Beware the Pot-Bellied Monster
Learn how to shape the three-layered texture in piano playing. Discover practical tips for balancing melody, harmony and bass with clarity and control.
Handel, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Rachmaninoff!
In this month’s practice clinic, Graham Fitch answered questions on trills, fingering, legato octaves and gave practising tips for tackling a difficult passage in works by Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff.
Pedalling Problems and Possibilities
I often find I have quibbles with pedal markings printed in the score. Chief among them is that these markings do not - nor can they ever expect to -…
Hold Me, I’m a Fermata!
Following on from last week's post on rests, I'm going to move on to the fermata - or the pause. We find this marked on rests as well as on…
Pedalling and Rests
Rests in piano music can be confusing. Some rests we have to treat very literally - this means a noticeable silence - whereas others may simply mean don't play anything on…
Don’t Play!
We tend to think of sitting at the piano and practising totally in terms of making sounds. If we’re not moving our fingers up and down, we’re not really practising,…
Taking Ownership
Some years ago, Dame Fanny Waterman gave a masterclass for the BBC (Beethoven Sonata, op. 2 no. 2 , I think it was) and had made some suggestions to the student…
A Ghost Story
There are certain places in the repertoire where I can predict that a student is going to hurry. They will usually tend to rob long notes of their value by…
Practising Chords (Part Two): An Extract from Rachmaninov
In this post, I aim to give a thorough approach to practising an extract, the return of the "A" section from Rachmaninov's famous warhorse, the Prelude in C sharp minor,…