The craft of piano playing

[Alvin Chan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_FKKIC1oSw&feature=related

This is the only video of Horowitz where he actually contradicted his own claim that he doesn't move around his body unnecessarily when he plays. Other than that, he does a lot more inefficient movements than he normally does. (normally, I can't even cite any inefficient movement of his). Here he apparently tensed up his arms from time to time, leaned back and forth, curve his spine, etc. Even within his hands, he does some of those unnecessary, tensed up moves other pianists do to "increase the tension in the music" (which of course only works in one's mind). It also doesn't sound too much like the normal Horowitz.

This, along with his rather bad (by his standard) performance in Japan, makes me think about how varied and flexible the nervous system of this artist is. (if not potentially all of us are) His flexibility of the kind of motions, while I believe is subconscious, serve to help a great deal in exploring different ways to approach different passages. If curling his 5th will help him on a certain passage, he stumbles upon it quickly. Inefficient motions are not eliminated a priori, but eliminated by trial and error. In other words, he doesn't actually have a scheme in his mind. He just stay with the remaining movements that work, the bad one being eliminated by difficult pieces and his own criticism on the sound his produced.

Evolution does not preach, it destroys.

This is a recurring theme, in biology (evolution), economics (creative destruction), cultural studies, etc. The triumph of Capitalism over central planning is a good lesson for us, that good things emerge by trial and error, and bad things get killed, not by planning ahead.

[alan fraser]

Yes, Alvin, but did you figure out why he overmoves here and nowhere else? That's the really fascinating aspect to this. Did you catch the part of the interview just prior to this performance where he says, "I never do all those standard movements you see the other pianists do," or something like that?

He said he never does that stuff, and because he mentioned it, the idea of all that stuff is now niggling his consciousness. And so, as he is playing, he gets curious about it and actually tries it out! Or even it just happens, reflexively, because the neural image of the movement had been planted in his brain by his talking about it!

THAT'S how amazingly sensitive his neurology was!

But I venture to disagree about one thing - it does sound pretty much like Horowitz to me...

Greetings from Montreal where I just arrived...

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

[Alvin Chan]

I found it more coarse, and rythmically it sounds to me to be less carefully controlled and crafted than he would normally do. But it's hard to know whether it's because of the informal nature of the performance. I found another recording by him, which sounds better to me. One theory is that he was rather new to the piece in the clip, and he hasn't stumbled on the best possible way to play it yet...... he's exploring....... and then later, as is probably the case for all his other repertoire, he refines it more and more, both physically and musically.

[alan fraser]

My old teacher Phil Cohen saw Horowitz in Chicago early one season and then same program much later that same season in Montreal. He described certain leaps in one piece that Horowitz seemed to be struggling with in Chicago but had totally minimized the movement and economized by the time he got to Montreal. It seems you have come across another instance of something similar... Nice!

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

[Eric]

Speaking about Horowitz...

Henri Jaton, my teacher for some years (also a wellknown music journalist and critics) told me once that before interviewing Horowitz he met a neigbour of H in his room in Grison who overheard him practice. It was (probably) Moszkowsky etude #1. He repeated two notes at a time da-di-da-di through the whole piece slowly and this kept on for hours.

I guess this was a version of tai-chi walking!

All the interviews by Jaton of the old masters are hopefully stored at the Radio Lausanne archives- someone should dig them up and put them on youtube.

Eric

[alan fraser]

I hope someone does... those interviews sound fascinating...

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