Jorge Luis Prats - What Piano Technique Is Really All About!

I posted one YouTube performance by Jorge Luis in the Ilya Itin thread, and further investigations have prompted me to add this to the conversation: . This long interview to my mind demonstrates what piano technique is really all about - it is at the service of musical expression and imagination; it is the means by which our fantasy can find sensuous fulfillment. When I listen to and watch an artist like Jorge Luis speak about his thought processes as he approaches the music he's playing, I feel like a real jerk to start talking about the lumbricals & interosseous! All my "physical obsessions" are so much BUT: take a look at that hand arch! See how his entire mechanism is working for him, how the action of flexion at the metacarpal-phalangeal joint is completely robust and working for him. What can I say? Here we see a complete manifestation of the principles of physical organization I present in my film and book - but how did he arrive there? He conceived a certain sound that was needed to convey a certain artistic idea, and he sought the manifestation of that sound. And the only way to get that sound is to have real contact with your instrument. should be the generating principle in good piano technique! AFF

should be the generating principle in good piano technique! AFF I think there is something wrong with this sentence. It suggests a one-directional, single-step progression: first, you come up with the musical conception; then you go to the piano and figure out how to embody it. In my, admittedly amateur experience, development seems to be more of an iterative discovery process: the piano itself suggests approaches; accidental discoveries get incorporated in later versions of an interpretation; random neurons firing in the middle of an execution add unexpected and welcome features. ocd

Very nicely expressed! I did not mean to describe a one-step process, just to state that the starting point should always be conception. I like very much how you describe the steps in between, the side-meanderings etc that lead to the goal in a nicer way than a straight-on path ever could... 1 Musical conception 2 Conception of your sound 3 Conception of the physical way to produce it is just a framework, within which happens all the lovely stuff you talk about. And yes, the piano does suggest things to one. I argued for years about this with Kemal, who thought this idea was poppycock: "Your musical conception should manifest no matter how the piano is..." I suspect he may be more amenable to our point of view these days... AFF

What a exquisite video! What a sound and colors and... but how did he arrive there? Like you said, he's got the real contact with piano! Not just that, did you see how fast his fingers move? He is so dexterous and he has this "positive tension" ...i mean, Jorge is the MAN!!!