The craft of piano playing

[phoenix]

Hi Alan

I watched this dvd recently - Freeing the Caged bird - and I have read your article a few days back reviewing some of the extracts. I must say Barbara is a very nice helpful lady having contacted her on several occasions via email. I do love her playing - musically I found her moving. I watched the whole of the Dvd and it did leave me slightly bewildered. I dont want to go into the production of the Dvd and how it did/not work just the content and hope to get some insight from yourself. I'm not sure if you have seen the whole Dvd?

The sections on arm weight. arm arches begins with demonstrating with some relaxing excersises. I have tried these myself although I think I learnt to relax a while ago through my own kinesthetic education - I couldnt have described it then - so its interesting now to find all this vocabulary to match the feelings I discovered. When I put my relaxed arm as instructed on the keyboard and the arm arch which she talks about does make things feel weightless because I think the limp wrists are hanging off the arm. The fingers are loose and light. But I cant help feel that Id never be able to play this light! This is where I dont know which language to use as its so ambiguous. When I play Im loose but my fingers seem to distribute any light weight naturally from finger to finger like your "walking" description. It's odd, maybe I missed something from the dvd but how she is able to get her demonstrating pupils from this relaxation to perform virtuoso repetoire is a mystery. She mentions playing in pulses any fast passages and then joining other passages up. She had a pupil that played the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 and gave the impression that this how she joined technical bits together. There had to be more than this though. How does one reconcile technical problems just being relaxed - the hand is at its full stretch for example. I think your book and dvd very succinctly describes in great detail the hand techniqes needed for various technical problems (8ves etc). Do you think her relaxation techniques would prepare someone in the right direction physically (posture etc) to carry on in learning the craft of piano teaching? I was left bewildered if the 2 could even be married together, as on the face of it they seemed like 2 completely different ways of getting the same goal even though there are similar things she mentions. Perhaps its that 'ole language/vocab problem again.


I am of the impression that both craft of piano and caged bird are addressing different pieces to the puzzle. For myself I find Craft of Piano much more informative and helpful and especially having the book with musical examples as well. I think the musical examples are excellent as one can almost build up their own technical programme for learning using these repetoire snippets to solve the problems. I like to use it as a reference book actually and address a particular problem one at a time.

One thing I noticed on the review of the Caged bird dvd that you posted on your techniqe.net site, was what seemed like some angry responses from Lister-Sink pupils. I think you tried to explain perhaps your directness on your points that they seem to be offended by. It's funny how we all want the same things but people still have a defense mechanism for the teacher we follow - not unlike religion! Anyhow I have the utmost respect for both yourself and Barbara.

Thanks

Sharon

[alan fraser]

Thanks so much, Sharon, for a really thoughtful and insightful post. I appreciate you taking the time to really contemplate things and think them through so thoroughly.

Look at the clips on YouTube of Barbara playing. Her arch is excellent. Her playing is excellent. Her musicianship is superb. She does many things very well (although because of the way she thinks about arm weight, she does sometimes bump the melodic line a bit). There is some Debussy which is really top class.

I have seen almost the whole teaching DVD, and in what I've seen, she doesn't teach everything she does herself when she plays. Hence your confusion, I believe. And permit me to be so bold as to say when she plays, she does more of Craft of Piano than she teaches!

You're right. You can't play all that big repertoire dangling your fingers like that. Look at her when she's whipping through the rippling passages of Reflets dans l'eau - what she's doing is excellent, but it's a far cry from dangling!

So like I say about something similar in my film, the dangling is an educative practice. It informs the reflexes. But if the reflexes think that's the end of the story, they will be very messed up. She dangles/relaxes so that her reflexes can hone, refine the potent technique she already possesses to a further degree of exactitude and sophistication.

I hope this lends some clarity to an albeit difficult subject!

Best wishes,

AFF

PS Sorry to take so long to answer this, I just found it!
_________________
Craft of Piano technique - the synthesis of mind, body and spirit in sound...
www.alanfraser.net
www.craftofpiano.com
www.pianotechnique.net

[phoenix]

Hi Alan

Thanks for your reply.
I listened to the clip on Debussy and Rachmaninov again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQLZvjzrp_0

YES!!! I noticed more of craft of piano this time. The grasping in Debussy and flat finger table tapping, the hand pumping the arch. In the watery passages the flat fingers are bright and its supported by the thumb and second finger. In the Rachmaninov there's the bird beak on some of the trebble notes in the left hand. One thing I noticed this time around, and perhaps because I've been tackling repeated chords in the Chopin Barcarolle is that the chords in the Etude tableux lost a little orchestration and I felt I was listening to a bit of flapping of the hand. That sound you get when there's too much air, as I say, between the fingers and the connection of the notes... its the timing. I thought that was due to too much relaxation (occurs around time :47 - 50) and I suspect this is because of not enough structural support from the hand you talk about in your books/dvd. I didn't hear that crisp sound you get when all the notes sound like they are going down together in the chords. I don't know whether you thought the same? It just didn't sound "easy" to me and I have done this kind of flapping myself (until I watched a Taubman/Golansky exerpt on YouTube funnily enough some years ago demonstrating repeated chords).

This subject has always fascninated me btw!! I love this forum!!

[alan fraser]

And I love your posts on this forum!

1) You are using the language that I have developed to describe these phenomena, and you are making that language yours... this is great!

2) YOU LINK WHAT YOU SEE TO THE RESULTING SOUND. You are bang on in your evaluation of
a) technical proficiencies and their corresponding musical qualities, and
b) technical deficiencies and their corresponding musical deficiencies.

This is very right on!

AFF
_________________
Craft of Piano technique - the synthesis of mind, body and spirit in sound...
www.alanfraser.net
www.craftofpiano.com
www.pianotechnique.net