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When I want to listen to some unforgettable piano playing, I turn to the recordings of Emil Gilels. I would have moved mountains to hear him live, but he died in 1985; I console myself instead with films on YouTube, notably his sublime account of the Bach/Siloti Prelude in B minor. The floating layers of sound he creates, each note ringing out within them: it’s a tone of voice that is entirely personal to him. In this issue, Jessica Duchen explores the elusive concept of what makes a personal tone of voice at the piano. Daniel Barenboim may tell her that placing an ashtray on a key will produce a sound, but – before you fall off your piano bench! – he’s only proving the point that anything and anyone…

From the softest whisper to the most sonorous roar, the great pianists play with a huge variety of sounds and colours, making the most of the vast tonal palette the instrument has to offer while retaining their own individual stamp. Focus on quality of sound should be at the top of the agenda during piano study – it’s our number one priority. In this article, I look at how to achieve that elusive singing tone that pianists seek. I also investigate how to create an intimate pianissimo without those annoying ghost notes that lose focus, or fail to sound at all. And what is the secret behind a fortissimo that retains character and roundness, avoiding the ugly banging that causes the listener to grimace and cover their ears? Felt-covered hammers…

Key A flat major Tempo Lento assai Style Romantic Will improve your ✓ Placing chords off beat ✓ Legato octaves ✓ Control of tempo The 1830s and 1840s were a time of considerable compositional development for Liszt. From around 1850 onwards, versions of earlier piano works appeared in print, in which the composer achieved a by now refined balance between technical demands and musical content. Part of that journey towards a more balanced style was a steadily growing number of shorter, individual miniatures that began to encapsulate Liszt’s moods as a performer: from short, flashy dances to exquisitely crafted lyrical album leaves. It is to that latter category that the present piece in A flat major (1865) belongs. The score was published after Liszt’s death, and was thus never specifically…

BEGINNER Playing tips from the composer: This piece is intended to evoke peace, in both the player and listener, and, hopefully, bring about peace, too. Most of us desire inner peace, and we also wish for peace in this increasingly volatile world. The tempo marking, crotchet equals 100 beats per minute, is approximate; you may prefer to play it slower – or indeed faster. No matter what tempo you choose to take, the quavers should always be played evenly – both tonally and rhythmically. As always, the metronome will be helpful here; aim to set it to a quaver beat so that you can ‘sit’ on the pulse, playing a note to every tick. The tenuto markings help define the melodic material, which is really all centred around the harmonic…

INTERMEDIATE Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Lyapunov is largely remembered for his challenging 12 Etudes d’exécution transcendante. This set completed the cycle of the 24 major and minor keys that Franz Liszt had started with his own Transcendental Etudes but had left unfinished. Lyapunov did write some ‘easier’ piano works, though, such as this charming Berceuse d’une poupée (Doll’s lullaby), the second of six pieces entitled Six Morceaux faciles (Six easy pieces) Op 59. Playing tips: Firstly, establish a good pulse in the LH; this is the rocking of the cradle over which the melody sings. Keep things calm, smooth and quiet, and make sure that the RH melody is phrased well. At bar 21 the melody develops a bit, but not for long; the hushed opening returns at…

INTERMEDIATE WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM Mykola Lysenko is regarded as ‘the father of Ukrainian classical music’, but his music is virtually unknown outside his home country. As Bartók did later in Hungary, Lysenko went out into the countryside, listened to what the people were singing and fashioned an individual musical language that brought together the styles of Chopin and Liszt and the essence of Ukrainian folksong. At a time when Ukraine is in the news for all the wrong reasons, here is a reminder of its cultural traditions. Playing tips: What a strong title for a piece this is: Anguish. The word’s meaning, ‘extreme unhappiness caused by physical or mental suffering’, should be conveyed through the music. The melody starts out quite bare; the staccatos to be…

INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED Compared to his operas, Bizet wrote relatively little for the piano. He was known to be an exceptional pianist, however, even if he rarely performed in public, and he won a number of prizes during his student days at the Conservatoire de Paris. Bizet composed his Chants du Rhin (Songs of the Rhine) in 1865. The set comprises six dreamy miniatures based on poems by Joseph Méry. L’Aurore (‘Dawn’) is the opening piece. Playing tips: There’s no respite to the rippling semiquaver accompaniment that flows bar by bar throughout the piece! And this is where the technical challenge lies: the six semiquavers should sound perfectly even, passing from one hand to the other. The RH top melody line needs to sing out, legatissimo. No easy task! Practise very…

As apianist by training, and someone who has come to composition only much later, one thing has become clear: Nobody composes the same way. By contrast, pianists tend to work in similar ways: we start by reading the score, writing in fingerings, forming ideas about the piece – followed by endless slow practice, using the metronome, and finally up to tempo, then resulting in some form of performance. But composers’ processes are much more varied: some use computer software, some use mathematical formulas and some plan out the structure with a pencil on a graph before writing a single note. Look at some of the past greats: Schubert and Mozart were ‘desk’ composers, writing on a table while hearing inwardly, whereas Chopin and Schumann were not able to compose without…

INTERMEDIATE Rimsky-Korsakov had few ambitions in the direction of piano or chamber music and concentrated his energies on lyric and dramatic forms: songs, opera, music that tells a story such as his orchestral masterpiece, Scheherezade. Nevertheless, he found it useful to produce a few salon pieces, and among them is his Op 15 set of three, dating from the mid-1870s. Rather thinly veiled is the presence of Chopin in the wistful harmonies of the central Romance. Playing tips: There are three voices to this Romance: one in the LH and two in the RH. So you can see which hand poses more problems: the RH, which carries both the melody and an accompaniment. Sometimes the melody is heard in the alto part (as it does at the start) and sometimes…

TAP TO WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS PIECE INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED ‘Serenade for the Doll’ would have been a more natural heading, but Debussy titled Children’s Corner and its movements in English that was never fluent: perhaps a gesture of gratitude for the work of ’Miss Gibbs’, the English governess of his daughter Chou-Chou to whom the suite is dedicated. Playing tips: This work is very fragmented. We suggested that you listen to it several times with the score at hand, marking up the different sections. Once you have understood the structure of the piece, get learning. The LH fulfils more than a bass-line function and often takes on the melody (at bar 16 onwards, bar 45 and elsewhere). Take careful note of the expressive and dynamic markings – Debussy meticulously…

EMAIL: editor@pianistmagazine.com WRITE TO: The Editor, Pianist, Warners Group Publications,The Maltings, West St, Bourne, PE10 9PH. Letters may be edited. Advice for Chopin Nocturne I am working on Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor and struggling with the scalic pattern in bar 55. Has Graham Fitch any tips on how to get this bar up to speed? Playing the right-hand scale fast enough, lightly enough, and musically, is proving very challenging. Louise Roques, Oxfordshire, UK Graham Fitch responds: There are two stages to mastering the fioritura passages in the coda of this Nocturne. Firstly, we need to be able to play the right-hand scales at speed using a leggiero touch. We feel this as a very light scratching motion of the finger tips supported by a floating arm (keep…

Key A major Tempo Allegro con brio Style Romantic Will improve your ✓Polonaise rhythm ✓Dynamic range ✓’Blind’ playing This piece is one of those rare works by Chopin that sounds more difficult to master than it is. It contains many tricky passages, of course, and it requires a lot from the performer. However, compared with some of the other polonaises, it is a sure-fire winner to impress your audience! Unlike the nocturnes and mazurkas, the rubato of a polonaise generally needs to be kept to a minimum The good news is there’s a lot of repeated material, so it’s fairly quick to learn. And if you add all the written repeats into your performance it becomes a rather lengthy short piece. As an aside, if you enjoy learning this Polonaise,…

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE Grieg wrote his Norwegian Folk Tunes in 1896. Highly evocative in character, each of the 19 pieces paints a different scene, and this Cattle Call is no exception in managing to evoke the Scandinavian countryside. Playing tips: The first two bars act as an introduction to the scene. Even if they contain few notes, there needs to be a sense of forward movement. The calm melody starts at bar 3. Find a good pulse and make sure to phrase the RH line. The most important technique needed in this atmospheric piece is the ability to create the most beautiful tone! Always voice the notes so that the top melody line sings out. Take the arpeggiated chord at bar 14 in a relaxed manner (don’t grab the notes quickly!),…

INTERMEDIATE Alkan’s 25 Préludes (‘dans tous les tons majeurs et mineurs’) Op 31 were first published in three volumes by Brandus of Paris in 1847. While we may feel tempted to draw a comparison with the Op 28 set by Chopin, which appeared some eight years earlier, a cursory glance at Alkan’s Préludes reveals the two composers’ intentions were vastly different. Playing tips: The biggest technical hurdle in this seemingly easy piece is to maintain legato in the RH chords. Keep the fingers close to the keys and shape the line, voicing the chords so the top melody can be heard. The LH is far easier – it’s just the same two notes all the way through! Pedal tips: See markings on the score.…

INTERMEDIATE Liszt wrote his 5 Pieces S192 between 1865-1879. The set, with a dedication to Baroness Olga von Meyendorff, was published in 1928, with the exception of Piece No 5, which was published in 1963. Even if the five works were misleadingly published as if they form some kind of a cycle, they were composed over many years and are quite independent from each other. They are models of simplicity, this second piece deriving from the second of the Liebesträume, and only the more extended fifth piece having a title, Sospiri! A couple of them have featured in past issues of Pianist – they are all worth exploring. Read Nils Franke’s lesson.…

ADVANCED Chopin wrote at least 23 polonaises for solo piano. Of these, seven were published during his lifetime (including the Polonaise-Fantaisie Op 51), three were published posthumously with opus numbers, six were published posthumously without opus numbers – and at least seven were lost! Among the best known are the Polonaise Op 40 No 1 (‘Military’), composed in 1838, and the Polonaise in A flat Op 53 (‘Heroic’). Who gave this particular Polonaise (and indeed the ‘Heroic’) its nickname? We are not sure. But the brisk rhythm, the ‘drum roll’ in the middle section and the heroic demeanour of the work in general all evoke the world of military music. Lucy Parham plays the Polonaise Op 40 No 1 on this issue’s album. Read her step-by-step lesson.…

DANIEL BARENBOIM Encores: Personal favourites by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Albéniz etc DG 4860932 ★★★★ A birthday present or a parting gift? On the eve of Daniel Barenboim’s 80th birthday, it’s a fair question, but I’m inclined towards the former. He still has so much to share, not least the maturity and wisdom of his years. Here he brings us very personal accounts of familiar works. Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat sets the scene, with its controlled and loving pace, the piece opening like a flower. Later, ‘Aufschwung’ from Schumann’s Fantasiestücke floats on a cushion of air. Likewise, Liszt’s Consolation No 3 in D flat. Where Barenboim’s playing is less persuasive is in faster pieces such as the quicker Chopin studies where, masked by judicious pedalling, the notes can…

INTERMEDIATE As a fluent improviser, Albéniz composed with ease and swiftness, and it’s equally easy to hear in this four-movement suite (composed in 1900 and published in Paris) how he transferred the guitar idiom of his native Spain into piano music with a French inflection. This melancholy piece of Debussyan Impressionism seems to evoke the leaves falling from the trees and the wind that carries them away; the cycle concludes with a windy winter’s day full of staccatissimo teeth-chattering. Playing tips: This delightful gem starts out pianissimo, requiring a light but firm touch. Bear in mind the wonderfully lilting 12/8 rhythm. No matter how quiet, all the notes need to sound. Even if there seem to be lots of notes (especially in the RH), they fit comfortably under the hand.…

We’re all accustomed to the benefits of slow, measured piano practice, which gives both the brain and physical machinery extra time to deal with the complexities of what we’re learning. At regular points in studying or revising a piece, airlifting relatively small chunks of the music from their normal contexts takes the heat out of what we’re doing and adds greatly to the focus we can give them. Aligned with slow practice, there’s hands separate practice of course, which is similar in that more of our attention is being channelled towards improving a smaller, thereby more approachable task. It’s the equivalent of holding a magnifying glass over a wasp’s wings and seeing detail we hadn’t spotted before. But beyond these two important, well-known facets of efficient practising, we’ll be looking…

Key G major Tempo Allegretto Style Romantic Will improve your ✓ Articulation ✓ Evenness ✓ Rhythm Firstly, take note of the two constrasting sections. The first half (bars 1-16) consists of quick RH passagework which should be rhythmically tight, even and legato. By comparison, the second scherzando section (bar 17 to the end) requires a lighter, more whimsical character with a predominantly detached LH touch. Bars 1-16 should be repeated, with the piece ending at the Fine. The first section can be practised ‘blocked-out’. That is, playing the notes in each bar altogether, forming one chord, which helps identify note patterns and solidifies fingering. Note: not all the notes within a bar will fit, but the majority should fall conveniently into chords. Try practising hands separately at first, concentrating mainly…

LESSON 54: VELOCITY On these pages, Pianist covers the most basic stages of learning through a series of lessons by Hans-Günter Heumann. Inside this issue we feature two exercises by French composer Henry Lemoine. He wrote them specifically for improvement of velocity. Etude enfantine Op 37 No 1 This exercise focuses on the RH. The best way to gain velocity is to start out very slowly, depressing each RH quaver note firmly and deeply into the key. Keep the notes even, with a slight emphasis on the first note of the bar. As the speed increases, the depth of touch should be less. The RH acts as the solid chordal accompaniment. Etude enfantine Op 37 No 2 Now, with the focus being on the LH, practise this piece in the…

LISTEN HERE: pianistm.ag/lyraslament BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE Notes from the composers: Lyra’s Lament is an uplifting piece in the key of F major with a beautiful Celtic-influenced melody and simple chord sequence based on the primary chords. It has a freely played introduction which produces a contrast to the gentle movement of the next section created by the LH accompaniment pattern. There are three key techniques: LH bass note and chord pattern, intervallic stretches of a sixth in the RH, and octave melody playing. Some background information: Lyra’s Lament is written by Janette Mason and James Thompson who have extensive experience in the music industry as performers, producers, composers and educators. They set up Piano Hive in 2020 with the core aim of producing beautiful sounding pieces designed to improve technique and…

INTERMEDIATE Bach composed his Prelude BWV 927 in 1720, though it was not published till over 100 years later in 1843. Playing tips: In the case of Bach and dynamics, less can often be more; look at the score, and you will find few dynamic markings. There’s no need to shift back and forth between loud and soft – the music speaks for itself. From the outset, imagine that you are playing one long phrase in a strict tempo, all the way through to the penultimate bar where you can take your time with the arpeggiated chord and the subsequent notes. Fingers need to be agile and even: try to emulate fingers tapping away on an old-fashioned typewriter, using the same pressure to depress each key. This is a great…

INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED Published in 1780 by the Viennese firm Artaria (one of the leading publishing houses of the 18th and 19th century), the popular Sonata No 37 was dedicated to the talented sisters Franziska and Marianna Katherina von Auenbrugger, whose playing in aristocratic salons drew the admiration of both Leopold Mozart and Haydn himself. Playing tips: Jubilant from start to finish, with a sense of cheekiness and innocence (see the innocentemente marking in the first bar), the notes should sparkle and be crystal clear. Practise in small sections, building up the tempo slowly and carefully. Keep the rhythm spot-on, making sure to follow all the dynamic and articulation markings. The rests are equally as important to implement, as they will achieve extra clarity, so lift the fingers away from the…

But what exactly is the difference between dynamic contrast and tonal variety? Sadly, we will not receive much help in answering this from acousticians: James Jeans’s classic 1937 book Science & Music firmly squashes any idealistic theories we may have about talented artists having magic fingers: ‘Records of sound curves of single notes played by well-known virtuosi and the same notes played by letting a weight fall on the keys showed no visible differences.’ Given this fact, it is understandable that many teachers find it hard to be specific when teaching tone. We may talk about ‘dark chocolate’ for Chopin’s D flat Nocturne, the ‘golden sun’ at the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto and so on. That is all very well for young, instinctively gifted students who are somehow able…

TRUTH Alexis Ffrench Hal Leonard Alexis Ffrench is a British classical-soul composer/ pianist, who has recently been appointed as the ABRSM’s first ever artistic director. Truth is a collection of 13 ambient, atmospheric pieces composed during lockdown which were inspired by the age-old question ‘who am I and what is my purpose in this world?’ His recording of the pieces features collaborators such as Jin Oki (guitar) and Leona Lewis (vocals), and all but one of them includes instrumental backing to add expressive warmth. Ranging in length from three to ten pages, difficulty is around Grade 5 to 7. The writing is pianistic and easy to listen to, and the pieces will test one’s ability to carefully balance and shape parts in order to project the songful melodies from accompanying…

INTERMEDIATE In the bagatelle form, Beethoven composed some of his most gently whimsical and at the same time puzzling and confrontational music: if these pieces are light-hearted, they are not as trifling as their genre would imply. Indeed the Op 119 set (including a 10-second Allegramente) perplexed one publisher, who turned them down on the basis that such pieces were beneath the composer’s dignity. An expensive mistake. Playing tips: This lesser-known Bagatelle starts out with a long recitative-like passage until it starts ‘proper’ at bar 7. This introduction needs to sound improvisatory (listen to the recording for guidance on that tricky-looking run). Pedal tips: When you listen to the soundtrack, you will hear hardly any pedal. To achieve a crisp and clear texture, avoid using the pedal as much as…