I don't understand these replies they progressively become more and more off topic and barely address the issues I am discussing. I understand technique and music are synonymous, but I am asking about developing raw facility... Teachers like adele Marcus claimed that the musical gift was the most important because it could not be taught and that the technique could be taught. She is often credited with training Byron Janis. So what does it take? Were rachmninoff and Lhevinne telling the truth bout hanon or is it a waste? Did lang lang and yuja do lots of hanon and pischna when thy were kids? I mean,look at he Liszt exercises for example - if Liszt advocated those exercises then surely we shouldn't discard that stuff?
About horowitz, I mean exactly what I say - his wrist was loose and he threw his hands into the keys with taut fingers- firmly held in position and curved. If you don't get what I am saying then I'd be curious to hear your own description... Check out the silent black and white home movie of him in the 20s.
That's just Horowitz pissing around, as far as I can tell. I think this is far more revealing:
While he may have made some changes, there's nothing radically different about what he was doing in 1926.
Regarding exercises, simply do whatever is useful to you. Sorry if that sounds drastically oversimplified, but I think it pretty much is that simple.
First I do not think there is any universal the material they needed in order to fine tune and maintain their ability. Furthermore, people with very different routines, like Gould and Marc Andre Hamelin developed equally phenomenal techniques.
What makes the difference in my opinion is the intelligence the body and the inner ear. If you learn to sense keyboard space and the weight of the keys and feel the musical gestures in your whole body, you will have the capability to do what you want on the keyboard. Any technical practice that enhances this and tests this is effective. So if you can use a hanon exercise to asses and fine tune your physical approach. Also, exercises like Liszt's are useful because they provide you with patterns or gestures that apply to lots of music. Liszt considered two finger exercises the best probably because the clarify how well your finger connections and articulations are working. But as it is you should constantly form inter-textual connections between passages because a lot of them simply aren't accounted for in any exercise book.
As for the music and technique part of my comments, your motions have to correspond to musical patterns and if you develop a greater mental body of knowledge of musical patterns, you can enrich your physical relationship to the instrument. Michelangeli was known to practice very slowly and very EXPRESSIVELY and his technical command was phenomenal.
Technical facility is different from musicality but you should sense the overall musical gesture a passage even while practicing slowly. Otherwise what you do has no meaning or content.
All these pianists you refer to have a basic natural musical ability that when combined with a thorough technical regimen became something really special. But if their technical practice was not motivated by musical intent I do not think they would have gotten very far.
If all you mean is and execution than a way of achieving raw technical command. Glenn Gould is the only pianist I know of who could play flawlessly on call with very little practice. Even Liszt could not maintain technical standards after he retired from concertizing and turned his attentions toward composition and conducting.
Busoni is far from off-topic since he after all was one of the first to take an active, scientific approach to mastering piano technique and his ideas are much more interesting and valuable than any run of the mill pedagogy. Read his aphorisms for young pianists.
If you want some basic practice advice, both Cherkassky and Hofmann said that you should contact the keys precisely at the center when practicing.
That's just Horowitz pissing around, as far as I can tell. I think this is far more revealing:
While he may have made some changes, there's nothing radically different about what he was doing in 1926.
What aspects of Horowitz's technique are different in that video? Are you saying that he doesn't play with loose wrists and taut fingers?
The most revealing Horowitz slow motion videos were taken off youtube a while back. They were slowed down clips from his Rachmaninoff and carmen fantasie. I think they were superior because they showed more than just his hands. You could see certain things about his whole body movement that are near impossible to notice at full speed. You could see a subtle pulse movement in his body. Glenn Gould played with a much more pronounced oscillating motion but the principle is the same.
Again, I think it is better to think of piano technique in terms of rhythm, shape and gesture than pure body mechanics. Piano playing is basically and the goal is to mirror the hierarchy of patterns in the music kinesthetically.
I think, (going back the the original question about acquiring "the goods,") that Shawn Lane, a great virtuoso electric guitarist who was influenced by people like Horowitz and Hofmann, has some valuable insight.
The guitar is a different instrument, but a lot of the principles of virtuosity are the same.
Are you talking about the entire body oscillating? Maybe that is what Horowitz was referring to when he said that you must use the weight of the legs and the torso to play fortissimo.
By any chance, could you notice any trace of an individual forearm rotation preceding each note? If you couldn't see that even in a slow motion video, then that very well may shoot down Taubman's rotation theory.
Exactly. His whole upper body is oscillating forward and backward. Rotation is hard to notice, especially with someone who moves as minimally as Horowitz. I am not that familiar with the Taubman system but I think that rotation is very important for shaping phrases and for passage work. This Hofmann video shows more visible rotation than anything I have seen of Horowitz.
Also there are some close-ups of Hofmann's hand from life magazine. Look it up on google books. "Josef Hofmann Life Magazine" will get you what you need.
The bottom line is really quite simple and you will find it in the Craft of Piano DVD. Hofmann and Horowitz, for all the apparent differences in their technical approaches have maximally fingers and the finger activity can only work fluently with lateral arm movement and rotation. The whole skeleton is an integrated system and the rhythmic pulse generates all the movement.
Nyiregyhazi also said he used the whole body to generate fortissimos. I don't think it is so much the of the whole body as the overall pattern of movement. The fingers are still active, but the stroke and subsequent shock require the support of the whole body.
Exactly. His whole upper body is oscillating forward and backward. Rotation is hard to notice, especially with someone who moves as minimally as Horowitz. I am not that familiar with the Taubman system but I think that rotation is very important for shaping phrases and for passage work. This Hofmann video shows more visible rotation than anything I have seen of Horowitz.
Also there are some close-ups of Hofmann's hand from life magazine. Look it up on google books. "Josef Hofmann Life Magazine" will get you what you need.
The bottom line is really quite simple and you will find it in the Craft of Piano DVD. Hofmann and Horowitz, for all the apparent differences in their technical approaches have maximally fingers and the finger activity can only work fluently with lateral arm movement and rotation. The whole skeleton is an integrated system and the rhythmic pulse generates all the movement.
Nyiregyhazi also said he used the whole body to generate fortissimos. I don't think it is so much the
That's a great video of Hofmann. I see what you mean about rotation, especially during the fast sections.
When you talk about the differences in approach between Horowitz and Hofmann, are you referring mainly to Horowitz's low wrist and flat fingers as opposed to Hofmann's level wrist and curved fingers? Even with different approaches, they were able to achieve some of the same results, as both pianists had incredibly even passagework. Although Hofmann never had octaves that could compare with those of Horowitz.
Taubman's theory about rotation is that an individual rotation (either single or double) of the forearm precedes every note that is played. Many pianists, such as Alan Fraser, have insisted that a rotation on every note would be impossible at a fast tempo.
While I don't know about individual rotation, I have noticed rotation in some of Horowitz's videos.
In this video , around 9:13, it looks like Horowitz is clearly rotating toward the thumb side to play the right hand chords.
In this video , at 1:03 it looks like Horowitz may be rotating the forearm during the descending scale. Could that be an individual rotation- right to left- before each note?
In this video , when Horowitz crosses the thumb under during passagework, you can see a slight rotation of the forearm. It looks to me like Horowitz's arm moves to the side a bit in the direction of the notes he is playing (perhaps a continuous rotation for a group of notes, if not an individual rotation for each note).
Yes that is the difference I am referring to. Of course Horowitz and Hofmann both possessed phenomenal nervous systems and near perfectly independent and articulate fingers, not to mention sonority and color. So I wouldn't be surprised if what they are doing is at some level very much the same. It just appears very different. In fact Hofmann's fingers are relatively flattened but his hand does not look as bizzare as Horowitz's.
I am suspicious about the Taubman idea because I see music as patterned gestures and bytes of information, not as notes and I think one's approach to the piano should reflect that. However it seems perfectly plausible to say that there is a rotation for every musical of information. For example if you play a diminished arpeggio in a single position, you do not keep each finger on all four notes but you make a gesture with the arm and wrist to prepare the finger for the next note.
As for the videos, I think that the rising rolled chords (the varied repeat of the piano solo melody) in the Mozart Concerto the scale are the most clear instance of rotation I have seen from Horowitz. By the way Mozart uses the exact same rising idea in the third movement of his G minor Piano Quartet!
Yes that is the difference I am referring to. Of course Horowitz and Hofmann both possessed phenomenal nervous systems and near perfectly independent and articulate fingers, not to mention sonority and color. So I wouldn't be surprised if what they are doing is at some level very much the same. It just appears very different. In fact Hofmann's fingers are relatively flattened but his hand does not look as bizzare as Horowitz's.
That's true. Horowitz's hands do look strange with his wrists below the keyboard.
I see that rotation too, and I also see a right to left movement of the forearm that is most visible at the beginning of the scale.
