Learn How to Play Piano from Expert

Some players pick up the peculiarity of making extraordinary faces during their performance of music. This is a very absurd fault, but it too often becomes a habit that is terribly hard to get rid of, because it is done quite unconsciously as a rule, and is also instigated by a desire to express the maximum of emotion, and sometimes provoked by the physical exertion necessary for the performance of a technical feat. The only remedy for “making faces” is to have a mirror hung in front of the culprit whenever he is practising.

And how about the student who loves his right hand better than his left? He seems to follow the Bible maxim of not letting his right hand know what his left hand is doing, chiefly because his left hand is not doing much at all! By this I mean that it is bad to neglect the left hand, which is generally the weaker member, anyhow, and not to allow it to develop its fundamental notes with just as much significance and sonority as the more obvious work of the right hand. Of course, the left hand should never be permitted to drown the right hand, but it should sustain and harmoniously support it.

Young players also err very often by incorrect style in their performance of different kinds of music. Bach cannot be played with the highly-coloured romantic passion which should pervade renderings of Schumann or Tschaikovsky, nor with the weird ethereal atmosphere that surrounds the music of the modern French school. Music approached thus in a totally false appreciation of its spirit becomes merely caricature. Yet I have had Chopin played to me with all the dryness and precision of the most pedantic classical manner, and Bach distorted with rubato and unnatural limelight effects.

It is perhaps disheartening to think that there are so many pitfalls lurking for the pianist in every direction, but there remains always this consoling reflection, that the man of real genius, even when he suffers from every one of the faults mentioned here, will not thereby be prevented from still being a great player. These deficiencies of detail are only grave hindrances to the commonplace ability which has no divine fire to sustain it. And when all is said and done, each individual possesses the right to hope that the spark of genius which palliates so many evils may lie in him too, if only it can be discovered.

I well remember Leschetitzky, the greatest of pianoforte teachers, finishing up his lessons to his dejected pupils, after telling them in his most forceful manner of all their heinous faults, with the following exhortation : ” I would say nothing, gentlemen, of the manner in which you play, if only the result was a satisfying one. You may play with your feet upon the keyboard if only it sounds well, but remember they must be talented feet.”

There are other serious faults which hamper pianists, pertaining more to purely technical matters. Such is, for instance, sticking out the thumb, instead of always keeping it ready underneath the palm of the hand in order to facilitate its rapid passage during the changes of position on the keyboard. This is an important affair, as if this sticking out of the thumb is not checked, it will impede the technical perfection of passage-playing and cause it to be awkward, heavy and laboured.

Keeping the elbows out is a trick that many fall into, which is both unsightly and detrimental to tone-production, because it forces the hand into unnatural positions, and stiffens the wrists, as well as impairs rapidity and suppleness of execution.

Excessive movement of the body, too, while playing, is disturbing to the sight and to the player’s power of elasticity, yet it is a bad habit which is much indulged in. No doubt it seems to help people to intensify what they are feeling, but this is an illusion. Exaggerated gesture, on the contrary, tends rather to diminish an impression which might otherwise be deep, and weakens it, by a suggestion of hysteria, while too frequently it borders on the ridiculous, in which case the impression is altogether lost. Movements of the body while playing can be divided into two classes, namely, jerky movements (generally confined to the head and shoulders), which produce stiffness and tension, and swaying movements of the whole frame, which disturb the rhythm.

As hurrying and also dragging the tempi are both errors connected somewhat with faulty rhythm, I will speak of this next as a highly unsatisfactory failing. Rhythm is no doubt to a great extent instinctive, and is bound up a good deal with individual temperaments. But it must be carefully developed by teaching and analysis, for too much emphasis can never be bestowed upon giving every note in music its proper value, apart from any other rhythmical consideration. For rhythm in. piano-playing is so essential a factor in obtaining a good tone-production, that it is imperative to cultivate it with great attention to correctness of outline.

Lack of rhythm, or faulty rhythm, will take all character from a musical performance, and will leave an impression of insipidity and monotony where there is no rhythm, and of irritation where the rhythm is inexact, as the case may be.

Close on the heels of bad rhythm comes the weakness of always using the same kind of tone while performing. Plenty of variation of tone-colour is absolutely necessary for inspired and interesting playing on the piano, as, indeed, on all instruments.

On the piano this is more difficult to arrive at than on the stringed or even the wind instruments, and needs much study of the technique of touch. For frequently we cannot understand, after coming out from a concert, why what we appreciated as a really fine performance of a musical work had not arrested our attention more, or aroused keener pleasure. A certain sense of monotony or dullness had crept over us while listening.

Such a feeling, or rather want of feeling, is almost always the result of the performer’s failure to grasp the possibilities of his instrument in relation to tone-colour. Everything he plays is in a similar hue of tone, therefore a sameness and lack of life and contrast pervades the whole. It is a strange anomaly that the more beautiful is the touch of the pianist by natural instinct, the 1 more he is apt to fall into the fault of using it indiscriminately in the same strength, because he takes so much personal pride and pleasure in it. It is like the case of singers who are gifted with wonderful top notes, and, therefore, are always inclined to warble them forth in full but monotonous volumes of sound.

Hurrying the tempo is nearly as bad, and is sometimes caused by nervousness, though indifference, want of confidence, and the very general mistake of looking upon a crescendo as an accellerando also give rise to it. People who are inclined to be nervous when playing before others often get a queer kind of defiant sensation when technically difficult passages hover in sight ; the ” let’s get it over and be done with it ” sort of feeling, which makes them hurry in an extraordinary manner.

Of course, hurrying may just as well arise from a lack of instinct for rhythm in the student. Where this is the case, it is rather a hopeless look-out, as it is so hard to inculcate a real feeling for rhythm into someone who is not naturally endowed with it. But it has often been my experience to listen to students who were gifted with a most highly-developed sense of rhythm, and yet who hurried, especially over their technically difficult passages, until I began to get positively breathless. This kind of increasing the speed was, of course, due to want of nervous control.

Now comes along the temperamental student, burning with ardour for the beauty of the music, longing to make the noble chords of some fine melody speak out its message! What special pitfall lies ready to entrap his zealous endeavours? Why, in his enthusiasm that the melody in both hands should be properly brought out, he gets one hand playing after the other! Only a fraction of a second after the left hand does the right hand strike, but in that loss of simultaneousness of sound the whole grandeur after which the performer is striving will be dispelled in the irritating effect of one part of the harmony always reaching the ear at a slight interval after the other. This is a most frequent failing amongst very musical people who enjoy tremendously what they are playing; and especially does it occur with them in slow movements, when they will arpeggio the chords between the two hands so much that it sounds to me like drawling in speech, or even like stuttering. These enthusiasts lose their sense of the symmetry of the sound in their intense pleasure over its component parts, and it is hard that the very virtue that lies in their love of the music can thus lead them into danger.

Dragging the time, another tiresome error of judgment, proceeds generally from the same cause of over-fervour. The player who suffers from this blemish mostly owes it to a lack of sense of proportion and taste, and to a certain want 01 artistic perception of the guiding line between true sentiment and sentimentality.