following this alphabetic instruction.

We might, therefore, be tempted to say that the most pianistic pianist was Chopin, who played his piano so piano that his audiences often struggled to hear him play at all. Importantly, Chopin achieved this pianism not through the use of another ‘p’, the una corda pedal (signed ‘ped’), but through the fingers. He played with great touch, preferring to practise and perform on instruments that suited his style – notably, on Parisian Pleyels.

And yet, shout it loudly, the great strength (or forte) of the piano is that it holds within itself its polar opposite. It was originally conceived by Cristofori as a harpsichord that could be played both quietly and loudly. It is the gravicembali col piano e forte. The piano, that is, is always the pianoforte or ‘pf’.

Thus it was that Liszt, who had been inspired by Paganini (another ‘P’), was able to perform in places like La Scala, Milan, and to thousands of gathered aristocrats in St Petersburg without any loss of sound. Not that it was it just about sheer volume for Liszt. The Hungarian was, by all accounts, the master of pianoforte playing in the fullest sense. In performance, one of his strengths was that he played the pianoforte ‘pf’, moving from quiet to loud, from lyrical passages to bravura runs and back again. For him, the pf was to be played ‘pf’.

James Holden is a writer working across the critical-creative divide. He is a specialist in British and European culture from the birth of Chopin in 1810 to the death of Monet in 1926. His published work includes In Search of Vinteuil: Music, Literature and a Self Regained (Sussex Academic Press, 2010). He is currently working on a philosophical reading of romantic pianism. James also writes experimental prose and poetry. He is currently associated with the HOARD art project in Leeds. 

His website is www.culturalwriter.co.uk and he tweets as @CulturalWriter 

 

P  is  for  Piano. Many call it the Perfect instrument. It can Play every note, high and low, that the orchestra can. It can be both melody and accompaniment. Or a wash of sound and colors. Or even five individual voices all vying for their chance to sing above the others. It can be Percussive, Pulsating, Pounding, or Powerful. It can be Pensive, Profound, Philosophical, or Prayerful. It can be Playful, Presto, or Peculiar. It can be Pleading, Poetic, Plaintive, or Pianissimo. The Piano can express a range of emotions, to the audience of course, but also to the Performer, who often experiences the music in a totally different way than the audience. It can at times sound Pompous and Pretentious. Or Produce the most Private, Personal, innermost thoughts and feelings.

P  is  for  Practicing. Many a Pupil will Procrastinate on this essential Part of Piano Playing.  Picking apart a Piece to understand it, analyzing minute details like the chord to chord Progressions, and the overall structure and compositional form. Researching Performance Practice, to ensure that the Pedaling is appropriate for the Period, or that the Portato touch is not too short. Practicing means Painstaking Preparation. Patience. Persistence. Repeating Parts, over and over, literally thousands of times. Purging wrong notes and solving Problems that arise along the way. It means Pleasure in Perfecting a Passage. Or Sometimes Physical Pain, when a Pianist overworks his muscles and Pushes himself too hard. Or even emotional Pain, because Practicing Piano also means being alone.

P  is  for  Psychology. As performers and teachers, not only do we need to know how to Physically Play the Piano, but we need to be our own and often our students’ Psychologists. We Practice Performing to Prepare ourselves for Principal dates and venues and maybe even Premieres. We try out our Programs, Playing for whoever will listen, making ourselves nervous with the hope that at the “real” Performance we will be calm and collected, and therefore able to make music more easily. Mistakes still happen, though, even though we Played our Program Perfectly many times in the Practice room and beyond. Bad mistakes can sometimes lead to a Phobia of Public Performance, which is tough to overcome. With our Psychology in one hand, and solid Preparation in the other, however, we Push down the Panic, the Palpitations, and the Perspiration (often on our Palms!) and get back on stage, encouraging our students to do the same, hoping to share a musical moment with the audience. After all, Playing the Piano is not about Perfection, but about making a connection: to the music, to ourselves, and to the audience.

Francesca Hurst

Francesca Hurst is a New Music and Classical Pianist and teacher in Washington, DC. 

www.francescahurst.com

 

P is for PPPP –  Plan, Practise, Prepare and Perform!

It’s Spring 2016, and I’ve just been planning my repertoire for concerts in 2017 and 2018. In this post about the Performance of a new piece, let’s begin with the Planning, which starts a long time in advance. Yes, we must be conversant with different periods of music and different styles, but think long-term, play to your strengths and play music you respect, believe in – and enjoy; this will communicate itself to your audience.  Keep learning new repertoire, investigating the unusual as well as the familiar, to keep programmes fresh and interesting.

Then comes the Practice. If a musical performance can be likened to an architectural structure in sound, then the score is the blueprint, and much can be gleaned from studying it away from the instrument. See how the piece is put together; what are the musical motifs which form the building blocks, how are they used, and which sections reappear in different guises? What stylistic features are apparent; to what stage of the composer’s life does the composition belong, what else was he/she writing at the time in other genres, and what does the title tell us? What were the characteristics of the instruments of the day, and what else was going on in the world ?

Having grasped an overview of the piece and ascertained its context, it’s time to start the Practice. Be strategic; learn similar sections simultaneously. I would always start with separate hands and careful fingering in small sections, gradually building into longer sections with hands together when they are fluent. Memorise as you go using not only muscular memory, but an awareness of keys, patterns, harmony and structure.

After learning the piece, we then enter the crucial Preparation stage before the first Performance.  Here we need the aim of a complete play-through some weeks, or even months, before – keep going, no matter what happens. Seek to replicate performance conditions, and try ‘stress-testing’ by getting friends and family to reproduce the noises which seek to distract us in public. Coughing, rustling, mobile phones, glasses clinking… you’ll think of others, I’m sure. Try recording yourself in private or making a video –  anything that raises the expectation and which highlights areas that need reinforcement. Seek out opportunities for trying-out pieces in informal settings. Have a dress rehearsal; ensure that clothes –  and shoes –  are suitable. Brendel writes amusingly of a piano duet performance with Daniel Barenboim wherein he became tangled in Barenboim’s concert outfit; they had rehearsed in their shirtsleeves.

And so – The Performance. Everyone approaches Performance differently; some withdraw into isolation before it, some are gregarious. Find what works for you. Try the piano in advance. Before you play, take deep breaths, smile, walk tall and enjoy! You’ve Planned, Practised and Prepared; be confident.  And afterwards …  Ronald Smith used to say that pieces always improve themselves after the first performance, and he was right. Learn from what went well, note what still needs attention – then move on. Tomorrow is another day.

Christine Stevenson

Christine Stevenson enjoys a distinguished career as a recitalist and concerto soloist in the UK and abroad. She is a Director of the Summer School for Pianists, and is on the staff of the Royal College of Music Junior Department in London.

Her concerts continually draw critical acclaim for her virtuosity, musicianship, and the engaging rapport she establishes with audiences of all ages.

www.christinestevenson.net

www.notesfromapianist.wordpress.com

Meet the Artist……Christine Stevenson