NEWS FOR STUDENTS
Happy January! This is a great month to stay indoors, fix a nice cup of tea (don't have it too close to your piano!!), and listen to music. Oh, and to PRACTICE, of course!!
Happy January! This is a great month to stay indoors, fix a nice cup of tea (don't have it too close to your piano!!), and listen to music. Oh, and to PRACTICE, of course!!
I found an interesting article emailed to me from Interlude.hk complete with listening links entitled: "Frederic Chopin and George Sand: The Real Story Behind Their Relationship". You may know that the name George Sand is a pen name (very difficult for women writers of the day to get published, sadly). But do you know her real name? It is Amandine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil. Look up on Interlude.hk and you will learn some other fascinating facts! Let me know what you think!
I'm already looking forward to the International Chopin Piano Competition next fall in Warsaw, Poland! So, let's do a deep dive into Chopin! We can begin by becoming great listeners, and I have read an interesting article from "Interlude" on some of the finest Chopin Pianists. I hope you enjoy this article and open your ears up to Chopin recordings.who_are_the_greatest_chopin_pianists_.webloc
Calling all those who love Chopin! (C'mon, is there a pianist who doesn't ?!) I can't wait for you all to listen to "The Chopin Podcast" created by Ben Laude with Garrick Ohlssohn - the first episode in on the Chopin Preludes, and it is fabulous!youtu.be/40NH65iGxWo?si=zxmjHz3ss0-EzVms.
If you need some inspiration to energize your Bach practice, look no further than this lovely video (linked)with discussion and performance of the J.S. Bach Two- and Three Part Inventions, given by the always wonderful Sir Andras Schiff. Whether you are just learning your first two part Invention, or you have played a good number of them, I promise you will walk away having learned something. Sir Andras shares his feeling about playing Bach on the piano as opposed to the harpsichord (and because he doesn't have a clavichord, Bach's preferred keyboard instrument!), and talks about his great love of these pieces since childhood. Sir Andras is always so eager to share his thoughts with us so generously. After watching, I immediately went to the piano and played through the pieces with inspiration. Do watch, and let me know what you think!
Perhaps ever since hearing the great Vladmir Horowitz play his own arrangement, his transcription, of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" march, I have loved to hear many marvelous works of music transcribed for the piano. It was with great delight that I watched Ben Laude's most recent video called "Top 10 Mind-Blowing Piano Transcriptions RANKED"!! To transcribe is to take a piece into your own hands and create magic. It is wonderful today that many pianists are ding this very thing. Check out Marc-Andre Hamelin's transcriptions! Some of Earl Wild's transcriptions of Rachmaninoff's songs are among my personal favorites. Please watch Ben's video and let me know which of these transcriptions might be your favorite!
I have enthused much over the French composer Olivier Messiaen since I was in graduate school, being fascinated first with the early Preludes for piano, then with the "Quartet for the End of Time," and the gigantic "Turangalila" for orchestra, piano, and ondes martenot (if you are not sure what that instrument is, please do yourself a large favor and look it up!) Messiaen"s second wife was Yvonne Loriod, a stupendous pianist and pedagogue, capable of playing anything that Messiaen wrote for the piano with (seeming) ease. We celebrate the 100th anniversary of her birth this year. I have listened with great care to many of her recordings available as I have studied some of Messiaen's works for piano. Her playing is always informative, but especially beautiful, and I have been grateful to have her recordings as reference for performance. On this occasion of her centenary, The Complete Vega Recordings 1956-1963 have been released of her performances, not just of Messiaen, but of many other composers. Please look them up on apple music or other streaming services. There is also a commentary by Jed Distler of interest (go to WWFM, and look up his name and "Between the Keys", and a lovely page found by looking up Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. There are a number of youtube videos of both Loriod and Messiaen teaching, as well.
The vast piano repertoire has no shortage of "finger-busting" pieces, right?! I can name at least two handfuls right off the top of my head! What about you? Have you heard, or even tried to play pieces that just confound the fingers? Well, for some pianists, perhaps technique comes a tad easier than for many of us mere mortals! Marc-Andre Hamelin is a pianist that I have long admired; I feel that he can play anything he touches with ease (although he DOES practice!!) I watched a video a day or so ago done by Tone base, in which host Ben Laude gives 9 "impossible" pieces to Marc-Andre Hamelin to hear him play and discuss. Watch, and I think you will enjoy while learning about some of the repertoire's most difficult works.
Continuing our study of French music, and "historical" French pianists, I thought we would continue with Alfred Cortot. Steinway & Sons has a nice description of Cortot on their website, and I include some of it here: "One of the 20th century’s most influential — yet inimitable — classical figures, Alfred Cortot was born in 1877 in Switzerland to a French father and a Swiss mother, and he based his long career as a pianist, conductor and teacher in Paris. Cortot was one of his era’s most renowned interpreters of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Saint-Saëns and Franck, his best recordings setting an enduring standard for poetry in motion. In 1925, the pianist made the first electrical recording of classical music, for the Victor label in New Jersey, featuring music by Chopin and Schumann. Among his hundreds of subsequent recordings was the first complete version of Chopin’s Preludes Op. 28. In holding up Cortot as a paragon of Chopin playing even decades after his death, The New York Times described his method as combining “lucidity with spontaneity.... It is almost modern in its lack of sentimentality and attention to structure; yet it is unmistakably Romantic in its insistence on freedom and variety. Each line is suffused with subtle detail, with interior contours and dynamic shadings. But these are not indulgent ornaments; they reveal rather than cloud the music’s intentions.” Cortot’s way with the Gallic modernism of Debussy and Ravel was also marked by a deeply personal sense of color and feeling. Not only a soloist, Cortot co-founded one of Europe’s most famous chamber groups in 1905 with violinist Jacques Thibaud and cellist Pablo Casals.
Cortot was one of the most inspirational piano teachers of the mid-20th century, his pupils including Dinu Lipatti, Gina Bachauer, Samson François, Clara Haskil, Magda Tagliaferro and Vlado Perlemuter. Tagliaferro described the virtues of her teacher’s playing this way: “His sound was pure enchantment.... The images that he conjured up were absolutely visionary.” Like Artur Schnabel, Cortot represents a bygone era, one when music was an aspirational art and note-perfect performances were not the be-all-to-end-all. His recordings were always spontaneous creations, and his concerts — especially in later years — could be marred by memory lapses, smudged notes, outright clinkers. Yet the poetry was always there. Critic Harold Schonberg, who admired “the sharpness, point, clarity of line, unmistakable rubato and sheer intelligence” of Cortot’s playing, said of the pianist’s mistakes: “One accepted them, as one accepts scars or defects in paintings by an old master.”
There are any number of recordings of Cortot performing on youtube, and I include two here, as I thought you might enjoy as I have: Cortot performing Debussy Preludes, Book 1 (one of my favorites begins at about 16:00 minutes into this one, 'What the West Wind Saw', and also Cortot playing his transcription of a piece from Faure's 'Dolly Suite'.....let me know what you think!)
Cortot was one of the most inspirational piano teachers of the mid-20th century, his pupils including Dinu Lipatti, Gina Bachauer, Samson François, Clara Haskil, Magda Tagliaferro and Vlado Perlemuter. Tagliaferro described the virtues of her teacher’s playing this way: “His sound was pure enchantment.... The images that he conjured up were absolutely visionary.” Like Artur Schnabel, Cortot represents a bygone era, one when music was an aspirational art and note-perfect performances were not the be-all-to-end-all. His recordings were always spontaneous creations, and his concerts — especially in later years — could be marred by memory lapses, smudged notes, outright clinkers. Yet the poetry was always there. Critic Harold Schonberg, who admired “the sharpness, point, clarity of line, unmistakable rubato and sheer intelligence” of Cortot’s playing, said of the pianist’s mistakes: “One accepted them, as one accepts scars or defects in paintings by an old master.”
There are any number of recordings of Cortot performing on youtube, and I include two here, as I thought you might enjoy as I have: Cortot performing Debussy Preludes, Book 1 (one of my favorites begins at about 16:00 minutes into this one, 'What the West Wind Saw', and also Cortot playing his transcription of a piece from Faure's 'Dolly Suite'.....let me know what you think!)
I have "long" been intrigued by the playing of the great French pianist of bygone days, Marguerite Long (1874-1966). Marguerite Long's name is mentioned in so many texts in discussion of the piano music of French composers of the late 19th and early 20th c. that it is impossible to do a listening study of Faure's, Debussy's, and Ravel's music without coming across some recordings by Ms. Long. She had a musical relationship with all three of these composers, and others. She premiered piano compositions of all three, but in particular the Etudes of Debussy, and the Tombeau de Couperin in 1919 by Ravel, the last movement of which was dedicated to her husband Joseph de Marliave who had been killed in WWI. She also had a long friendship with Darius Milhaud, and was honored in the 1937 World Exhibition by dedicated compositions by Auric, Ebert, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre, among others. There are a number of video recordings on youtube in which she can be heard as pianist, so I will suggest two for you to listen to: the first movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, recorded in 1932, and the "Jardins Sous la Pluie" (Gardens in the Rain), the third movement of the Estampes by Debussy, recorded in 1929. Have a listen, s'il vous plait!
I was very intrigued by the title of a new video produced by Tonebase which I then watched on youtube. The title is "What if Rachmaninoff & Gershwin co-composed a piano concerto? (ft. Yuja Wang, Teddy Abrams)" I SO encourage you to join me in watching this superb production about the new piano concerto composed by Teddy Abrams for Yuja Wang which I link here! Along the way, you may learn a bit about the history of the form "piano concerto", along with learning more about the wonderful concertos written by Gershwin and Rachmaninoff, not to mention the jaw-dropping performances by Yuja Wang of this new concerto! Please watch.....I know you won't be disappointed!!
Ahhhh, a beautiful midsummer piano immersion through listening. I have been SO enjoying listening to 10 different pianists perform 10 different Rachmaninov Preludes, Op. 23, courtesy of a youtube video from the 30th Anniversary of the Verbier festival. Please join me, and listen here, to have a half hour or so of aural beauty, performed by pianists like Evgeny Kissin, Yefim Bronfman, Kirill Gerstein, Yuja Wang, Danill Trifonov, and a young Alexander Malofeev (whose name and playing I did not know prior to this).
Rachmaninov composed these preludes around 1901-2, a difficult time for him financially (they are dedicated to his cousin Alexander Siloti, who was helping support Rachmaninov at the time). They are of varying degrees of difficulty, but they all represent interpretive challenges, especially with balance.
Have a listen, and let me know what you think of these preludes!
Rachmaninov composed these preludes around 1901-2, a difficult time for him financially (they are dedicated to his cousin Alexander Siloti, who was helping support Rachmaninov at the time). They are of varying degrees of difficulty, but they all represent interpretive challenges, especially with balance.
Have a listen, and let me know what you think of these preludes!
I have been immersed in French piano music, especially of the 20th and 21st centuries, as of late; enjoying myself tremendously! I have been researching, reading about, listening, searching, playing, and having a fabulous time! All of this work to do with planning another recital; more to follow on that account! I did happen upon something some of you may enjoy (especially those of you who share my enthusiasm for CATS!) Did you know that Maurice Ravel, composer of many lovely works for the piano, including the magnificent Gaspard de la Nuit, had a thing for Siamese cats? They even inspired a portion of his opera, L'enfant et les sortilèges. One male cat and one female cat star in "Duo miaulé," or Meowed Duet. I found this information in an article in Interlude: I will link it here so you can read, listen, and enjoy! I have to go now.....Oni and Misha want to listen to more Ravel (actually, I think they want dinner!)
Let's discuss your feet....with regard to using the pedal(s) on the piano! Have you truly thought about how we pianists pedal? You certainly should, and the most important way to better use of the pedal is not by moving your foot up and down, but by being a better LISTENER!! I ask all of you to please watch this Tonebase video, "26 Concert Pianists Teach Pedaling." Ben Laude does a wonderful job, as ever, to entertain us as well as being thought-provoking. I will admit to taking issue with a couple of suggestions given by some pianists, and am curious to see what you think!? Let's share our thoughts at your next lesson.
Wisdom, age, and grace......all of these define the pianist and teacher Seymour Bernstein. This morning I watched a beautiful and inspiring video on youtube from Tonebase piano with an interview of Seymour by host Ben Laude. Seymour is giving marvelous advice (there may be a thought or two I'm not sure I totally agree with?); please watch here and see what you think? Seymour opens with advice to parents of young piano students - they MUST be a part of home practice - I agree. He also describes the way education was framed during Plato's time with four disciplines that are necessary to make a "whole" person. Guess what one of the four disciplines is? Yep, MUSIC! Let's discuss at your lesson......
Have you ever heard "three's a crowd"?? Well. not always, my friends! One gorgeous sub-genre of chamber music is the PIANO TRIO. Piano trios generally mean violin, cello, and piano (and isn't everything better with a piano !?!) I recently read a marvelous article from Interlude.HK called "Chamber Music, the Ten Most Beautiful Piano Trios". There you will find linked a number of videos with trios by Mozart, Beethoven, Arensky, the Ravel in a minor (fabulous), etc. etc. I am linking the article here for your perusal and listening. Three can be the most beautiful number, what do you think?
So, to those of my dear students who are missing their lessons as I take a break - to PRACTICE ! - I can't encourage you enough to spend 45 minutes taking a lesson with Seymour Bernstein, teacher, composer, and lovely human being! In this youtube video called "Seymour Bernstein teaches Chopin's Prelude in e minor," you will garner much in the way of understanding music-making at the piano. You may have noticed at your lessons that I have Bernstein's book entitled Chopin: Interpreting his Notational Symbols sitting on a music stand in my studio. I have been reading and truly thinking about all that Maestro Bernstein has researched and suggests regarding the "hairpin" symbols in Romantic style period music (these hairpins look like small crescendo and diminuendo markings, used together or singularly). Please watch his video linked above for a full explanation of this.......if you own a copy of the Chopin Preludes, find the e minor and try out some of the ideas for performance for yourself; we will discuss when I see you next! Enjoy your own time at the piano for the next several weeks!
I have been watching videos of the 2022 Verbier Festival on medici.tv. This event takes place in the Swiss Alps, and I have seen some wonderful performances, including Yuja Wang (can her fingers REALLY move that fast through Ligeti's "Devil's Staircase" Etude and Kapustin's Concert Etude No. 3!!?!), Daniil Trifonov, and Kirill Gerstein playing the Liszt sonata in b Minor on........the Maene-Vinoly Concert grand piano with, yes, a CURVED keyboard!! I have been fascinated with this instrument after reading about it and I thought you might enjoy learning about this, too, so I link articles here and here. This instrument is straight-strung as opposed to being cross-strung as our current grands are; the sound is quite different. I can't share the Verbier festival videos with you, but here is a youtube video of Kirill Gerstein practicing a bit of the Liszt on the Maene-Vinoly. Listen and tell me what you think!!1
I watched an interesting lecture on youtube recently. Professor David Witten at Montclair University discussed Chopin's sketches regarding technique. The lecture is entitled "The Greatest Method Book Never Written: Chopin's Sketchbook for Pianists". I found many of his comments to be thought-provoking; Prof. Witten is also an engaging speaker! The video is a little under forty minutes, and I think you may enjoy as I did! Let me know your thoughts!
Some of you may tire hearing me say that the study of music is a lifelong endeavor, but truly, I learn of new composers, performers almost every day that I previously knew nothing about. For example, as much as I have admired the music of organists Marie-Clare Alain and Gillian Weir, I never knew about Jeanne Demessieux, born 100 years ago, who was an astonishing performer and virtuosic composer. I link a New York Times article here, with incredible performances of her music played by Paul Jacobs (who is from Washington, PA., went to Curtis, and is chair of the organ department at Juilliard). Please do watch the inserted youtube video of Paul performing Demessieux's "Octaves". I watched with dropped jaw!! Jeanne Demessieux was deemed " the greatest organist of all generations" by none other than her teacher Marcel Dupre. Maurice Durufle, as he was finishing his Requiem said that "next to Demessieux, the rest of us play the pedals like elephants". There is also a link in the article to a wonderful performance of Demessieux's Te Deum by Renee Anne Louprette. Sit back, turn up your speakers, and prepare to be wowed!!
WHAT is an "Etude"?? Harvard Dictionary of Music describes as "A composition designed to improve the technique of an instrumental performer by isolating specific difficulties and concentrating his or her efforts on their mastery. A single etude usually focuses on one technical problem; etudes are usually published in groups more or less systematically covering a range of such problems in a range of keys." This month we will focus on etudes. If asked to name one famous collection of etudes, many pianists would come up quite easily with those written by Czerny and Hanon, but immediately thereafter, one would probably say those by Chopin (I linked Pollini playing all twenty-four). There are, however, thousands of etude for piano, and every pianist should have a good number under their fingers! Those etudes by Claude Debussy are among the most glorious, in my opinion; listen here to a young Mitsuko Uchida practicing during an interview regarding her performance of the Debussy Etudes and see if you agree! To listen to the set in entirety, I link one of my fav pianists, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, performing the Debussy. Now, another set of etudes that I just adore are those incredibly difficult ones by Gyorgy Ligeti. Listen to No.13 dubbed "the Devil's Staircase", performed here by another favorite pianist of mine, Pierre-Laurent Aimard. There is also a good video by Aimard where he discusses this work in detail. Alright, enough! Now, let's get those fingers moving! What etude are YOU working on today?
One of my favorite quotes by Sergei Rachmaninov:
“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.”
Hey, gardener/pianists, check out student Gwen's wonderful garden blogs! Visit Gwen's
website: GwenWisniewski.com.