Raised Pinkies

I have to admit that this is still a problem for me but here are two ideas that help me. Firstly, fingers reaching up is equivalent to throwing the arms out when you feel about to fall. It's because you're not stable. Try doing it more, to get whichever finger played last more stable. If you stand on one leg and wave the other you'll feel the standing leg being forced to make adjustments to balance. Likewise, lifting other fingers deliberately will wake up the balance in whichever finger is keeping a key down. Then slowly let the fingers dangle back down- but don't overrelax the activity of the supporting finger that keeps the knuckles up. When you get used to being stable in the first place, the panic lifting goes away- but the balancing action remains, without needing the lifting to trigger it any more. Secondly, is relaxed good? Try extending the finger out lightly against the keys while the others play. Do enough to feel the fifth is contacting the surface clearly enough to make it's own contribution to keeping the knuckles up, without doing quite enough to actually move the key. Being passive is not necessarily the goal. it can directly contribute to panic lifting. sometimes point down deliberately and other times work to see if having the last finger stable is enough for the fifth to hang without the knuckle drooping.

I more or less disagree. It is irrelevant what pinkies do when playing with other fingers. If you look at different pianists, you see different pinkies: straight, totally curled, maybe even collapsed, but I think never 'relaxed'.

Horowitz's raised pinkies are perhaps more informative. He certainly isn't about to fall over! He actually curls them pretty tightly as a concise form of 'cocking' the hand to give greater energy to the fingers. I wouldn't bother trying to unraise your pinkies unless they are clearly related to another problem. Even then, don't try to do anything to the pinkies - instead, address the underlying problem! AFF