December 6th, 2008
I really must be more regular with these blog posts… It’s been a month since Obama’s victory but much longer than that since I’ve written anything about piano technique – and this at a time when my own playing is going through a metamorphosis full of new insights…
The Landowska Steinway and its effect on my piano technique
Did I mention here that I recently had the extreme good fortune to acquire a 1942 New York Steinway B once owned by Wanda Landowska? This piano has changed my life. And largely due to its influence, the collision between two diametrically opposed piano techniques I have been describing here has begun to reach some sort of detente.
You recall how I have been raving about Kemal’s extremely flat fingered approach and describing how it has resolved many of my facility problems in a totally new and effective way. But when I took all that back to the Landowska Steinway, she wouldn’t let me play like that on her! That instrument is so responsive, so sensitive, so easily changeable in her colour, that I felt I was bashing it unmercifully when I tried all the flat fingered stuff that worked so wonderfully on a lesser instrument (by ‘lesser’ I include the very fine concert Steinway at FIU, Kemal’s university).
Return to the well-expressed hand arch
So I went back to the high arch, the meat of what I describe in my book and film, but now hovercrafting it even more extremely, going further and further into unstable equilibrium, not digging in and standing on the board but hovering above it and letting my long rope-fingers snake down and barely reach the keys. When I do this well, my hand actually gets bigger. Each joint, released from the compression of standing, opens up and enlarges the entire hand. Plus I get really exact control of the key, and the magic resonance and colour of that instrument begins to emerge.The adage, “compressions stifles the instrument’s voice” was never truer than on this “grand old dame.”
I can also cultivate this arch much better than I could earlier because of advances in my own Feldenkrais work. The benefits of Feldenkrais increase exponentially over long periods of time if you keep doing it – the initial revelation is great but it is nothing compared to the results of the same new stimuli being repeated over long periods, as each part of the brain integrates and begins to share the new kinesthetic information with the other parts. Thus it is much clearer now how each tiny anomaly in my hand instantly evokes a contraction elsewhere – in my shoulder, my back, and especially
1) in the “neck cords” that run from the side of my neck down into my arm and
2) in my hip joints.
A new individuation of the thumb
The open 90 degree angle between thumb and second finger correlates directly with a sense of openness in the hip joint. One mirrors the other and influences the other. Thus not only does any anomaly in the hand evoke tension in one of these places, but also tension in any of these places evokes something going wrong in the hand.
When it really starts to work, my thumb is finally, truly individuated from the hand, and I feel new efforts in a couple of specific muscles that indicate this. One is in the first dorsal interosseous (see film for an explanation), which must really work to maintain the almost “opposed” feeling of thumb and hand (not “opposed” as in thumb opposition, bringing the thumb tip around towards the fingertip, but “opposed” as in struggling to stay away from each other instead of the almost inevitable falling towards each other). Another muscle that I really feel working much more tangibly than before is the big fat one on the inside of the thumb’s metacarpal, the one that works to sweep the thumb under the hand but not necessarily oppose it to the hand.
OK, so I am busy practicing like this, finding new exactitude in both body and hand posture that leads to increased virtuosity every day – a fascinating, compelling experience, a vindication of everything I’ve been teaching and a clarification, an intensification – perfecting it, refining it, creating it anew… Wonderful!
Different instruments demand different piano techniques
But when I go to my other piano, an old EHRBAR from Vienna, I find that Kemal’s flat fingers still give me more juice – I feel more secure, everything GOES better. My high arch is wonderful but finicky; living in unstable equilibrium is somehow living on the edge. I am more COMFORTABLE down there resting snugly on my squashed fingers “in” key more than “on” key… Bizarre! “In key” stifles the greater instrument but opens up the sound of the lesser one.
I write this from Miami where I am in residence at the Gekic’s, and tomorrow I go to Miami Steinway to try out Horowitz’s piano which is in residence there. In preparation I am practicing less, playing through more, and some sort of synthesis is finally starting to happen. I just play, I am in the sound, in the emotion, in the vast investment of psychic energy that this music demands of me, and I notice that I can’t tell any more whether I am doing high arch or flat fingers. It is just going… Whatever feels more convenient in the moment, that’s what’s happening…
What is important is the tremendous learning that became available to me when I subjected myself to these two wildly contradictory pianistic regimes!
More later…
AFF
This post has been incorporated into the penultimate chapter of Alan Fraser’s Honing the Pianistic Self-Image
The high arch vs. flat fingers in piano technique
December 6th, 2008
I really must be more regular with these blog posts… It’s been a month since Obama’s victory but much longer than that since I’ve written anything about piano technique – and this at a time when my own playing is going through a metamorphosis full of new insights…
The Landowska Steinway and its effect on my piano technique
Did I mention here that I recently had the extreme good fortune to acquire a 1942 New York Steinway B once owned by Wanda Landowska? This piano has changed my life. And largely due to its influence, the collision between two diametrically opposed piano techniques I have been describing here has begun to reach some sort of detente.
You recall how I have been raving about Kemal’s extremely flat fingered approach and describing how it has resolved many of my facility problems in a totally new and effective way. But when I took all that back to the Landowska Steinway, she wouldn’t let me play like that on her! That instrument is so responsive, so sensitive, so easily changeable in her colour, that I felt I was bashing it unmercifully when I tried all the flat fingered stuff that worked so wonderfully on a lesser instrument (by ‘lesser’ I include the very fine concert Steinway at FIU, Kemal’s university).
Return to the well-expressed hand arch
So I went back to the high arch, the meat of what I describe in my book and film, but now hovercrafting it even more extremely, going further and further into unstable equilibrium, not digging in and standing on the board but hovering above it and letting my long rope-fingers snake down and barely reach the keys. When I do this well, my hand actually gets bigger. Each joint, released from the compression of standing, opens up and enlarges the entire hand. Plus I get really exact control of the key, and the magic resonance and colour of that instrument begins to emerge.The adage, “compressions stifles the instrument’s voice” was never truer than on this “grand old dame.”
I can also cultivate this arch much better than I could earlier because of advances in my own Feldenkrais work. The benefits of Feldenkrais increase exponentially over long periods of time if you keep doing it – the initial revelation is great but it is nothing compared to the results of the same new stimuli being repeated over long periods, as each part of the brain integrates and begins to share the new kinesthetic information with the other parts. Thus it is much clearer now how each tiny anomaly in my hand instantly evokes a contraction elsewhere – in my shoulder, my back, and especially
1) in the “neck cords” that run from the side of my neck down into my arm and
2) in my hip joints.
A new individuation of the thumb
The open 90 degree angle between thumb and second finger correlates directly with a sense of openness in the hip joint. One mirrors the other and influences the other. Thus not only does any anomaly in the hand evoke tension in one of these places, but also tension in any of these places evokes something going wrong in the hand.
When it really starts to work, my thumb is finally, truly individuated from the hand, and I feel new efforts in a couple of specific muscles that indicate this. One is in the first dorsal interosseous (see film for an explanation), which must really work to maintain the almost “opposed” feeling of thumb and hand (not “opposed” as in thumb opposition, bringing the thumb tip around towards the fingertip, but “opposed” as in struggling to stay away from each other instead of the almost inevitable falling towards each other). Another muscle that I really feel working much more tangibly than before is the big fat one on the inside of the thumb’s metacarpal, the one that works to sweep the thumb under the hand but not necessarily oppose it to the hand.
OK, so I am busy practicing like this, finding new exactitude in both body and hand posture that leads to increased virtuosity every day – a fascinating, compelling experience, a vindication of everything I’ve been teaching and a clarification, an intensification – perfecting it, refining it, creating it anew… Wonderful!
Different instruments demand different piano techniques
But when I go to my other piano, an old EHRBAR from Vienna, I find that Kemal’s flat fingers still give me more juice – I feel more secure, everything GOES better. My high arch is wonderful but finicky; living in unstable equilibrium is somehow living on the edge. I am more COMFORTABLE down there resting snugly on my squashed fingers “in” key more than “on” key… Bizarre! “In key” stifles the greater instrument but opens up the sound of the lesser one.
I write this from Miami where I am in residence at the Gekic’s, and tomorrow I go to Miami Steinway to try out Horowitz’s piano which is in residence there. In preparation I am practicing less, playing through more, and some sort of synthesis is finally starting to happen. I just play, I am in the sound, in the emotion, in the vast investment of psychic energy that this music demands of me, and I notice that I can’t tell any more whether I am doing high arch or flat fingers. It is just going… Whatever feels more convenient in the moment, that’s what’s happening…
What is important is the tremendous learning that became available to me when I subjected myself to these two wildly contradictory pianistic regimes!
More later…
AFF
This post has been incorporated into the penultimate chapter of Alan Fraser’s Honing the Pianistic Self-Image