Understanding weight as a preparation- not to move the key

Also, just looking at some of the concerto. Her use of the finger extension action is extremely visible (although I do wonder if she could produced a smoother tone by doing more with it before adding arm presses). I don't have a problem with using arm-weight thinking when that action is so well developed to transmit it. However, I share Alan's concerns that countless students are pushed into weight-based thinking to compensate for a of ability to contact the key with efficiency (rather than simply to add to what the hand does). For me, this where the idea of combining thought of finger extension plus slight resting on the surface of the key could be so effective. It trains that basic finger expansion through the key and takes even traces of collapse out of the question. Once that is well learned, I'm all for using arm pushes or drops for extra sound. However, I think much arm-weight teaching fails to deal adequately with the business end of things first. EDIT After watching a little more, I must say that there are many places where the arm pressure makes her hand give way. Of course, she's a good pianist- but I find the tone rather thudding sometimes. The sheer arm pressure is making the fingers sag sometimes (which means less energy goes into sound and more goes into impact at the keybed). I do feel she could have achieved a big tone with far less effort if she movde a little extra at the hand end of things, before deciding that the arms need to make all the volume.

Nice to see TN, I heard her playing Shostakovich prel&fugues in Stockholm long time ago. That was some concert you could hear a needle drop. As I recall it looked like pure finger play with that repertoire. It's also obvious that she isn't in her top shape any more in Tchaikowsky but who cares? I think it is important that someone tries to describe "technique" scientifically even if it is of limited interest in teaching. I can imagine that there are huge material hidden from the Soviet era a lot of research in different areas hasn't reached the west yet as we know.Is it possible to get the book of Josef Gat in pdf? Many of these "old" but very simple methods I beleive can solve complex problems.Like rythmizations. Automatically you get "armweight" right among other things. Have you watched the dvd of Paul Wirth? Seems to me to be the kind of teaching you refere to above.

EDIT After watching a little more, I must say that there are many places where the arm pressure makes her hand give way. Of course, she's a good pianist- but I find the tone rather thudding sometimes. The sheer arm pressure is making the fingers sag sometimes (which means less energy goes into sound and more goes into impact at the keybed). I do feel she could have achieved a big tone with far less effort if she movde a little extra at the hand end of things, before deciding that the arms need to make all the volume. Since I cannot imagine or accept that she wasn't able to time her movements (she was a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory for 4 decades, a position you don't get by accident), I must conclude that 1) collapse is often done deliberately for certain effects, although maybe not always with the intended result 2) collapse (or no collapse), pianism as such is not part of the picture at all while they perform. I mean, how can one stand on solid earth and fly at such artistic heights (shaky territory) at the same time? Paul

She doesn't have the hands for Tchaikovsky, but still manages to impress, and shows some of the elements Andrew talks about. There is no denying though that, however brilliant your mechanical tricks to stay out of trouble, you need certain hands for certain repertoire to get the right effect in a big hall against an orchestra. I am also VERY interested in descriptions of that kind, but I have found that 1) words themselves are very limited; too limited to describe stuff effectively. 2) backgrounds of people are too different for those words to drive the right message home and 3) authors may actually describe their perception of what is going on, but not what is really going on. I have also found that certain descriptions of certain theories of piano playing are very closely related to the problems the authors of those theories solved for themselves. For example, someone who had a very weak knuckle bridge from the start or who had "Asian" finger joints (collapsing at every movement) will almost certainly focus on solving that problem, etc., often suggesting that x% of the pianists suffer because they never solved that very problem. Others, with healthy, strong hands, will consider the arch-talk a heritage from the 19th Century, not worth even talking about. Talented people who never experienced problems never write books about mechanical stuff. "Play it with your nose" Now, what the authors problem-solvers actually do/did is write down a summary (excerpts of what they think they remember) of a very long experience with certain conclusions in a certain focus - FOR THEMSELVES with little or no practical value for those who 1) haven't been through those same problems or 2) are unable to even identify such problems. The picture is almost always incomplete. Besides, there are always hidden assumptions present that "outsiders" may not be aware of. People from the Taubman camp will undoubtedly read something else in the first post than you and I did, and very likely, you and I may not even be in perfect agreement about what exactly we read there. For example, is it really "weight" Andrew is talking about, or is it merely "stabilizing" more with a slight arm extension or with a tiny downward knuckle/hand/arm push, which feels like "weight"? After reading the first post, proponents of the R. Holmes "scratch-the-keys" school, who seem to hate the very word "weight" itself, must have come to the conclusion that Andrew has now lost any chances for improvement completely, etc., especially if you combine "weight" with his ... I think I have a copy in English somewhere on one of my many USB flash drives. The extension is not .pdf, but .DjVu (another format for scanned books, for which you will need a separate viewer). Since I work with Russian students, I circulate versions in Russian, of course. That's why I don't have English handy on my computer. P.S.: The material on Rachmaninov's exercises seems to have been lost. Power outage crashed my computer and did unrepairable damage before I was able to save all the data. I haven't, but I know he seems to have a lot of sensible ideas about arm weight. I live like a pauper here, though, so I really can't afford to spend money on DVDs and other teaching stuff. Paul

That's probably why "masters" tend to avoid the subject in their teaching... I found Andrew's little exercise very useful especially to activate the 4th and 5th better, where the movement of the knuckles are more visible. I don't feel competent to contribute to this discussion but here is a clip from a lady that had lessons with Rachmanninof so I guess this is also a "russian" way to play even if she is far from mainstream.At first view the opposite to TN but if you look closer it's very similar from key and down? Ruth S. creates a fantastic sound and her La Campanella is breathtaking.

Since I cannot imagine or accept that she wasn't able to time her movements (she was a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory for 4 decades, a position you don't get by accident), I must conclude that 1) collapse is often done deliberately for certain effects, although maybe not always with the intended result 2) collapse (or no collapse), pianism as such is not part of the picture at all while they perform. I mean, how can one stand on solid earth and fly at such artistic heights (shaky territory) at the same time? Paul I want to stress that I fully acknowledge her as a very fine pianist- but I don't think we should put anyone on a pedestal. Very few even approach perfection. Even if they produce good results, are they producing exactly what they intend? Should we assume their means was perfect and could not have been better in any way? I'm definitely not saying that collapses are absolutely ALWAYS a bad thing, but there are some significant objective issues that are worth considering around them. It reduces both control over the resulting tone and sends more of the energy into the keybed instead of into tone. Sometimes, I see a negativity in her collapses- where the arm is putting so much in that the hand has to give way to reduce the input. The result is still often good- but it's like when a golfer tries to shy away from the ball after a big backswing. It necessarily introduces a vastly biggger margin of error than when you apply a lesser amount of energy with positivity. In both golf and piano, smaller amounts of energy to start with (leaving room to accelerate confidently through the escapement/ball, without finding you've overdone it) objectively produces greater scope for control over the result. The practical consequences of realising this simple issues can be phenomenal. As I say, Nikolayeva was a very good artist, but could she have improved her sound by understanding issues of negative vs positive movements? Personally, I honestly suspect so. Rubinstein had bigger hands of course, but I suspect that the reason he could produce such big bold sounds with quite so little sense of percussiveness or effort is because he was so good about eliminating virtually all traces of the negative movements.

No doubt; as a didactical exercise. I have some of my own, which I will share later. For training (didactical purposes), as I understand it, the Rachmaninov school is one where the keybed is somewhere where the floor is. Push, push until your fingers bleed. Of course, they were able to create miracles when in trance... Paul

No, of course not. My only purpose with showing this representative of the Soviet school was to show that what you describe is natural, not entirely new, and is just one of the many movements in a Soviet pianist's bag of tricks. I wonder what you think about "young" Richter's TV performance of the 2nd Prokofieff sonata. Weird movements abound. Care to comment? I hope you sit it through till the end because from the pianistic viewpoint it is really interesting to see how somebody who was not a trained pianist draws sounds out of the instrument, sometimes even one tone with one finger in completely horizontal position for no obvious reason. If you don't have time for this, the fireworks start at 14:15 till the end. As usual, Richter set the norm, notwithstanding the pianistic "sins": That's a bit of an understatement. If you can drop your "relaxed" hand from either the wrist or the arm and grasp G-Bflat-Eflat-G-Bflat as one blocked chord with rounded fingers and a high, strong arch, then dropping that same hand into an octave seems like a non-challenge... Rubinstein is my favorite for behavior at the piano, of course, but to explain his finger technique, for example, one should understand that it involved rotation on every finger, much like Taubman propagates. Also, his hand COULD NOT collapse under any circumstances. I don't know exactly how he created that knuckle structure, but this does not develop from mere piano practice. He may have done some boxing like Michelangeli. I know that my makiwara training (I did martial arts for a very long time) surely helped me in developing my piano technique; at least I like to think that's true. Paul

To be honest, I'm finding it to be a little more than that. There's a very literal feeling of the finger interacting with the keys before sounding them, even in faster playing. In slow practise, sometimes I'm "going around the block" slightly- and taking an excessively time consuming path to find that poised position. However, getting into that preparatory interaction with the key's resistance is definitely something that can be carried over quite literally into everyday playing. As Eric says, it's especially with the 4th and 5th. It makes relatively small differences with other fingers, but truly substantial differences to the simplicity with which 4 and 5 go on to produce sound. It's especially significant for op. 10 no 1 and 2. I suspect that it's something that you can ultimately get such an instinctive feel for, that you no longer need to think about it. However, I'm definitely finding that it's a very literal thing in the final product- rather than purely a practise method. I can feel how much better the fingers are primed for producing tone. More of the basic finger movement is being translated into key movement, with vastly less lossage.

Sure, I'm not saying it's a new movement- just a new way of understanding how to go about achieving it. I agree that it's "natural" for many, but for those who do not chance upon it I think it's very useful to understand the basic components- so it can go on to become a more natural instinct. I'll take a look. Just a preliminary thought though- I think weirdness on the surface often disguises what is still simplicity with how the finger accelerates the key. As I say in the golf analogy, the key is to be accelerating through the ball/escapement of the key- not to be giving way or slowing down at this point. There are all kind of strange gestures that might occur further back, but this is the underlying issue when it comes to how easily you can predict how much sound ends up being produced. I think seemingly bizarre actions often disguise something extremely simple between finger and key. Sure- but there are many octaves where she has no problem expanding the arch, without a shred of collapse of visible strain to reach it. This raises the question as to whether her hand size is truly the issue regarding the holes elsewhere- or whether it's just matters of habit? Quite honestly, I think she's only making it harder by sending so much energy in via the arms. The more energy the arm sends, the harder the hand is going to have to work to avoid those collapses. I think she had the equipment to convey more sound via the hand, but was in the habit of exerting the arm harder, instead of doing that little bit extra. I don't like the moments where the arm gears up as if to produce a huge sound, but then suddenly ducks out at the last moment for a softer sound. I prefer Horowitz's approach of retaining positivity for even the most abrupt ppp. He doesn't take a run up and then suddenly slam on any brakes- but simply applies the amount of energy required with deliberate intent. Although a bigger hand makes it easier, I think a smaller hand makes it all the more important to get the hand properly active in big sounds- rather than to resort to thrusting the arm. I think small-handed pianists create their own dependence on arm-pressures. The more the arm is thrusting, the harder it is to get the hand truly involved. Of course, Nikolayeva plays to an extremely high standard indeed- but I don't think she has the effortlessly big tone that DeLarrocha could produce (at least, not in that clip). I hear the arm pressure making for thuds. For me, it's all timing. Much of the objective stuff I've been analysing is rooted in expanding upon practical tips that Alan gave me and this is one of them. The end of my last blog post is essentially just a practical proof of the truth of this point. Basically, he spoke of how you must not start collapsing and then try to change direction. Objectively, if the hand is not ALREADY expanding out before it contacts the key, it must be made of granite not to collapse. Strength helps, but to be truly beyond the possibility of collapse, the objective answer lies in the hand starting to create positive movement first- not in trying to stiffen against negative movements or allowing them to begin but only then going on to switch direction. Without movement, strength only minimises collapse- and yields nothing but stiffness and discomfort. If you are moving early on, you need not necessarily even be all that strong. It can assist good timing but it can never compensate for missing the moment where positive movement needs to begin- or some level of collapse is a certainty. Of course, I'm no master of this in practise (to make a phenomenal understatement) but I'm increasingly in a position to see how much difference it makes when I do succeed in timing it. Understanding the concept is making for huge differences. The difference to the sound (and physical comfort) can be truly startling- but the hand must be moving positively from the outset. It cannot be the hand "responding" to the arm taking it to the keys, or it's objectively too late. Only when the hand is already just about beginning to expand as it makes contact, can collapse be eliminated as so much as a possibility. For me, (seeing as he did not have hands of steel) it's 99.9% certain that Rubinstein must have mastered these timing issues. His hands didn't respond to reaching the keys, but actively instigated movement on their own- no matter how big the arm drops. I think is why so few modern players can lift their hands above their heads yet land softly. By allowing "give" they only make the landing harder- forcing brakes to be slammed on in order to avoid collapsing into a cluster. Only those pianists who acquire the ability to get the hand moving a split second before arrival are in a position to safely direct momentum away from a heavy landing. Traditional arm-weight teaching never seems to mention this key ordering. It always seems to be about a hand responding to arrival at the keyboard- not instigating anything before it gets there.