A year of piano lessons

It has now been a year since I started taking lessons from my current teacher. What I've been learning has certainly altered my perception of what playing the piano is all about.

One aspect of playing that he stresses quite a bit is the tactile one: feeling the keys and the vibration of the string and the resistance as you lift a key. I had never thought of the piano in that way; it always seemed like a big monster machine, maybe a giant manual typewriter. I've known all along I was missing something, especially in recent years, but the various teachers I've had never mentioned anything like this, and I was too focused on playing notes to notice subtleties like these. Oh, I suppose on occasion when I had the chance to play a really responsive and beautiful-sounding piano, I would think, "Hey, there's more to this than playing the right notes," but I didn't know how to take it any further.

Another concept completely new to me was how little force one needs to use. I was raised on lifting the fingers and hitting the keys hard, but I'm learning that creating volume comes from the combination of using the wrist, the weight of the arm, and the speed with which the key is depressed, and that actually, plenty of volume usually is created without exerting a lot of effort. It's a kinder, gentler, more relaxed approach to playing the piano, and I think a warmer, purer sound is the result (though of course I still have a long way to go).

And then there is the matter of how to move around the keyboard, execute big leaps, and play fast -- all things I used to try to do with brute force and wishing for luck. In combination with using less effort, per the previous point, I'm finding I can play faster and more easily.

The whole issue of voicing, while not new to me, has been a major theme. How very much one must bring out the important line, and keep everything else in the background, is constantly surprising.

Most of all I have appreciated my teacher's patience and willingness to hold me to higher standards, though he always does so with good humor. I know when he tells me to do something, it's based on what he is hearing and not on a lesson plan or a rote instruction.

So sign me happy (music) camper.

Another year already??

I am way overdue for the obligatory new year's post: an occasion to evaluate the previous year and make resolutions for the next one.

The main comment I have is that this past year has flown by. In some ways it has been exciting: I finally am having the kind of piano lessons I have always wanted; I am really getting back into playing the cello; I started teaching again. I am more involved with music than I have been since I was at the conservatory. In other ways it has been frustrating: I never feel I have enough time to do justice to anything; my day job is less than compelling. I have done a lot of soul searching and pondering on what it all means and whether I'm following my best path.

In the big picture, I am very fortunate. I have the easy life of a person in a modern Western country, with the means and the leisure to follow my enthusiasms. I am limited only in the ways all people are limited.

I want to make some changes, but I do feel I am working from a good base already. So we shall see.

A curious phenomenon

I've performed for quite a lot of people in quite a lot of venues (aside from school recital halls and churches, I've played solo and chamber music in places like the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall). Admittedly most of my performing experience has been with the cello, but even on the piano, I have been brave enough to play in front of a number of audiences with a certain amount of musicality. But what has proven to be a high hurdle is playing my brother-in-law's Yamaha upright in his music room while the family listens. Somehow, when I sit down at that piano, bungling is the name of the game.

We were over there yesterday for Christmas dinner. I brought my carbon fiber cello along to show it to them because they had been curious about it:

I played a little Bach and a holiday-themed request ("O Holy Night," by ear, in C major), and then put the cello away and repaired to the piano. I pulled out the Villa-Lobos piece I've been working on (the Preludio from Bachianas Brasilieras No. 4). At home I can play it from memory, and even at my lessons I can play it pretty fluently by now, but here, even with the music in front of me, most of it was a disaster (my husband very helpfully asked "what happened?" as we were driving home later). My sister-in-law's innocent comment was that it was "scary" -- coincidentally, the same thing she said about the Brahms I played for them at Thanksgiving -- not exactly the vibe I'm going for! I followed up with some Bach, and that went better, but I was still stumbling over myself in a way I don't elsewhere.

What is it about this situation that causes me to regress to an almost nonperformer level? Part of it is the piano, which is serviceable but not inspiring (it has such a light touch that there's almost no resistence -- it booms if you breathe on it), and the bench, which is too low for me. Part of it is the negative feedback loop of hearing bad sounds that causes my playing to deteriorate as I go along. But another part, the more interesting one, is my awareness that I'm playing for people who listen mostly for the melody and who understand nuances subliminally at best. When you play the piano, the supporting material is usually what is difficult and also so very tempting -- all of those countermelodies, inner voices, bass lines, and special effects -- but listeners generally don't care about all that. They don't appreciate all of your struggles; they just want to hear the tune.

When I play for fellow piano students, or even for my teacher, I know they empathize with the difficulty of what I'm trying to do. Or when I play on a better piano in a bigger room with the audience farther away, the physical situation is more forgiving. But I feel it's a real weakness that lack of these things has such a powerful effect. I keep imagining that a true artist at the piano can compensate enough to have a musical experience no matter what. So if I can ever figure out how to play well at the in-laws', I will feel confident that I can play well anywhere!

New love

I recently stumbled across the cello concerto by Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) and have been fascinated by it ever since. It was written for cello, wind band, and classical guitar.

I saw it described here as "a pioneering work of jazz-rock-classical-marching band fusion," which is about right. I love the way Gulda created a melting pot of styles, plus the audacity of his sticking a solo cello in front of a wind band and drum kit, and making it all somehow hang together. He also wrote some beautiful music for the cello.

The first movement (Overture) starts out very rock 'n' roll; here's a great performance by Gautier Capuçon. Note that I'm having trouble getting these videos to play today, and this first link may actually go automatically to the rest of the concerto:

Gulda Concerto First Movement (Overture)

Here's Capuçon playing the second movement (Idyll), which has whiffs of Dvořák (to my ear) and maybe even Mahler (I believe this link does go on to the next movement):

Gulda Concerto Second Movement (Idyll)

And here's Heinrich Schiff, for whom this piece was originally written, tearing up the last three movements (Cadenza, Menuet, Finale) with the composer conducting; unfortunately, the very end is cut off in this video:



After hearing this playing in my head for about a week, I broke down and ordered the music and a recording. It will be fun to play around with it.

What I'm playing this week: Change of course

At my piano lesson a few days after I wrote my previous "what I'm playing this week" post, I broached to my teacher the idea that perhaps I was working on music that was too hard for me. I've sensed from him that he hasn't been entirely convinced that I should be working on all of this stuff but that he didn't want to discourage me, either. I felt this particularly with regard to Kinderszenen; that is, I know he had some specific reasons for starting me on "Of Strange Lands and People" and a few of the others, but he wasn't enthusiastic about my continuing with the whole set though he didn't say so specifically.

And then he told me to work on the Brahms Op. 118 No. 1, and the shit hit the fan. This piece has highlighted my weaknesses as a pianist, as only Brahms can do: the big chords, wide jumps, and wall-of-sound washes of arpeggios, against which the pianist has to bring out the melody and make it expressive. I attempted this piece on my own a few years ago without much success, and this time around it has again been a struggle. It's hard to say whether I even like it or not; maybe I do in the sense that a gymnast likes her routine on the parallel bars -- not necessarily something you'd do for fun, but something that advances your technique and lets you show it to the world.

Anyway, the upshot of our conversation was that I have dropped the Schumann and Chopin for a while and am working only on Bach and Brahms (this piece plus Op. 116 No. 6 and 117 No. 2), plus a new piece: the Preludio from Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4. I could see instantly why he chose it: It has the same big leaps and balance issues as the Brahms but is much, much simpler musically. (He also told me to stay away from YouTube and use my own imagination to come up with an interpretation.)

So that has been my task for the past couple of weeks. The big technical challenge for me is to learn how to let go of notes once I play them. My instinct (and I suspect this is probably common for a lot of people) is to hold onto everything even after it has sounded, even though this is often counterproductive. Once a note sounds on the piano, the only thing that affects its continued sound is the pedal; your hands have nothing to do with it after the hammer hits the strings. If you play a big chord, for example, and continue to press down the keys with the same force, your hand is in a position of tension, and it's also more difficult to move to the next note. But at the same time, one's instinct after grabbing something with effort is to hold onto it. Thus, quite a bit of retraining is involved here. We'll see if I can do it.

I also started another Bach prelude and fugue, the C minor from WTC I. I learned this set five years ago and never recorded it, so it's good to relearn it. I don't exactly feel "finished" with the D minor set, but when would you ever? I was able to play through both the prelude and fugue very cleanly and from memory at my last lesson and even got a couple of  "good"s from my teacher, so not so bad, right? Maybe I will try to record it again so I can compare it with my previous version.

On the cello: I am contemplating how best to proceed. Stay tuned.

Another orchestra concert

Yesterday, my chamber orchestra played its second concert of the season. The program was all short audience pleasers. Well, of course we always hope that our programs are audience pleasers, but this one was especially so: Humperdinck's overture to Hansel and Gretel; Smetana's "The Moldau," Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours," Mahler's Adagietto from the fifth symphony, and selections from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake suite.

"The Moldau" is special favorite of everyone, including me. One of my earliest memories of listening to classical music as a child was the set of "great classics" purchased one at a time from the A&P, stored in a fat binder covered in red leatherette, with heavy marbled paper sleeves for the LP records. I don't know what orchestra was playing the stuff, but I loved this piece. My resident critic (aka my husband), opined that this one went especially well at our concert. (We were kind of stretching the definition of "chamber orchestra" with the full brass section, including tuba.)

The Ponchielli has a rather challenging cello part, with a full page or so of the cellos carrying the melody. And it's a cool piece, too, despite the collective consciousness of dancing hippos and nerdy Jewish folk singers it evokes.

The Tchaikovsky, as I mentioned in an earlier post, includes a big cello solo, a duet with the first violinist, and I was a little nervous about this. Six flats, lots of big shifts, very emotional. Imagine my horror when on the first measure of my solo, my endpin slipped!* But I yanked the cello back into place without missing a note, and everyone said they saw it happen but didn't hear it (maybe they were being kind).



(I think our cello section actually sounded better than the one in this video, which I think was the Philadelphia Orchestra. I guess standards were lower in 1939.)

*For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the endpin is that sharpened metal spear that holds the cello in place on the floor. If the end gets too dull, it sometimes doesn't stay in place even on carpet, and this can really mess you up. I usually use a little device I made myself out of a piece of wood, some cup hooks, and some plastic rope that hooks around the chair legs, but I didn't use it yesterday, unfortunately (thinking the carpet was enough of a holding surface).

What I'm playing this week

It's been a crazy week. After our trip to New York, because of the hurricane we had two days off of work, one of them without electricity. And yes, the András Schiff recital on Tuesday was canceled. :( So you'd think I would have gotten a lot of practicing done, and I did spend quite a few hours, but it seems the more time I have, the more the practicing spreads out to fill it.

On the piano:

Continuing with one scale per week (though I was told to spend two weeks on E flat minor, which I dutifully did). We're working through them chromatically, so I'm up to E minor now. I also practice the corresponding chord progression (modulating up a fifth and back, then down a fifth and back).

Bach Prelude and Fugue in D minor from WTC I, working on playing the right-hand triplets with complete relaxation and a light touch.

Chopin, Preludes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 22.

Brahms, Intermezzi Op. 116 No. 6, Op. 118 No. 1, and now Op. 117 No. 2. My teacher asked me to record Op. 118 but I'm still struggling with it, and I'm too dissatisfied with my attempts to share them with anyone. Those "two innocent-looking pages" (as he described them) are a [fill in whatever NSFW word you prefer]. I can't figure out why this piece is so difficult, but there it is. As for Op. 116, the main problems I'm having are keeping it from sounding muddy and keeping it flowing; it's easy to get bogged down and oversentimental. And then Op. 117: really beautiful, really intricate. But maybe in a way more straightforward than the other two in terms of voicing.

Schumann Kinderszenen: I'm starting to think this is going to be another one of those lifetime endeavors. We've worked up through No. 7 (Traumerei) in my lessons, and I'm slowly picking my way through the rest to get them to a point where I can play them at all. But that's as far as it goes, for now.

I'm getting very frustrated with myself over the issue of memorizing. I'm falling into that trap of playing most of these from memory when I'm practicing but then chickening out at my lessons  and using the music without even testing myself, when the lessons would be the perfect opportunity to do so. I guess I'm not totally committed to the idea that I should play from memory, even though that's one of my goals for my piano playing. I know I can do it, but it takes a certain fortitude to carry on with it.

On the cello:

We have an orchestra concert in a couple of weeks. It's really sort of an old-fashioned pops concert -- no show tunes (thank goodness) but a raft of chestnuts: the overture to Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake suite, Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda, Smetana's The Moldau, the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. These are kind of hard chestnuts, so I must practice to avoid embarrassing myself. We had another one of those dispiriting rehearsals yesterday with a full wind and brass section pitted against a meager measure of strings (four first violins and no concertmaster, six seconds, four violas, four cellos, one bass). Oh, well; I can only try to do my best.

I'm also working a little on the Schumann concerto.

And here it is election day eve -- and it's supposed to freeze tonight, so I went out in the yard after dinner and picked these. Don't know what I'll do with them, but there they are.