Innehållsförteckning för 113 från Pianist

Rare manuscript looking for a good home Reading Ralph Thompson’s ‘Star Letter’ in the latest edition of the magazine (issue 112) took me to my own small library of Beethoven works for piano. I, too, have some works, albeit transcribed for piano solo, that I haven’t touched for many years: the piano solo versions of the Quintet, Sextet and Octet (see image) which I bought from the locally famous music stall in Bradford Market in the late 1960s. This is I believe no longer in print, and somewhat of a rarity, and I could never really get to grips with the transcriptions. If any of your readers would like this copy then I would be more than pleased to send it to them at no charge. Condition is good and…

Peter Serkin American pianist Peter Serkin, known for his commitment to contemporary music, died on 1 February at the age of 72. Serkin was born in New York City, and from the age of 11, studied at the Curtis Institute. His teachers included Polish pianist Mieczysław Horszowski, the American virtuoso Lee Luvisi and his own father – the great Beethoven interpreter, Rudolph Serkin. His career began in 1959, being invited to perform at Marlboro Music Festival and with such orchestras as Cleveland and Philadelphia. In 1966 he was awarded a Grammy for Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist. However, in 1968, shortly after marrying and becoming a father, he decided to cease playing, feeling burdened by his heritage and what was expected of him. He spent eight months in Mexico…

Do you have a favourite concert hall? I recently discovered Carnegie Hall, and the sound there is fantastic. I have a physical memory of it. You feel the sound is flowing and it’s very powerful. Do you encounter any technical hurdles? No. But it’s all about the touch, because I am searching for sound. It comes from the desire to get a sound that I hear inside. It’s not that I am using a technique, but it is the desire. Do you have a favourite piece in your output? Every piece of music is connected to a certain moment of my life, and every piece is an act of love. It’s difficult to say that you prefer one child to another. What would you be if you weren’t a pianist-composer?…

When everything seems to come out effortlessly at the piano, it is easy to feel we have ‘strong fingers’. Science has shown us that this perceived strength is not really muscular as such, rather the result of coordinated, economic movements at the keyboard that come from a body that is free of tension – the hand, fingers and arm working together. Pianism has come a long way in recent decades as we sift through the legacy from our forebears, challenging pedagogical beliefs (including so-called finger strengthening exercises) that were once widely accepted. Given that the fingers are inherently unequal in strength, attempting to make the weaker fourth and fifth fingers as strong as the thumb, second and third fingers seems doomed to failure. Modern trends in piano technique tend to…

Key: F minor Tempo: Allegretto un poco agitato Style: Romantic Will improve: ✓ Sense of line ✓ Balance between the hands ✓ Use of rubato This Intermezzo is one of the less frequently played pieces from Brahms’s Op 118 set. It is full of musical challenges and can be hard to pull off. One needs an incredible control of the instrument, a real ability to use rubato perfectly and tastefully, and a well-honed sense of line and structure. An underlying restlessness should prevail at all times (note the ‘agitato’ at the start). This is the language of Brahms’s maturity. And it needs to come directly from the soul. Begin by trying to learn the first two lines as block chords. This means playing the triplet figures as a whole crotchet…

On these pages, Pianist covers the most basic stages of learning the piano through a series of lessons by Hans-Günter Heumann. This lesson features a warm-up for scales, followed by two exercises involving rests and interchange between the hands (pages 29-30). Scale in contrary motion Learn first in the key of C (as below) and then try transposing it into G and then F. Interchange between the hands Lesson 15 The piece below allows us to get used to releasing one hand (lifting it up), while playing with the other. Practise it slowly, making sure to lift the relevant hand for the rests. Imagine that the hands are passing from one to the other. Turn overleaf and you can study it in two different ways: the first, with closed chords…

Piano Meditations is a beautiful collection of 12 original piano compositions that have been inspired by paintings of a meditative nature. By best-selling composer Pam Wedgwood, these piano solo piecesare perfect for practising mindfulness in music. The book is suitable for intermediate-level players and is accompanied by a stunning pull-out poster of art providing the visual inspiration for each piece. PRINT SUBSCRIPTION PRICES (AND RECEIVE YOUR FREE BOOK) UK DIRECT DEBIT: £4.50 AN ISSUE EUROPEAN: £46 FOR 6 ISSUES UK CARD: £34 FOR 6 ISSUES REST OF THE WORLD: £60 FOR 6 ISSUES Subscribe online: www.pianistmagazine.com Or call our team on: 01778 392 483 *This offer is available worldwide for new print magazine subscribers* CODE: PIA/MAG113…

ON SALE 22 MAY 2020 ZLATA CHOCHIEVA Jessica Duchen speaks to the Russian pianist about her kaleidoscopic view of music-making – from her studies with Mikhail Pletnev to the success of her Chopin Etudes recording BLURRY VISION Andrew Stewart explores age-related sight loss, its implications for pianists and what can be done about it HOW TO LEARN A NEW PIECE Opening the score of a new piece and knowing where to start isn’t as logical as it seems, says Graham Fitch, who reveals a whole toolbox of tricks THE ART OF PHRASING It’s all about conveying something close to what a good singer does, says Mark Tanner, who explains how to think like a vocalist 40 PAGES OF SCORES Favourites and rare treats including Schubert Minuet D600 (a Volodos classic),…

Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791) Rondo from Sonata in C K545 INTERMEDIATE Mozart was a mature composer when he wrote this sonata; he described it as being for beginners (it’s also known as the 'Sonata facile'). Playing tips,. What a wonderfully happy piece this is. You should have no difficulties adding a bit of humour to it! For example, just look at the playful pause at bar 52. A more technical aspect to notice is that halfway through bar 8, both hands jump to the treble, so you will want to have your hands in the right place as soon as you've finished playing the repeat ofthe first section. Pedal tips: Very little pedal is needed. Erik SATIE (1866-1925) Gnossienne No 3 INTERMEDIATE This issue we celebrate the great French composer…

2020 sees the launch of a nationwide series of new piano performance festivals for players of all levels and ages, organised by the European Piano Teachers’ Association (EPTA). The EPTA Festivals concept is unique in that it offers opportunities for players from pre-Grade One level up to the most advanced levels to perform together, on the same platform. Both non-competitive and competitive entries are accepted, and entrants can choose to play anything from three minutes or less to 30 minutes. The project is expanding, but so far, for 2020, festivals have been scheduled in West Midlands, Merseyside, Cardiff, Oxford, Manchester, Kent, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Bristol, Cambridge, North Yorkshire, Essex and Belfast. The EPTA Festivals’ ‘anti competition’ ethos is emphasised by the way entries are adjudicated: each performance is given positive feedback,…

Proprioception is our ‘sixth sense’; how the body moves itself using proprioceptors located in our joints, muscles and tendons. Sometimes interchanged with kinaesthesia, proprioception explains how we coordinate simple as well as complex physical motor movements and store these away to be used when, say, riding a bicycle, striking a tennis ball… or playing the piano. For pianists, some of these movements can become ingrained consciously through mindful repetition, while others are subconscious, reflex-based or linked with left/right-handedness. Every task we encounter taps into our proprioceptive skills, starting with the simplest up/down movements of one finger. Importantly, these movements live a kind of virtual existence as well as a practical one, helping us quickly to gauge intervals between notes and meet the challenges in any given piece. What’s more, the…

Key: F major Tempo: Waltz Style: Romantic Will improve your: ✓ Articulation ✓ Touch ✓ Evenness An etude (or study) focuses on a particular technical challenge. It allows the pianist to surmount the difficulty via careful repetition. This study, by the Romantic French composer Jean-Baptiste Duvernoy, offers up the chance to practise several touches: staccato in the LH combined with a legato leggiero (i.e. smooth, light and graceful) articulation in the RH. It moves along swiftly at a dotted minim equals 68 beats per minute, and the style is that of dance – or more specifically, a waltz. The LH provides the important accompaniment. For quick study, play through the entire LH part ‘blocked out’ as one chord per bar. I frequently refer to this technique as it’s an easy…

ALESSIO BAX Italian Inspirations: Works by Bach, Dallapiccola, Liszt and Rachmaninov Signum Classics SIGCD 611 ★★★★ As Alessio Bax notes in his introduction to this album, Italy produced almost no piano music during the Romantic period, probably because of the contemporary prominence of Italian opera. So in devising an Italian piano recital he’s turned his attention to transcriptions. He gives a delightfully crisp account of Bach’s Concerto in D minor (BWV 974) based on an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, and he relishes the technical and dramatic challenges of Rachmaninov’s high-octane Variations on a Theme of Corelli. The only echt-Italian piece is Dallapiccola’s Quaderno musicale di Annalibera – but since this dull set of plinky-plonk variations is actually written according to the rules of Austro-German dodecaphony, maybe it’s not that…

Calling all publishers (again) I sympathise with David Glynn (Letters, issue 112). I have enough trouble these days trying to speed up my sight-reading without having to get the wretched music book to stay flat. I have a book, from a very reputable publisher, which is about 15mm thick and the edge is glued rather than spiral bound. To hold it onto the piano I have to use bulldog clips the size of bulldogs, so turning a page involves unclipping both sides, turning the page, and re-clipping. No good at allegro speed. Even at largo it’s a scramble. A funereal pace is about the best I can do. Don’t publishers road-test their products before they issue them? Now, if a book of music won’t lie flat, I won’t buy it.…

Beethoven German Dance (p32): For 12 of its 16 bars, the LH stays conveniently in one place on the keyboard, with a brief octave interlude (dominant and tonic, bars 11-13) calling for a bold shift in position. Initially, as you strike the C chord in bar 8, glance own and reposition the hand for the first of these octaves. These can then be made into a fun practice loop – use your second finger as a silent locator, first on the C#, then on the G#. Bach Prelude in D minor (p44): For just one quarter of its duration, the LH breaks away from playing crotchets and quavers. From a keyboard geography perspective, tackle the semiquaver exchange (bars 39-43) early on, preferably memorising these otes to ease the transitions. Elsewhere,…

Key: D minor Tempo: Personal choice Style: Baroque Will improve your: ✓Touch ✓Ornamentation ✓Stylistic understanding Playing Baroque keyboard music on the piano is a wonderfully free and creative process. There are no dynamic indications, no articulation marks, no tempo indications. In other words, we need to make this piece our own by combining what we know about performance practice of the period, and what today’s instrument enables us to do. This prelude would have been played on both the harpsichord and the clavichord. The former produces a plucked sound, the latter offers direct contact with the string, including the capacity to aim for vibrato on a keyboard instrument. It seems that even in Bach’s time different ways of playing the same piece would have applied, which takes us back to…

Amid the dreaming spires of Oxford, the Oxford Piano Festival returns in August in this, its 22nd year, with another feast of performances by some of the world’s greatest pianists, punctuated by masterclasses featuring future stars of the instrument. Nelson Freire (who performs Brahms Concerto No 2 with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra), Elisabeth Leonskaja, Richard Goode, Paul Lewis, Nikolai Lugansky and Alain Lefèvre – just some of the great names scheduled to play in the Festival’s evening concerts, held between 1 and 9 August in venues around the city. Away from the concert platform, some of these same performers return to inspire today’s rising young stars drawn from all over the world in a series of daytime masterclasses given in the presence of audiences keen to share the experience. They’re…

In many ways, its name, Piano Week International Festival and Summer School, doesn’t do justice to this extraordinary musical venture or, more accurately, adventure. For a start, it’s a touring festival and summer school held over multiple weeks and in multiple countries. And while its primary focus is the piano and acquiring the skills and knowledge to play it well, it’s also, in the rare period of downtime available and because it has a residential aspect, a holiday where people, who share a passion for the instrument, can explore their location and enjoy the amenities it offers. This year those locations range from Moreton Hall School and Rugby School in Shropshire and Warwickshire respectively, to the Scuola Comunale di Musica in Foligno, Italy and the Symphony Salon in the heart…

DAVE BRUBECK: A LIFE IN TIME Philip Clark Headline ISBN 978-1-4722-7247-8 At the beginning of his biography of jazz legend Dave Brubeck, Philip Clark explains how the subtitle of his book, A Life in Time, was inspired by not only the dramatic times his subject lived in and his efforts to find time for his multiple lives as performer, composer, husband and father of no less than six children, but also by the musician’s obsession with polytonality, polyrhythm and complex time signatures. Most notably, 5/4 became his very signature. The result is a biography that avoids the traditional chronological path in favour of one that is led by Brubeck’s music and the times that helped shape it – and him. It’s also a biography written by someone with a deep…