Monday, December 27, 2010

Student Recitals

A huge congrats to my New York students and families who just performed beautifully this December at Steinway Hall! A huge thanks also to Jennifer at Steinway for hosting us. Thank you!
My Peabody Conservatory Students will have their semester-end recital on January 22nd in Goodwin Hall. We will also be hearing concertos as a new addition to this year's program.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Piano Action


As pianists, we all go through phases of reinventing, maintaining, and fine tuning our "touch. Things we all struggle with on a daily basis-legato, cantabile, etc.

Besides the technical aspect of it, there are so many factors we discount in our pianistic development. The largest oversight and handicap being the type of instrument we spent the most time on practicing as a child.

I myself grew up on a C7 yamaha. It is a big piano with a big sound. When I was 10, I fell in love with it for the huge sound it was capable of producing and the really acute bright articulation delivered in brilliant passage work.

However, what the instrument lacked was a variety of color from mf and belowother than a thin and colorless p. This made it extremely difficult to voice other than brightly and brashly, and as such, I struggled with controlling and voicing the softer sounds. In addition, the stringency of the attack made fine legato work very difficult because the singing and slower cantabile touch was not possible on this massive piano without many disappearing notes. The instrument was incapable of many subtleties.

The pluses. Because of the powerful melodic factor and actual difficulty in playing the instrument (heavy action), it served greatly in the aid of memorization and security of playing because of its powerful sound and melodic reinforcement.

After leaving home for many years and spending time on beat up conservatory instruments, usually Steinway M's and L's, I find that yes I have better ability to voice and control my p sounds, and listen more carefully to legato, but on the other hand, my touch itself has gotten much more sluggish (lighter action), and my memory is not as infallible as before! The other explanation...I must be getting old!