Problems With Right Hand. Maybe Video Might Clarify Problem?

I do not understand what is going on this year my right hand started feeling like it was constantly tired after practicing and my sound was coming out as if it were forced. I was under ALOT of nervous tension and I am working on it but I still feel it and it bothers me. I am going to a good physical therapist(shmule tatz) and he is working on my wrist (he says that the bones in my wrist are not mobile and my muscles are compensating by over working). Maybe these videos might clue someone on what might be going on wrong. My wrist begins to feel tight in fast scale like passage work and lound contrapuntal passages in one hand (when the pinky and fourth fingers play the melody and fingers beneath play contrapuntal passages). I mean I can still play but its just I have the feeling and it bugs me. This is from the year before I started feeling trouble. This is from this year (I dont know if its noticeable. I feel it much less on stage)

Juan, you are a very fine pianist and have what looks like excellent technique... wonderful hands, big round sound... Your problem is because that wonderful arch of yours actually often sinks imperceptibly in the instant just before a note or chord, indicating that you are actually using your arm too much and your hand not enough. THE ARCH MUST GENERATE THE SOUND. Instead, your arch is continuously having to exert effort to recover from the mini-collapse. This is the source of your pain. Do something about it before it gets worse! All sincere best wishes, AFF

So if I may understand better. My strength of my hand and the weight of my arm are not in balance. My arm is exerting too much weight making my hand unable to support it?

Exactly. You have good hand strength, you're just not using it very well. AFF

So what happened? AFF

turns out there are some problems with the ligaments of my wrist (went to a orthopedist. It is due to a fall that I could have had sometime in my life. ) I will be splinted when I sleep and will get hand therapy. In the mean time I will dedicate myself more to Bach and the classics (mozart, etc). I have to find a technique that allows me maximum effortlessness without stress and tightness (to ease recovery). The other component is the emotional part which I know also plays a role. I can never open up enough and it hinders potential. If my mind tightens, my muscles do as well and that cant help. Any advice? By the way I have taken into acount the advice of the balance between hand strength and arm weight and it is true. I have been stressing my hand with too much weight and it must have aggravated the problem I already had by the nature of my wrist.

But I think I am getting better. I stopped playing for about two weeks and it relaxed things so that I can begin again. I am also seeing good specialists.

I guess in my first email when I said "you have great technique" I didn't really mean that. What I meant was you big pieces with real proficiency and good musicianship. If you had great technique you wouldn't be hurting yourself. When the bones line up well, they take the strain off the ligaments. But to line them up well, the commands to the muscles must be different: you have to use yourself differently. You have to conceive an entirely different way of producing tone, one in which the weight of the arm is not an issue. It's the bones of the arm lining up with the bones of the hand and fingers, , that make for a better technique. You don't move your fingers enough, and then use your arm to shove them into the keys as compensation - an instant recipe for strain. And beware: you can even perpetuate this problem in Bach and Mozart, although the polyphonic melodic strands in Bach make you move the fingers more (it's more difficult to invest your arm weight in each of several voices played with one hand, so the fingers tend to differentiate more). I wish you luck - and perhaps I may permit myself to plug my own approach here - I'll be traveling to the States in a week to conduct several Alan Fraser Piano Institutes through July and August - there, the combination of Feldenkrais lessons and piano retraining would be a great way of handling your problem! AFF

apparently thats what the problem is. the bones in actually both my hands are actually not aligned. But the therapist told me that its the way my hands have developed into as a result of genetiacs or some injury. But for the time being I have experimented to find a way to play suitable to my hands. I dont know if you find this list logical. First, to avoid holding tension in the shoulders, neck, and especially the face which is the result of my very active nervousness. Second to release all sensation from the forearm so as to not force the sound, instead using a very natural manipulation of the weight of my arm. Third, to rely on the natural standing of my fingers without collapsing the nuckles for support in the hand without stiffening or becoming floppy (this I got from observing my teacher play closely and from the word skeletal you used that triggered a sort of image). Lastly to simply work with my ear more because I noticed that I waste time with mindlessness and any extra effort is not doing me any good. I have been trying to follow these more diligently and improvement has been made. The only thing that is impeding are passages like the coda of the fourth ballade of chopin. I can play it but it isnt effortless enough and my hand feels like its out of place when I play it. Forgive my long replies, piano is all I have and I must find solutions.

Don't worry, your reply is not overly long at all! It is full of valuable information which allows me to understand and guide you better! Everything you are doing is right, it is all really excellent - but it is not enough. You need one more ingredient to get yourself over the hump. Getting your bones into standing position where they are lined up is great, but if you achieve it solely through relaxation, this good position won't hold up under pressure. You need to cultivate more overtly the actionof the hand, specifically whole finger grasping, not curling the distal joint. These two styles of finger flexion ideally work together, but to learn whole-finger grasping better, I would advise you even to lay off finger curling for awhile and learn the empowering sensation of whole finger grasping by doing it in isolation. It is this action that will remedy the subtle, almost invisible collapse that has been troubling you until now. Good luck, you are a fine pianist. If you learn this you will be an even better one, both technically and artistically. Whole finger grasping opens up your tonal palette tremendously as well as improving your physical technique. AFF