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This article on the Piano Addict blog interested me, not least because I feel we spend far too much of our lives these days trying to do things at high speed, without allowing ourselves time to stand still and think, or to look up occasionally to admire a beautiful sunset or starlit sky, or to listen – to the birds singing in the garden, or the beauty and intricacy of a Bach Chorale. Or to just sit quietly and do nothing, even for just a few moments

As a foodie as well as a pianist, I have an interest in the Slow Food Movement and concur with many of  its values. And like the author of the Piano Addict article, I think similar values could be applied to the way we play the piano, teach the piano, and study and listen to music.

Many, many teachers, practitioners, mentors and students advocate “slow practice”, playing a piece at half-tempo, or slower, to allow one time to examine all its elements, and to consider and learn them properly. When I’m teaching – and the majority of my students are quite young children – I find that students want to rush headlong into pieces, and to be able to play everything that is put before them very fast and (too often!) very loud. Children (and some adults) often do not have the patience or the understanding to take time to acquaint themselves properly with the way the music is constructed, to look for the composer’s signposts, and to consider, before playing a single note, the kind of sound, mood and character that the music requires.

Lately, I have been trying to apply my own admittedly rather cerebral approach to music to my students, and the first thing we do on encountering a new piece, is to study it. “Have a look through this and tell me if there is anything in there you don’t understand, don’t like the look of, or want to ask me about….” is usually how we start. This very basic analysis will, I hope, set my students on a learning path that will ensure they take time to study the music before actually putting their fingers and hands on the keyboard. It allows important “thinking time” and, for the more advanced musician, is an essential part of the process of learning new work. As an aside, I also do a lot of contextual reading and listening, especially if I am embarking on a piece by a composer whose oeuvre is relatively new or unknown to me (such as Olivier Messiaen).

Slow practice is often the only way to tackle tricky or rapid passage work, awkward chord progressions, or uncomfortable fingering; it is also the best way to become really intimate with a piece of music, to understand the composer’s intentions and to examine all the interior architecture of the work. Listen to Perahia or Gould playing Bach, and you can hear from the way the music is played that these pianists (and they are not alone) have taken the time to understand the interior structures, textures and colours of the music.

During my lesson this week, my teacher suggested practising the trickier parts of the Bach Toccata (BWV 830 from the 6th Partita) I am learning “in the manner of a Chopin Nocturne”. I was amazed at the difference this made, not just to the sound but also to the feel of the music under the fingers: my hands and arms were instantly more relaxed, more languid (but no less alert), as Bach’s Baroque arabesques were transposed to a 19th-century Parisian salon. Bach is always beautiful, but played like this, it was really beautiful (especially played on my teacher’s lovely antique Bechstein). Practising the piece at home yesterday, the effect was the same (despite the noise of a drill outside). In the end, I played the entire piece in this way, and I will continue to practise it like this until all the awkward passages are secure, and I can play them accurately and in a more relaxed manner.

I was struck by the need for Slow Piano techniques in my studio, not just for myself, but also for my students, when a parent asked me recently if it would be possible to “fast-track” her child to Grade 4 by the time applications have to be made to senior school (in eighteen month’s time; apparently, this may secure a music scholarship to a local private school). It reminded me of my own learning, at roughly the same age as the child in question, when I was on an “exam treadmill”. As soon as one grade was passed, I would embark on the syllabus for the next one. What I should have been doing was playing and enjoying repertoire to bridge the gap between grades for a few months, something I have been doing with a number of students who have recently passed Grades 1 and 2.

So, maybe Slow Piano is all about taking time to enjoy and savour the music we are studying, playing for pleasure, and listening to, and encouraging others to do the same. And the only competition is with oneself, to achieve perfection, through slow, meticulous and thoughtful practise. It’s a big ask, but one that is definitely worth pursuing.

With that in mind, I’m off for some slow piano practise of my Bach Toccata……………that is, when I’ve fed the cats, made a cake, and prepared dinner for tonight, had my hair cut and written out some music for lessons later…..

Sviatoslav Richter demonstrating “Slow Piano”  techniques in Schubert’s Sonata D894 – one of the most thoughtful readings of this sonata I know. The opening movement is marked molto moderato….

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I wrote these notes for my adult students to help them overcome their anxiety about performing in my forthcoming concert. They are coming to my home a couple of days before the event for an evening ‘soirée’ of music and wine – an opportunity to play their concert pieces in (I hope!) a non-threatening environment, amongst friends.

First, it’s ok to feel nervous! It is normal, and it is a sign that the body’s “fight or flight mechanism” – i.e. the production of adrenaline – is working properly. Performance anxiety can manifest itself in many different ways; the most common physical symptoms are:

  • Dry mouth
  • Moist hands
  • Trembling hands
  • Nausea
  • Palpitations

I find Pilates-type deep breathing (“thoracic breathing”) very useful for dealing with anxiety. The physical act of breathing like this calms you down. It also forces you to focus. When I am playing and I make a mistake, or I find my concentration slipping, I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. This helps me refocus.

Learning to deal with performance anxiety is a useful skill, and will make any kind of public performance, musical or otherwise, easier to deal with.

1.    Before you perform, take time to remind yourself that you have practiced to the best of your ability, that you know the piece intimately, and that even a small slip is not going to put you off. Confidence comes from knowing the piece intimately. Before the main performance, play it for family and friends and imagine yourself in a concert situation.

2.    Do not be self-critical. Do not pre-judge the event or draw conclusions about what just happened or what might happen. Self-criticism is pointless because it destroys your focus and takes you out of the here and now. Rather than judge your playing, simply observe it without saying anything. Do not over-analyse, play from the heart.

3.    Avoid inner dialogue. Do not distract yourself with the “what ifs” and the “maybes”. Focus on the music. Hear it in your head and imagine your fingers on the keyboard.

4.    Do not pre-judge the audience’s reaction. Remember, no one is going to boo, slow hand-clap or heckle. Most people who go to concerts, whether given by professional or amateur musicians, are full of admiration for anyone can get up on stage and do it. Everyone who comes to our concerts is there because they want to be there, to support the performers and to enjoy the music.

5.    When you go to the piano, acknowledge the audience – without them it would not be concert! – but then try to blank them out: look straight ahead at the score.

6.    When you sit down to play, take a moment to compose yourself. It is up to you when you start – the audience must be patient. Think about where your hands should be on the keyboard. Get acquainted with the look of the piano – if it’s an unfamiliar instrument.

7.    Just before you begin, take a deep breath and breathe out slowly. As you exhale, allow your fingers to float onto the keys – and then begin. Remember to breathe when you’re playing – it’s amazing how many people hold their breath when they are playing! If you feel your focus slipping, use the deep-breathing technique to help you.

8.    When you have finished, let your hands float off the keyboard. Wait for a moment and then stand and acknowledge the audience again

Cue rapturous applause!

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“It sounds wrong, but it’s right” is something I say to my students quite regularly. And sometimes I say it to myself as well, when a ‘crunchy’ or unexpected harmony catches me out, and I have to go back and check that what I played was in fact correct.

Fairly early on in their lessons with me, my students learn about intervals, “the distance between one note and another” as it says helpfully in the tutor book I use. We play them and listen to them and describe them: a major second, a “pinched” sound, usually elicits a shriek of distaste at its dissonance; a third is pleasant, warm; a fourth, when played in different places on the keyboard, “sounds Chinese” (it sounds “medieval” to me); a fifth is a bare, open sound – it needs the middle note to form a satisfying chord; a sixth is easy on the ear; a seventh “hurts” almost as much as a second, though when converted into a dominant seventh chord, it is enjoyable, especially the sense of relief when the harmony goes “home”.

An unfamiliar, or especially crunchy harmony – and in the simple pieces (pre-grade, and Grades 1 to 2) my students are learning these are often very bare chords, formed of only two notes and are therefore far more noticeable – can bring a student up short, cause them to stop playing, go back and play that section again, thinking they have made a mistake. “It sounds wrong but it’s right” I say patiently, urging them to keep playing. Afterwards, we play “spot the interval”, and it becomes apparent that the problem was not an incorrect note, merely that the ear did not like the sound!

Saskia, who is working on ‘Tarantella’ from the Grade 1 repertoire, a rather charming, plaintive little A minor dance by Pauline Hall (she of the excellent Piano Time series), does not like the chords in the first section, which alternate between a straight A-minor tonic chord and a chord composed of A, D and E. “I can’t play it!” she grumbled at her lesson this afternoon, and then proceeded to play it perfectly, albeit somewhat tentatively. We have been trying to achieve the effect of a strummed guitar in the left hand, with soft chord changes, while the right hand melody dances moodily over the top. Going back to the score, I showed her why she did not like that A-D-E chord, and explained that it was a deliberate device on the part of the composer to create moments of tension, and delayed gratification, before the resolution comes on the next beat. “Music would be very boring if we didn’t have these crunchy harmonies and surprising moments,” I said.

It is this sense of delayed gratification that makes the Chopin Ballade I am working on (and indeed all his other music I play, or listen to), so fascinating, so suspenseful, and so utterly addictive. He forces player and listener to work hard, taking the ear on amazing harmonic journeys, to distant highways and byways, and so when it comes, the resolution, the “reward”, is all the more wonderful and satisfying. Sometimes it may sound ‘wrong’, but in Chopin’s extraordinary hands it is most definitely right.

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I first heard this work live a few years ago, at a concert given by the American pianist and noted Mozart specialist Robert Levin, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Played on a fortepiano, whose relatively modest voice spoke so elegantly to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, from the opening measures I was completely hooked. The next day, I purchased the music and started to learn it, but for some reason, I never learnt it properly, and it was only when I had been having lessons with my current teacher for about six months, that I recalled that moody little Rondo, and decided to revisit it. I worked on the piece seriously for about six months, and after playing it for my teacher as a performance, she suggested I put it to bed for awhile and learn something else. I then revived the work for my LTCL: it was wonderful to be able to work on it in detail again, and I discovered all sorts of new things about it when I revisited it for a third time. It’s a piece that keeps surprising both listener and performer.

Composed in the spring of 1787, after Mozart returned from Prague, it has been suggested that its composition was in response to the news that one of the composer’s closest friends, Count August von Hatzfeld, had died, and may therefore be a rare example of a personal event in Mozart’s life prompting a composition. The piece is introspective and private, consistently freighted with melancholy and sadness, while exuding a thoughtful, measured elegance throughout. It is touching and beautiful, simple and perfect; but its deceptive transparency offers no place to hide. It requires great clarity and preciseness in order to express its overriding melancholy, and its poignant charm.

The Rondo theme is a pensive melody which looks forward to Chopin – and has been mistaken for Chopin by an unwary listener when I’ve played it. A rising theme, yet it hardly seems to move forward, and with each weary semitone step, there is a dying fall, almost sigh or a painful intake of breath, emphasised by the quaver rests. The dissonance, created by the first ornament (which reappears regularly throughout the piece) further enhances the sense of tragedy. I play this on the beat, so that it sounds with the first A in the left hand, and, momentarily, it hurts, as it is clearly meant to. Each reappearance of the theme is treated slightly differently, further emphasising its pathos and poignancy. The word “zal“, more often associated with the music of Chopin, seems entirely appropriate here, with its bittersweet melancholy, poetic shadings, plaintiveness and longing. The C major phrase is somewhat less painful, but it is hardly hopeful.

The first subsidiary theme (‘B’), beginning at bar 31, harks back to the Grand-daddy of them all, J S Bach, in its use of counterpoint and chromaticism, while the texture is suggestive of string quartets with its different melodic voices. The new theme pours forth, the mood more hopeful and consoling, with a lovely LH cello-line which is very different to the haunted bass of the opening melody. There’s an almost operatic grandeur through these measures, immediately dispelled when the music lurches unexpectedly into D-flat major at bar 46. The music creeps chromatically, recalling the opening theme, and, after an episode marked by plaintive descending and ascending chromatic figures, the earlier ‘B’ material returns, building to a climax in bar 59, marked by the octave figures in the LH. A greater, more full-toned climax at bar 63 is carried through to bar 69 with a grand, energetic arpeggiated figure in the RH. From bars 69-75, the long chromatic notes hark back, once again, to the chromaticism at the beginning of the piece, while from bars 74-80, the music seems hang in suspense in the dominant, in anticipation of the rondo theme, which returns at bar 81.

The second statement of the theme is stripped of its C major sentence, and is even more haunting, with its sobbing, breathless syncopations in bars 86-87, a kind of written rubato, which needs no additional increase or decrease in tempo in the bass line (prefiguring Chopin). The quaver rest in bar 88 can be lengthened in readiness for the A major section (“C”).

Now, we are in more familiar, comfortable territory, for here is Mozart at his most charming and elegant, before a brief shift into B minor, with dissonance created by the ornaments. A more hopeful D major passage (I read somewhere once that Mozart declared D major “the happiest key”) begins at bar 101, reprising some of the material from the A major interlude. At bar 116, the chromaticism in the bass again recalls the opening motif, leading into further chromatic surges and grinding diminished seventh harmonies. The thematic material of the opening is never really forgotten, thus further reminding us of the prevailing sense of sorrow.

At bar 129 the rondo theme returns in its original form, but with more elaborate ornamentation this time, tortured rather than decorative. There’s a real sense of desolation at bar 155, while the repeated A’s and chromaticism in bars 155-157, evoke almost a wailing, grief-laden lamentation.

The Coda, beginning at bar 163, heartbreakingly recapitulates all the elements that have gone before and all the motifs return in a grim, Bachian setting. It is highly emotional, mixing tragedy and frustration, with a final, whispered statement of the opening theme in the closing measures.

It is no accident that this piece is included in the diploma repertoire list, for it is both technically and musically challenging, and repertoire such as this reminds one that a musical performance diploma is a long way on from Grade 8: one is being assessed on one’s technical ability, musicality, maturity, conceptual understanding, stylistic awareness and stagecraft. From one’s programme choices to one’s dress, this is, in all sense, a ‘proper’ recital, leading to a recognised professional qualification.

More a Fantasia than a strict Rondo in the assemblage of its thematic material, the K511 offers many technical challenges, and, as stated earlier, requires absolute clarity in its delivery. Overly fussy playing will only obscure the deeply emotional nature of this work – and this, to me, is the real heart of it. Conveying that sense of melancholy, sadness and grief is the hardest part, while always maintaining honesty and fidelity to the score. For those of us whose early pianistic encounters were with the ‘boyhood’ works of Mozart, the pieces with the earliest ‘K’ numbers, jaunty little numbers, all smiling childish innocence and playfulness, the Rondo K511 represents a work of great maturity and life-experience.

The weekend after I heard Robert Levin perform the Rondo K511, I went to an OAE study day, at which Professor Levin spoke most eloquently and lengthily (he likes the sound of his own voice, but everything he said had value) about Mozart’s piano music. He demonstrated, through the use of excerpts, and, in the afternoon, a masterclass on the Piano Sonata K332, all the subtleties of Mozart’s music: its chiaroscuro, its many moods, some fleeting, passing in the space of a single bar, its storms and its sunshine. Too often, Mozart’s music is given a simplistic reading, but it is not for nothing that pianist Artur Schnabel pronounced the piano sonatas of Mozart “too easy for children, and too difficult for artists”, while Leonard Bernstein said, “Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation”, a quotation which, to me, beautifully sums up the enduring fascination and appeal of the K511.

An afterthought:

I read a very useful and informative book while learning the Rondo last year – Mozart and the Pianist by Michael Davidson (London: Kahn & Averill, 1998), which provides helpful overviews and analysis of Mozart’s major solo piano works. I found it particularly useful in relation to the ornamentation in the K511: according to my Wiener Urtext Edition of the work, these were “written out” ornaments, as opposed to decorations left to the performer’s discretion.

My favourite recording of this work is by Mitsuko Uchida. I also like Ashkenazy’s reading: he places the turns before the beat, as I do (or had been doing!), something which generated an interesting and heated discussion with a pianist colleague, who feels such ornaments should be placed on the beat. This is, in the end, a matter of taste: there is no hard evidence that I could find in my research of this work of how Mozart intended the ornaments to be played.