The Russian School Of Piano Technique

This category has been on our forum for some time, but nobody has seen fit to submit anything. I thought I would get the ball rolling by posting my answers to an email inquiry I received about the Russian school. Thanks for that description. This brings up a very interesting point, some of the negative experiences I have had with what passes today for the Russian School. I've worked with many who went through that regime who had serious problems. They could work their fingers just as you described, but the involvement of their whole body was non-existent. They were in one narrow sense using their structure well but in a more profound sense exerting tremendous stress on it. Thus there was always an inner tension that kept their sound from being warm and alive. Their playing became an attempt to be expressive, rather than being expressive. I had to work a lot to "cure" this, but when I succeeded, their really thorough training of their fingers allowed them to play great. We also had an assistant at our Academy who played really beautifully, went to Moscow for two years of post-graduate work, and came back a broken man, pianistically and spiritually. It is important to remember, this is not the genuine Russian School, but a deformed perversion of it. The genuine Russian School is, to my mind, still pure gold, as our own Jokuth demonstrates in spades (Jokuthon Mihailovich, chair of the piano department, Belgrade Faculty of Musical Arts). If your son's teacher is a second generation Regina Horowwitz student, it is likely that he is in relatively good hands, but you should know that there is a real down side to the whole wonderful Russian tradition. As for a master class in Sydney, I would love to do it - all I need is an organizer down there to set it up! I've never been to Australia, but my paternal grandparents lived in Melbourne in the 50's so would love to see the place... Good luck, AFF

My reply to his reply: I would definitely say the former. Another example: they say that the Orientals have difficulty understanding the passion and emotion of Western music. But when I taught at Wuhan Conservatory, P.R. China, by the end of the year my kids all demonstrated real passion and real understanding of the material. One reason was because I always took care to link the technical knowledge I was giving them to emotional/spiritual aspects of the music. Even more important, it was the quality of the technical knowledge itself that allowed this flowering of passion to happen. You can always find serious flaws in the physical technique itself when this shallowness of expression you describe is in question. In my experience, for instance, despite the amazing dexterity of these digital wizards you can generally find a serious hidden weakness in the functional arch structure of the hand in what they're doing. This was the case with the products of the Russian School I worked with. They don't do what I show very clearly in the first chapter of my film. Anyway, you can see for yourself how the real solving of these hidden underlying technical flaws can lead to unexpected musical results. I have put my Chinese students' exam recital recordings online at . I was really proud of my students because they worked hard and understood what they were being taught. They were amazing! Check out for instance Chen Yuan's Dante Sonata. Out of nervousness she fluffs the first octave, then proceeds to give a performance that has the sound of a Horowitz although her tiny hand can barely stretch an octave. I was also gratified to see such tangible results from my teaching: this was where what I say above was really confirmed, that the most surefire way to solve problems of emotional-spiritual expression in music is to solve the underlying, often hidden physical anomalies. The proof is in the pudding!

Mind you, it's not all bad! There is a competition on in town (here in Novi Sad, Serbia) and yesterday I heard a young lady from the Ukraine who played the best Bach Chaconne I have ever heard. Wonderfully differentiated, orchestrated, expressive and atmospheric sound, and by the way, a really fine and functional hand arch. This is proof that in the Russian system and its descendants, there are people who still get it right, and I mean right! I am reminded as well of a Russian I heard at the First International Scriabin Piano Competition held in Nizhny-Novgorod in 1995. A guy named Karin Kornienko played the best Scriabin 10th sonata I have ever heard, a marvel of sensuous experience that rose and fell in organic waves of intensity - it gave a new, deeper spiritual meaning to this mysterious work. His Scriabin concerto was also beautiful, great sound and soul. I wonder whatever happened to him.

Hi Alan, I am always wondering what people mean when they say Russian school. I also surprised that example of the letter can apply to the teaching in Russia, because Russia is huge and there are plenty of different approaches: use body, don't use fingers, use fingers, don't move wrist, use both and so on... Unfortunately great russian teachers didn't write books and those who wrote wrote it in Russian and it was never translated. And if it were translated people would know that there was a great teachers like Shmidt-Shklovskaja, who new how to prevent and heal piano injuries (she has a book with all types of exercises (without piano, with piano, preliminary stage and so on...) there was Henrich Neigauz who explained in his book all elements of piano technique based on knowledge of body and deep musical knowledge, there was Evgeny Liberman who also wrote exceptional book about piano technique. There others who understood how our body and mind works and they were also amazing musicians.

I have always admired the Russian school and felt that I didn't know very much about it. I think one key aspect of the Russian school in which it differs from others can be summed up by Anton Rubinstein who, when asked how he got such great tone, said, "Press, press the keys until your fingers bleed." I abhor pressing but there is a way to do it well. If you press in but in such a way that there is no collapse anywhere in your hand, then you will get a great sound. When I hear this done really well, and hear the wonderful not only pianistic-sonic results but the musical results, I feel there is still something essential I don't understand about piano playing. Generally when I hear somebody do something either good or bad at the piano, I know how and why they do it. But there is something about this particular sound that remains a mystery to me. I talk about the "genuine" and "deformed" Russian schools only out of my own limited experience. I hear a pianist play, there is something amazing and specifically definable about his sound that I recognize as "Russian." I hear another pianist with negative qualities that I recognize arise from a misunderstanding of that Russian 'gold.' There's a teacher in Austria named Oleg Maisenberg who to my mind exemplifies the real golden Russian school simply on the basis of my having heard his student, Stefan Stroissnig, in Graz in 2008. Stefan had that 'certain something' that I hear in some students at our Academy who have the good fortune to study with Bilyana Gorunovich who studied in Moscow for many years. There's a fatness to the singing voice that is quite recognizable, a warmness to the tone and a rich, robust feeling of rhythmic vitality and security. An ease at the piano that allows you to express anything you want musically. Hard to describe it in words actually. Then there's the Ruska Capella Orchestra I heard in Novi Sad in 2009. One of the greatest concerts of my life. The Russian school in spades. Amazingly, deeply moving... As for the 'deformed' Russian school... the old recordings of Gavrilov for instance. Steely, unmusical... none of the gold we long for. Does this answer your question? AFF

I have always admired the Russian school and felt that I didn't know very much about it. I think one key aspect of the Russian school in which it differs from others can be summed up by Anton Rubinstein who, when asked how he got such great tone, said, "Press, press the keys until your fingers bleed." I abhor pressing but there is a way to do it well. If you press in but in such a way that there is no collapse anywhere in your hand, then you will get a great sound. you will get what you hear in your head, physical aspect comes as a result here is no such a thing as Russian piano school. what was really special is a USSR educational system which pushed musicians to work for the sake of art and not for the sake of money like now. So nobody invented any methods, there was good teachers, bad teachers of different nationalities (jews, russians, ukranians and so on...) but there was a certain understanding of music, high level of understanding that;s why good teachers had such amazing results-they were not just teaching how to play piano, the first thing they were teaching was WHAT to play. And in order to be able to teach like that one had to be very educated in many different ways

You are obviously Russian and so cannot see the thing because you are inside it. Believe me, from the outside there are certain qualities which differentiate Russian teaching from that of other countries and traditions. It is definable. Bilyana Gorunovich asked me once, "Why do you always talk about the Russian arch? I never heard about the Russian arch all the time I was in Moscow." But when she showed me how they trained her hand, it was arch cultivation all the way! It wasn't the 'Russian arch' for them, it was just the arch. The same with the Russian school: for you guys it's just, 'school.' AFF

You are obviously Russian and so cannot see the thing because you are inside it. Believe me, from the outside there are certain qualities which differentiate Russian teaching from that of other countries and traditions. It is definable. My English is messy when I write, but I don't live in Russia since 1990. Currently I live in Canada and I used to live and learn piano in another country as well. . To tell you true...arch is just the shape of the hand when you put it on your knee, that;s how kids in Russia were taught. Or ...pretend apple ...or orange... But it doesn't help to get sound if the tip of the finger is not working. Like one great teacher said-sound is born in the tip of the finger and this is totally true. I had this arch from childhood but I got sound just when I started desperately to seek for it. Great teachears in russia had different approach toward technique, depended on their own source of learning.

forgot to mention about arch... from the medical point of view the pressure while playing piano has to go not to the finger but to the outside of the palm, this thing also makes you have this arch but not every teacher knew it and there were many of those who made their students play damn exercises to make fingers very strong there we many musicians who had injuries

What you say about the fingertip is absolutely correct. But you also know that a fingertip not supported by the arch will be a disaster and possibly lead to the injuries you mention. Nice to have your comments on our forum, thank you! AFF