Legato Vs. Non-legato In Piano Technique

My last couple of entries touch on the problem of how most freely and effectively to manipulate the piano keys for beautiful and variegated sound. Another way of describing unstable equilibrium (see previous post) is “empowered neutral,” the neutral point being the point at which the greatest amount of potential energy is available. If the hand is standing freely on a finger, 1) it is free from parasitic contractions that limit its movement, and 2) it is as high as possible. These two characteristics lend it the greatest amount of potential energy it can possess. A hand “stands freely” when its finger feels rooted in the key and yet it feels no downward pressure. It has “made peace with gravity.” Stand your third finger now on the desk, and don’t press into the desk. Simply move your hand forward until each finger bone is stacked up vertically on top of the one underneath it, and your hand is attached to the top finger knuckle horizontally. Now rock your pelvis slightly forward and back, causing your hand to follow its lead - it mirrors the pelvis’s movement. Let your arm be floppy, to better feel how your pelvis and the cupola of your hand mirror each other in their movement, but don’t let your arm floppiness undermine the wonderful feeling of structure in your finger and hand! Now as you continue to rock, switch the finger your hand is standing on. Walk from one finger to another, and try out different ways of coordinating it with the rocking - when is the most convenient moment to make the switch? This exercise allows you to feel your hand standing on your finger with a minimum of “sheer factors” acting upon it. The actual sensation is markedly different from what we’re used to. Normally we tend to deform the finger by exerting pressure down through it into the key, or by having the arm pull it one way or another. Then we need to contract certain muscles to hold the finger in a certain shape. Here the finger acquires a strange feeling of strength, strange because it is not derived from muscular effort but from exact skeletal alignment - the shape holds itself. This is what Kemal was trying to get me to feel when he had me abandon legato (see two posts ago). My legato had acquired a certain pressing that impinged upon the precise bone alignments of my hand, and hindered the free movement of my fingers. Cultivating the freely standing hand gives me the freedom that Kemal instilled in my fingers, but also allows me to reinstate a legato if needs be, a legato free from the negative qualities that can so easily creep in unbeknownst to one.