A series on transcendetal etudes from a series of lessons Alan gave to his student Rafael
Born in Montreal in 1955 Alan Fraser studied piano but also delved into composition, cello, classical singing and had several stints as a pop musician. Alan’s main pianistic influence was the pioneering research of Phil Cohen who studied alongside Ronald Turini, Andre Laplante and Janina Fialkowska with Yvonne Hubert, who had been Cortot‘s assistant in Paris. Alan spent several years with Cohen after an apprenticeship with two former Cohen students, Alan Belkin and Lauretta Milkman.
Think softening your thumb makes impressionist passages sound more delicate? Think again. In this lesson, we dig into measures 32–33 and discover how a powerful, accented thumb launch is the secret to fluid, marble-like tone, not the enemy of it
Alan and Rafael critique the performance, focusing on physical techniques like thumb activation, correcting rhythmic errors, and prioritizing dark, expressive tone coloring over sheer volume
Alan breaks down how to make music feel disorienting, tense, and emotionally unsettling
