There are those teachers who demonstrate for their students all the time in piano lessons, and those others who don’t go near the instrument. I have studied with both types. Does a demonstration necessarily have to be a perfect model though, to be listened to reverentially and copied verbatim? Or might a teacher’s hands on the keyboard serve other purposes? To illustrate different ways of practising, or to give various suggestions as to how a phrase might be shaped, or indeed how not to do something?
In his interview with Frederic Gaussin for iplaythepiano.com Yevgeny Kissin reminisces about his teacher, Alice Kantor.
Mrs. Kantor never played herself during her lessons. She never voluntarily played piano, for me or her other students. In studio classes, she never demonstrated herself what she expected from us, simply because she didn’t want us to mimic her. Mrs. Kantor only used verbal cues. Her teaching was entirely passed on through speech. And everyone, every single student, kept their own demeanor, their particular manner. Regarding this last point, I knew – and I knew this even at the time – that this was not necessarily the case in other schools.
For me the term “demonstration” does not capture what’s really going on, it feels way too pretentious. I like to think of what I do at the piano in a lesson as an extension of speech, a soundtrack over what I am saying.
The Dangers of Copying
Have you noticed how listening to a recording of a great artist playing a piece you are learning can immediately change your own playing? The danger of listening to recordings is that you can easily end up copying without developing your own authentic ideas about the piece. I’ve seen it regularly – students who have listened to, and copied so many recordings they end up being literally spoiled for choice – incapable of finding their own voice or forming their own artistic impressions of the work they are learning.
There is one form of copying that I think is really wonderful. This is the type of demonstration we can make for ourselves when we work. Unless we have the right sound in our ear, we can struggle in our practice and end up frustrated. Ideally, we pause and hear the sounds we want to hear in our imagination before we connect with the keyboard. Sometimes, it really helps to strip it down a bit and use two hands to create a vivid sound picture of a passage we will eventually need to play with one hand.
The LH opening of Chopin’s second Prelude is a good example of this. How many of us have stopped after a few notes, dissatisfied with our results? We start again, only to be disappointed and disillusioned further.
The Ideal Demonstration
We would reach our goal much quicker and more directly if someone were there to deliver a perfect demonstration of the passage so that we could immediately emulate it. The good news is we can do this for ourselves – when we practise hands separately. If we made an arrangement that was technically far easier to manage, we could recreate the sound we are after with vastly reduced technical difficulty. I propose a two-handed version that would function as a crib, an aural role model for the one hand to aspire to.
I’ve come up with three possibilities for the opening phrase of this prelude. Experiment further and you are bound to generate more. Practise the crib in alternation with the original until they sound and feel identical (I’m assuming nobody would even consider doing this without some pedal).
All of which brings me nicely to another work of Chopin, one that students tend to practise all wrong – the so-called “Winter Wind”, op 25 no 11. Because the technical difficulty lies in the right hand, it’s easy to forget that without an incredible underpinning from the left hand the study is just not going to sound. What makes Chopin’s studies so great is the main technical difficulties often lie in the accompaniments, and op 25 no 11 is a supreme example of this.
I suggest beginning your work on this study by making a fabulous two-handed arrangement of the lower stave until you can make it sound amazing. Next, aim to recreate this soundscape with the left hand alone. Continue to refine the left hand tone poem using the two-handed model even as you begin the technical work on the right hand, and carry on chipping away at it regularly thereafter until it is memorised.
In performance, if your listening is directed to the left hand the paradox is you’ll hardly even need the right hand – a truth not lost on Artur Rubinstein. At the beginning of his career he admitted he got away with murder in this study by focussing the audience’s attention onto the left hand, not troubling too much about accuracy in the right hand. In later life he came clean – listen to his own account of the story.
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personally someone who teaches ‘only in speech’, always looks somewhat weak to me, no matter how famous they are. Liszt was known to ‘teach’ in this fashion too, and guess what, one credible source (the pianist Amy Fay) said in fact that Liszt as a teacher was nothing special at all, and he certainly wasn’t the best either, citing other better teachers (I forget the names).
I think also Josef Hoffman said that Anton Rubinstein also never played for him at lessons.
I think the reason is fear of being judged. I think every serious musician should dispense of this, and in complete confidence. So what if a great pianist like Glenn Gould played Bach so masterfully? It’s ok not to be Glenn Gould, as much as I admire all these great musicians.
As an experienced musician myself ( I am ‘only’ a solid grade 6 at the piano but play classical guitar at concert level), I find ‘spoken lessons’ really boring. Imitating the teacher is not an excuse for a teacher not to confidently expose his views by playing. Imitation is a separate problem. It’s actually the teacher’s job to make clear that his demonstrations are NOT a model for anything, and is certainly not a ‘performance’, but just an general example made at the piano. I’d rather hear a less than absolutely perfect example actually played, than just a string of words.
The real problem, I think, is that pretty much everybody is intimidated by the complexity of the piano, no matter how good they are. I always am extremely confident with my classical guitar playing. But at the piano, my approach has to be way more humbling. It is my firm belief that the piano is the most complex musical instrument of all, and the hardest to master. So I am quite proud of my humble ‘solid grade 6’ 🙂
I also highly question, always, listening to other performers. There is little point in performing a piece like someone else. Learning all about performance, yes. Listening to Mr World Famous pianist this and that, should only be done very occasionally, and never for the pieces one is preparing.
I had an interesting experience about this (to me, anyways). I remember once learning a grade 4 piece by Pamela Wedgwood called ‘Street Place’. The piece was part of a series in a book, that in a newer version, came with a CD. (I had bought an older one, without a CD.) I tried it the first couple of times, and the general style and harmony suggested a kind of ‘new age’ style…… a very tiny hint of Satie or Debussy meets pop music. (I don’t like this kind of comparisons, and mentioning Debussy seems a long stretch, but just to convey a very general idea). I didn’t know there was a new version of the book. Learned the piece, but then I became curious about how it was performed on the CD, so I bought the CD version. To my surprise, I found the CD performance very disappointing, I liked my interpretation a lot more (and I can assure you that I am the last one to rave about my piano playing, although fortunately I don’t think it’s bad!). I had put many things that were not even on the score at all, such as rubatos, crescendos, etc. On the CD the playing was much more ‘linear’, I did not like it at all.
Of course, my example has limitations…..I mentioned a piece of popular music, where you can do pretty much whatever you like. ‘Doing your thing’ with classical music is more intimidating 🙂
But I learned the lesson: whatever is the piece I learn, I never reach for Youtube. I listen to other performers only to study performance on a general level. I think it is OK to trust myself, provided that I have no serious technical shortcomings for the piece I am learning, such as unevenness in tempo or touch, etc….
PS. I detest Arthur Rubinstein’s ‘teaching’. He once said: ‘There’s NOOOOOOTHING to learn!’. I hope no one punched him. 🙂
I think that what these performers say, should always be taken with an (abundant) grain of salt 🙂
I would actually choose you as a piano teacher, over Arthur Rubinstein OR Anton Rubinstein, believe it or not. If I want to hear speeches, I’ll head to Audible 🙂
Thanks so much for your comments, Luigi. Given that amazing results come from both types of teaching styles, as far as demonstration is concerned, I would not want to hold one up against the other.
actually I have been somewhat unfair on good old Arthur, in the video he demonstrates abundantly. And of course I agree with you, after all, I don’t teach piano, but you do 🙂 Thanks
PS. sorry, earlier I meant ‘to expound’, not ‘to expose’
I take back what I wrote about the classical guitar vs the piano…..mastering Mozart’s Turkish Rondo took me about the same as it did for Giuliani’s op 45, the only difference is that the Mozart piece at the piano is grade 6 and the one on guitar about gr 7.5…..other than that it took about the same (deliberate and very focused practice done with a time and entered in a diary)
time= timer