Piano master video discussion group
39 posts
Started 18 Jan 2017
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Alanfraserpiano
We can certainly see the collapse (maybe there's hope for me--ha), but he seems to know exactly what he is doing.
According to what notes and tempo are of the moment, he choose to either keep the arch or let it collapse. Is this innate to Horowitz to know exactly when to do what, or do you think he learned it from his teacher and further developed the skill as he continued to play?
I think he figured it out himself. His teacher probably taught the standard Russian arch, as exemplified in Richter. However Tarnowsky might have done something else, we will really never know. I suspect that he did develope it on his own because very early videos show a less unusual hand with a more pronounced, 'normal' arch (I am thinking of the silent slo-mo videos). He also told his student Ronald Turini (a Canadian!) not to imitate his flattened arch, because it was very difficult to do and took him 20 years to develop.
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Alanfraserpiano
What should this be? Elbow and keys approximately same height? Elbow higher, elbow lower? Change it for the style of music and power wanted?
I've been carefully paying attention to my elbow height.
Because I have a long torso, shorter legs, I cannot get my bench low enough for my elbows to be even with the keys. They are about 2" higher. Do I need correct this (by raising my piano) or is it a matter of taste?
Actually, if I lean forward so that my nose is over the tuning pins, I can get me elbows even with the top of the keys. I look a bit like a chicken though: hands are next to the torso, elbows are way to the back. I don't think this is good for technique or skeletal alignment.
I know of "nosing" the keyboard, but not the tuning pins!
Bob, you sound like a quite uniquely constructed person! In any case, my belief is that the elbows work best when they are either at or below key level. It is not to keep the sound smaller! I find the lower I sit, the bigger my sound. Sitting high forces one to compress down into the keyboard, stifling the piano instead of freeing it to resonate. It's easier to use the fingers as levers when you're lower - and to use the entire arm-hand-finger as a mechanism to hook into the key. So I would definitely raise the piano in your case...
Let me know what happens when you try this!
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A pianist
Forgive my eagerness. If I would just wait until I have received and studied the DVD, I would have a better idea how to judge visually whether a playing hand is or is not skeletal. Maybe there are degrees of skeletal-ness?
For this topic, I just watched again Ruth Slenczynska performing the Rachmaninoff Preludes. Skeletal? Non-skeletal? ?Purposeful variation in degree of skeletal-ness in order to achieve desired colors, dynamics and other interpretive aspects?
She impresses me as a extraordinarily intelligent, thoughtful, and sensitive musician, and powerful. Though those knuckles look soft some of the time, the music sounds marvelous to me--a layman and amateur. On the DVD, she mentions that when as a child she played for Rachmaninoff, "He told me I had fingers like over-cooked spaghetti." One presumes that as she continued studying (with Artur Schnabel, Egon Petri, Alfred Cortot, and Joseph Hofmann), she was able to firm up those spaghetti fingers to an acceptable degree. She said of her later study with Rachmaninoff, "He taught me how to substantiate...ideas by a solid, thorough, technical background." In this DVD, her hands appear quite supple most of the time, to my eye.
As a newcomer, I hope I have not violated forum etiquette by referencing a recording I cannot post. I hope at least some members can access this DVD, view it, and comment.
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Alanfraserpiano
A former student of mine had a grandmother in Herceg Novi, Montenegro, whose piano teacher had fled the Russian revolution. I visited the old lady (now deceased) once there, and she told me of the teacher yelling at her when she was a child, "Vashoy pyrsti su NYET pyrsti, oni su KLYASHNYAR!!!" Which means roughly, "Your fingers aren't fingers, they are overcooked spaghetti!
So it seems she and Rachmaninoff came from the same pedagogical tradition...
I sure wish we could see that Ruth Slenczynska video, it sounds absolutely fascinating.
As for spaghetti fingers, it is not so much firming them up as finding the - not overcooked, but not uncooked either!
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A pianist
Thoughts?
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Alanfraserpiano
OK, these posts bring up a very rich internal discussion in my brain. Your hand reminds me 1) of Kemal's and 2) of Wanda Landowska's. In both cases, judging by the external appearance of shape, they appear to be doing something wrong - but they achieve something very RIGHT. To wit, the 2nd metacarpal-phalangeal joint, what I call the keystone of the hand, is very low. The musculature of the fingers and thumb is extremely well-developed both in strength and agility, so many great things can be achieved even though they are being done against a background ergonomic resistance created by the anomalies of hand shape.
Why did this situation develop? You were probably used to playing like this earlier, and as your ability developed you simply adapted to what your hand was already familiar with instead of finding an easier way.
I wouldn't change anything in the physical technique, at least not at first. But I WOULD change a great deal in what I was demanding from myself in terms of refinement of sound. Your hand reminds me of those two greats, but your sound does not. I don't care if it's a clavinova, if your conception of sound is everything it should be, it would show even on this electric keyboard...
My hand is in a cast so I cannot answer at greater length now, but there it is in a nutshell...
Thanks for a couple of really amazing performances!
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A pianist
That isn't me though.
Until I get that Reverie video sorted out, the only video of my playing available is this ; and I'm planning to post few more big topics soon, so I may not have it up for awhile...
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A pianist
who is that guy?
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A pianist
I was talking to him over on pianostreet last night. He goes by the name "Mozarta"
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