Innehållsförteckning för 119 från Pianist

DONT MISS OUR FREE ONLINE VIDEO LESSONS www.youtube.com/PianistMagazine Deutsche Grammophon bet on a winner when they scooped up Krystian Zimerman right after his victory at the Chopin Competition in 1975. He and DG have stayed loyal to each other for almost half a century, even when the keyboard perfectionist resisted going into the studio for years at a time. Last year’s Beethoven anniversary, and the promise of rekindling a long and happy working partnership with Sir Simon Rattle, drew Zimerman to lockdown London in December. The planned concerts went up in smoke, but Pianist still caught up with him at LSO St Luke’s during sessions to record all five concertos. Zimerman can be an elusive interview subject, but he spoke candidly to Jessica Duchen (p10) about his continual search for…

This is the perfect time of year for a spring clean! For many of us, piano playing has become quite a different experience from what we were accustomed to just a year ago. While for some the daunting reality of a virtual world merely confirms the indispensability of face-to-face interactions, for others it has been an eye-opener to more innovative ways of thinking and remaining creative online. The whole business of learning the piano, teaching it, communicating and exchanging views about it – on all levels from the novice to the more seasoned player – has undergone a shakeup that could well reverberate for a long time, post-pandemic. Piano clubs are no longer geographically bound, as we imagined they were when we had to drive to them. The availability of…

WATCH GRAHAM’S ONLINE LESSONS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM/LESSONS When we open a score, we may encounter an array of different types of dynamic and articulation markings telling us how the notes are to be played – or none at all, depending on the style period. If we play the notes from an Urtext score of a Baroque piece literally, through 21st-century eyes, the music is going to sound very dull and empty. This is because composers of this period left most of the performance decisions to the good taste of the performer, who would have known what to do. We pianists have been schooled on music from Beethoven onwards, where the composer has stipulated everything scrupulously in the score. If we are going to play Baroque and Classical period music convincingly, we…

Key C minor Tempo Moderato (minim = 60-63) Style Classical Will improve your ✔Fourth & fifth fingers ✔Sustaining chords ✔Shaping phrases Cramer who? Born in Mannheim (Germany) in 1771, Johann Baptist Cramer’s family came to London when he was three. Initially taught by his father and a number of London-based musicians, Cramer had lessons with Clementi in 1783, for about a year. Soon Cramer’s life embodied the diverse success that quite a few musicians enjoyed in the capital during the late 18th century: as performer, composer, teacher, and businessman in music publishing and fortepiano manufacturing. In 1804, Cramer published a collection of 42 studies. He named them his Studio per il pianoforte Op 30. The impact was nothing less than sensational. French, German and Austrian editions followed in less than…

Contemporary reviewers and colleagues sometimes ran out of complimentary metaphors when describing the playing of Mischa Levitzki (1898-1941). The influential player and pedagogue Abram Chasins said ‘He was a vibrant master workman; everything was pure radiance; every note shone like a sunbeam.’ Steinway and Sons also thought he was the bee’s knees. In the 1930s, they categorized their artists into four grades from A to D, with the four players in group A receiving a $100 subsidy (about $1500 today) for each concert. Levitzki was one of the favoured top four. Even Horowitz and Rachmaninov were ranked lower down the food chain in group B. Levitzki’s success was well deserved. As recordings show, he was a vibrant performer with an excellent technique and a capacity for delicacy and poetry. He…

EMAIL: editor@pianistmagazine.com WRITE TO: The Editor, Pianist, Warners Group Publications, The Maltings, West St, Bourne, PE10 9PH. Letters may be edited. Star Letter wins a CD. STAR LETTER PIANISTS ON FILM Further to Warwick Thompson’s article Silver Screen Pianists (Pianist 118), I was pleased you cited in your editorial Charles Williams’s lovely the Dream of Olwen from While I Live as a personal favourite amongst 1940s weepy themes; it also happens to be one of mine. To this piece, and the Warsaw Concerto from Dangerous Moonlight, I would add Hubert Bath’s Cornish Rhapsody from Love Story as another classic example of the genre. Interesting that these three movies in question are all usually better recalled via the titles of the music composed for them! A little factoid re The Beast…

1 Take stock of where you’re at with your piano playing at regular intervals. 2 Consolidate previous repertoire to expand your bank of enjoyably playable pieces. 3 Challenge yourself in multiple ways – tackle music by an unknown composer, enter for an exam or invest in a one-off lesson/consultation. 4 Dare to rethink the future: add new elements to your approach, such as improvisation, theory/composition, find a duet partner or consider attending a summer school. 5 Be positive about the options that face you! The idea is to broaden your enjoyment and satisfaction, not to burden yourself with an unrealistic wish list.…

LESSONS FROM THE EXPERTS MELANIE SPANSWICK is a pianist, writer, teacher and composer. As an author, she is published by leading publishing houses, and has written a three-book piano course for those returning to piano playing; Play It Again: PIANO (Schott Music). Melanie teaches the piano at Junior Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Eton College. As a composer, her music is published in the renowned Edition Schott Composer Series. Read Melanie Spanswick’s lesson on page 20 NILS FRANKE is Dean of Higher Education at the University Centre Colchester, UK, having previously held posts at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and the University of Reading. He has recorded for Warner and Brilliant Classics. Nils specialises in historical performance pedagogy, with a particular focus on 19th-century…

Key F sharp major Tempo Andante con moto Style Late Romantic Will improve your ✔ Phrasing of melody line ✔ LH technique ✔ Chords Mischa Levitzki was a fine concert pianist. Born in 1898, he left Russia for America, winning many prizes and accolades en route. He also wrote numerous short pieces for piano; this one, The Enchanted Nymph, may well be the most popular. On reading this piece, you can immediately tell that it has been composed by someone who possesses a natural piano technique, as it lies so beautifully under the hand. And that’s in spite of it being composed in the treacherous key of F# major! This gem of a work has a feeling of a beautifully crafted French salon piece. The central section is a delightfully…

NICHOLAS ANGELICH Prokofiev: Sonata No 8; Visions fugitives; Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet Op 75 (excerpts) Erato 0190295267681 In the first movement of Sonata No 8 (the last of Prokofiev’s trilogy of ‘War Sonatas’) Nicholas Angelich certainly brings out the dreamy quality of the slower music – too slow, I wondered (the marking is Andante), if persuasive; yet, the alternating quicker contrasts, even if played with infallible technique, lack bite and the overall effect, over 18 minutes, borders on blandness. Angelich’s expressive tendencies come into their own in the second movement, and he darts through the Finale in impish fashion. The 20 varied aphorisms that make up Visions fugitives combine for gripping listening: so much packed into short-form designs, and Angelich ensures that each note has significance. There not…

Congratulations to Patrick Dailly from Cambridge, the winner of our 2021 Composing Competition. Patrick wowed the judges with his imaginative composition, Our Mortal World. A regular reader of Pianist, Dailly is a self-employed piano teacher with about 30 pupils. He also loves to compose: ‘Composing, for me,’ he tells us, ‘is like a perpetual experiment: will this work? will that work? how about I start over again, but this time do it differently?’ As for Our Mortal World, he says: ‘There was an idea behind the piece. Language, and particularly poetry, have always seemed close bedfellows with music. The phrase “mortal world” appears in the last stanza of WH Auden’s Lullaby. I like the way that Auden plays around with strong, resonant phrases which seem to make sense, but in…

All composers write not for the piano, but for their piano, because they get feedback from that and inspiration from what they hear. For me it was always fascinating to find out what it was that they heard. In the case of Beethoven, it’s far more complicated because of his hearing problem, which is probably completely different from what we imagine. He may have heard things that were not at all what we hear. First of all, an instrument doesn’t exist without an acoustic. And here comes the hearing deficiency of Beethoven: maybe this is the biggest influence of his condition, on the acoustical part. The acoustical part is responsible, among other things, for tempo. I remember a discussion with Herbert von Karajan when we played some concerts in one…

Streabbog The Whirlwind (p30): Your chromatic scales get a thorough workout in this delightful piece. Try out a variety of fingering choices, such as: 4321, 2132, 1432 when descending in the RH six bars before the end; 1234, 1231, 2345, 12345 for bars 1-2, or (just for fun!) cross the RH over the LH in places such as bars 9-10. Doing this keeps your imagination going as well as your fingers. Gardel Por Una Cabeza (p38): For amusement and variety, try playing the tune with just your second finger (with pedal) in places such as bars 1-5 and 11-17. This ingrains each chromatic shift into your mind and can even help you to memorise the melody, especially if you can sing along quietly as you do so. When you then…

Key F major Tempo March Style Romantic Will improve your ✔Rhythm ✔Chord playing ✔Hand coordination This bold and lively piece comes from German composer Cornelius Gurlitt’s 35 Easy Studies Op 130. It is full of character and charm and bounces along nicely at dotted crotchet equals 104 beats per minute. The notes fit comfortably under the hands with only a few awkward hand position changes. A march such as this demands astute rhythmic precision and adherence to a strict pulse. To achieve this, let’s start by focusing solely on the rhythm (the notes can come later). Set in 6/8, or compound duple time, aim to count each quaver – that is, six quaver beats to a bar – and, taking your LH, tap the LH part’s rhythm on your piano…

On these Keyboard Class pages, Pianist covers the most basic stages of learning the piano through a series of lessons by regular contributor Hans-Günter Heumann. This exercise introduces the technique of hand crossing. Exercise for crossing hands When hand crossing, try not to lift the hands too high. In bars 1-2 the LH has to jump over the RH (and vice versa towards the end), but still try to keep it as low as possible. Make swift, lateral movements, placing the fingers over the notes before you play. Hans-Günter Heumann continues his series for beginners in the next issue. To find out more about Heumann, visit www.schott-music.com…

German-born Johann Baptist Cramer moved to London with his family at the age of three, studying under Clementi for a short while. He was the English publisher of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 and is credited with giving it its nickname, ‘Emperor’. Cramer’s commercial success mustn’t detract from his skills as a pianist. Ferdinand Ries recalled Beethoven’s opinion of Cramer: ‘Among pianists he praised only one to me as an excellent player: John Cramer. All others found little favour with him.’ Read Nils Franke’s step-by-step lesson on p21. See also John Evans’s article on p70 in which Cramer features.…

WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM This ravishing (and rather daunting) piece is written by the Russian-born virtuoso pianist Mischa Levitzki. Levitzki enjoyed a glittering career as a concert pianist, but he also transcribed numerous works, prepared a cadenza for Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, and wrote small pieces for the piano. Among his most popular compositions for piano were The Enchanted Nymph, Valse in A, Valse tzigane, and Gavotte. Lucy Parham’s lesson on page 22 offers up plenty of playing tips, while Chenyin Li touches on the use of the pedal, suggesting pedalling with the harmony, keeping the bass note within the pedal whenever possible. Less and lighter pedalling is required in the waltz sections. Turn to Lucy Parham’s step-by-step lesson on p22. Read about the life and music…

Rather like horrible-tasting but beneficial medicine, the music of certain late 18th and early 19th century piano composers has a reputation for being hard to swallow but, ultimately, good for us. Hopefully, the suggestions below will prove that not only is their music good for our playing but also good to play. Burgmuller, Friedrich (1806-1874) Play: 25 Easy and Progressive Studies Op 100 Czerny, Carl (1791-1857) Play: Variations on a Theme by Rode Op 33 Clementi, Muzio (1752-1832) Play: Sonata in D Op 40 No 3 Cramer, Johann Baptist (1771-1858) Play: 84 Etudes Op 50 (No 10 is terrific) Cramer’s Study Op 30 No 28 appears on page 33 Diabelli, Anton (1781-1858) Play: Pleasures of Youth – Six Sonatinas for four hands Op 163 Dussek, Jan Ladislav (1760-1812) Play: Piano…