Innehållsförteckning för 129 från Pianist

Sometimes we like to go off-piste with our covers, especially at the end of the year. This issue features one of the world’s most instantly recognisable faces, Cate Blanchett. She’s no pianist, but her latest film casts her as a classical musician, and if she’s in town and willing to chat to me about it, I’m not going to say no. Blanchett spares nothing to get under the skin of her characters. In this case, that’s the conductor Lydia Tár, who is often seen sitting at (and playing) the piano. Everything she says, and every move she makes, persuades the viewer that Blanchett has been living and breathing music all her life. We could all surely learn from her example. I’m not talking about fingerings and arpeggios, scales or Alberti…

Key C major Tempo Allegretto Style Classical Will improve your ✓ Articulation ✓ Evenness ✓ Rhythm This characterful minuet is bold, elegant and full of sunshine! It was written by German composer Christian Friedrich Schale (1713- 1800), who’s style is often thought to bridge the gap between the High Baroque and early Classical periods. Constructed in four-bar phrases, and in binary form, this three-in-a-bar dance demands a fairly steady tempo. The Allegretto tempo marking is a suggestion, and a crotchet equals 96 beats per minute should do the trick, even if a slower speed could also work. Make sure the fingering is set in stone from the outset. Starting with the LH, observe the editorial suggestions: the finger change on the repeated Cs in bar 1 and the repeated As…

It almost goes without saying that security and consistency in fingering is essential for technical and musical success at all levels. Finding the most comfortable, elegant and musically sensitive fingering for each phrase can make a huge difference. As teachers we should guard against spoon-feeding and non-negotiable law giving. It is all too easy for us to quickly write fingerings on scores with no explanation. Indeed, at its worst, dictatorial pedagogy can see beginners working with scores in which a pencilledin fingering is literally inserted above every single note! This is particularly damaging as it encourages pupils to read numbers rather than notes, so stumping their development of reading and storing up serious problems for note processing later. Taking the time with your student in the earlier stages will reap…

Places with pianos In answer to Susie MacLeod’s letter (‘Holidays with a piano’, issue 128), I have had good success finding piano access when traveling here in the US. 1) Colleges and Universities: I have made contacts and gained permission to use practice rooms at a couple of different educational facilities, in particular one full university and another community college. I contact the piano professor well in advance to open the conversation. I generally make a donation to the music department based on how much time I spend practising at their facility. 2) Many piano showrooms in the US have practice rooms available for rent. Prices are assuredly a bit higher now, but last time I used one I paid $10- 15US for an hour of time on a Kawai…

You could think of sight-reading as learning a piece… instantly! An ability to compute a score quickly, i.e. ‘at sight’, implies an ability to assimilate information on the hoof, instinctively and reliably. Therefore, it stands to reason that we must first be competent readers – only then can we quickly drink in the most salient bits of information dotted about the page. Reading, and for that matter, sight-reading, involve that irksome word ‘analysis’, though don’t be put off. Practised regularly, analytical skills gradually become more subliminal. We eventually get to a point where we feel less need to follow a laborious checklist: key signature, time signature, tempo, clefs, etc. But initially, this process is absolutely necessary – it will partly remind us how we first learned to read (and connect…

Key B minor Tempo Andantino cantabile Style Romantic Will improve your ✓ Pedalling ✓ Voicing ✓ Memory There are only a few composers whose place in music history is secured by a seemingly small number of works. César Franck (1822-1890) is one of them. Dig a little deeper, and it appears that what we recognise as Franck’s piano style today largely came about in the last 15 or so years of his life. This is where this piece (c.1862) is so important as an earlier example of Franck’s developing mature keyboard style. Originally written for organ, its transcriber – the English pianist Harold Bauer (1873-1951) – offers an organ transcription for the piano that breaks with much of the more full-on sonorities that eager transcribers, from Liszt to Bartók and…

Rim and back posts Beech and mahogany give the rim a warm and deep sound quality. Acoustic Resonance Enhancement technology reduces the wood’s moisture content to suppress damping for clean vibrations. An innovative joint method binds woods together for a smooth, resonant tone. Frame Sand casted and designed to resonate beautifully with the soundboard. Soundboard The shape of the crown has been refined to add a deeper, more resonant mid-bass sound.The width, height and position of the sound ribs has been modified to increase dynamic range. Bridge Reshaped in the mid-treble register to increase effective string length, enhancing lower frequencies between the mid-treble and treble, and optimising balance across the entire register. Hammers Felt is shaped to impart an exceptional tone and rich palette of sounds with more depth and…

FIRST REPERTOIRE FOR LITTLE PIANISTS Books 1 & 2 Melanie Spanswick The Willis Music Company As their titles indicate, these are repertoire books (not method books) aimed at pre-Grade 1 beginners, starting with pieces in five-finger position centred around middle C. The pacing is nice and gentle, so that quavers only appear in Book 2, and are joined by dotted crotchets in the final pages. Teacher accompaniments help to flesh out musical interest, and the author notates the rhythm of most pieces for the student to tap in a ‘Rhythm Focus’ section. The pieces are all original works by the author, so students won’t recognise them. However, the musical material is sympathetically written for its target user and includes inspirational, creative touches. The front cover of these books will satisfy…

Fingering is a very individual matter, since no two hands are alike. There are some pianists who might practise two or more different fingerings for a given passage; the one that comes out in performance is not predetermined, but influenced by factors such as the particular piano they have to contend with that night, the acoustical properties of the hall, a different way with articulation, and so on. Other pianists are not so conscious of the fingering they are using and do not write it down; rather than focus on developing muscular memory, a lot of the practice is geared towards training the ear and the mind to guide the hands to the right notes. Another group, perhaps the majority, decide on their fingering early on in the learning process…

Key A major Tempo Andante Style Classical (but Romantic in style!) Will improve your ✓ Legato ✓ Cantabile ✓ Artistry French composer Hélène de Montgeroult (1764- 1836) was a contemporary of Mozart, yet wrote music that was decades ahead of her time, closer in spirit to that of Mendelssohn, Chopin and Schumann. Hers is visionary work of astonishingly high quality, but Montgeroult remains virtually unknown today. While this may largely be a result of her gender, she was also a very private person who never sought the limelight. Despite a life story that could inspire a Hollywood blockbuster, Montgeroult avoided public life as much as possible and only ever performed in private salons. ‘On first encountering this étude, my immediate thought was of Chopin, yet it was written while he…

CYPRIEN KATSARIS 20th century Greek piano music Melism MLS-CD-035 What a treasure. There is no harm in sounding like Messiaen-lite when the colours are so vivid and the feeling for the piano so instinctively right as they are in the 24 Préludes (very French indeed) by Yannis Papaïoannou (1910- 89). Titles such as Miss A.J. Eccentric and Oiseaux aquatiques actually live up to their promise, and here much credit must surely go to Cyprien Katsaris, who gets a sumptuously engineered Bechstein to speak and glitter and (in Le Christ est ressuscité) thunder as required. The collection of eight dances from the Greek islands by Yannis Constantinidis (1903-84) is comparatively tame despite the rhythmic complexity of metres such as the Karsilamas in 9/8. Cast in a Lisztian single movement, the…