Wrist, Pedal And Touch.

Hi, Alan! First of all, sorry for possible grammar mistakes in my text (English is not my mother tongue). Alan, in your dvd, when you're playing Bach/Busoni's Nun komm' der Heiden Heiland, at the tragic C minor chord, you definitely bring down a lot your wrist at the moment you play the chord. Why do you apply this? I usually see Nelson Freire and Michael Uhde apply this kind of movement of the wrist, but I never understood the reason. Doesn't it harm the hand? And another question: Yvonne Lefébure taught, at a masterclass, that the pedal should be always raised by the heel in Ravel. What do you think about it? I have seen many ways of using the pedal, including that one (raised by the heel) by Eduardo Monteiro. Afterwards, I'd like to ask you some questions I have about touch and tone. Thank you!

I brought down my wrist because I was ill at the time of the recording and not in complete control of myself - I wouldn't do it that way now but use other means to get the expressive agogic accent I wanted there. If you can believe it, I made the entire DVD fighting off the flu - I had to go ahead because the entire production team was booked and had to be paid. It was an interesting experience of mind over matter... As for pedalling by raising the heel, I suppose she felt this would give the lightness and sensitivity to shading required by Ravel - I don't do it myself but I can see the logic. Kemal doesn't either, as far as I know, but you hear amazingly subtle pedal effects in his Ravel on the French Piano Music CD... Welcome to the forum! AFF

Alan, thanks! Ah, I really thought you were practicing a way of relaxation or something to improve the quality of sound! haha. But, still about the wrist: I usually play with a "flexible wrist", because I fell that with this way I can shape better the phrases and I fell my sound more beautiful. Besides Nelson Freire and Anna Malikova, I find Celina Szrvinsk's tone one of the most fine and lovely of all I've heard. Unfortunately, I didn't find on youtube many videos of her, but there are two that I'd like you to watch and then tell me what you think of the way she plays (especialy about the way she moves her wrist and elbow). Here you can see better her hands: Also here: Michael Uhde plays very similiar, but, unfortunately, I didn't find any video of him to show you... --------- OK, I'll hear Kemal's Ravel. I just heard his Debussy's L'isle joyeuse and it's beautiful!

Recently, I've generally been thinking of a wrist drop as one of the most ineffective motions in piano playing, as it both applies energy to the keys very wastefully (channeling very little of the wrist movement into sound) and it also demands a very sudden deceleration, meaning that all the "spare" energy goes into impact. If a movement involves the wrist going up slightly, gravity naturally slows it down smoothly. When it's going down, it's always less smooth. That said, I recently saw this film of Seymour Bernstein and he actually gets a very effective sound from this technique (about 4.20 in). I don't think I'd particularly recommend it to anyone, as even Bernstein doesn't have the softest landings imaginable. It's very hard to pull this off. However, it made me realise that the movement doesn't necessarily have to be discounted 100%. One place where I like this movement is not so much for loud chords, but for softer ones (where there's too little energy involved for impact issues to come into it). Particularly in Schubert's surprise modulations, a drop of the wrist can provide an extremely cold sound that equalises all of the individual fingers into a dead sounding chord. The drop minimises scope for finger articulation and makes a single slab of completely empty sound. Although this is one of the reason why I'm not convinced about this movement for many things, I think you can get some very bleak effects by using it in the right place (preferably as a contrast to much more extreme voicing).

I see what Celina's doing and she does it well... but if she did the same wrist movements but less pronounced she would actually feel freer and more in control. Also those big movements actually tend to make her arch empty out slightly. All these movement counterforces combine to make a viable gestalt in her playing, so I wouldn't change anything. It's her way, and a way that is taught all over the place, and she does it well. But if it was someone whose technique was still being formed, I would definitely advise less waving the wrist around. There are really better ways of getting that musical result. Horowitz is the best example of this other way. As I said in , even someone as great as Richter was hampered by some of these 'school' wrist movements which he'd obviously been taught but which didn't contribute to his artistic process in any big way. As for Kemal's L'Isle Joyeuse, it's not just great, it's a bacchanal! AFF

Do you mean that Horowitz was someone who didn't wave the wrist around? His movements did look very economic, although during interviews, Horowitz claimed that the wrist is an essential part of piano technique- particuarly in terms of voicing chords and creating a singing tone. "Now the ideal equipment for the pianist consists in movement in the wrist and relaxation in the arm. The touch itself must reside in the finger. This is the secret of avoiding a harsh tone. " "The wrist must relax often, to help out in the skips, at the change from the first finger to the fifth." "One must not merely say "the upper voice is stronger than the lower voices, and it must be legato or portamento." No! The wrist must feel the movement which makes the connection; the fingers must have a consciousness of the movement which makes the singing, predominating melody! "

Watch the Horowitz interview from the mid-60's at his home where he says, "I never do all those wrist movements the others do," and demonstrates. Immediately after, he plays Vers la Flamme, and in the middle of it, the idea of those wrist gestures somehow resurfaces in his consciousness (the power of self-suggestibility!) and he actually tries some! It is very weird to see because you instantly realize how unlike him it is. My point being: Read all my materials from both books on the subject: I spend a lot of time explaining how to arrive at a much more refined, subtle, mechanically efficient and potent use of the wrist. AFF PS I agree with everything H. says about the wrist, and none of it implies having to wave it around.

A couple of points: 1. The interview is from 1974. 2. He is talking about grimacing and swaying around, not wrist movement. 3. How do you know that he played the vers la flamme right after he made that point? His Clementi and Chopin performances on the video do not seem to have been affected the same way. The key insight to glean from his comments is that the activity is in his words, "inside, not outside." The bones need to connect properly and there is a certain pattern of wrist bone movement corresponding to a musical shape. Wrist flopping is disturbs the subtle internal activity. A lot of the movements you see are . They often undermine the precise pattern of skeletal movement that produces a musical phrase. I think Sebok's demonstration with the final movement of the Chopin second sonata is also instructive here. He says that you must play the piano with your hand, not your fingers. You can see a very precise wrist movement here that is integral to the musical effect. Here is the link:

Hello Kannan, for points 1 & 2, sorry, my bad - I just remembered it wrong. Old brain... About point 3: I believecomes right after he was talking about that in the film - I think there was even continuity (although this again could be the ravings of my decrepit brain). As for the rest of your comments: hear hear! AFF