Among the many students who come and play to me and ask me for advice, the majority remind me of a well-known limerick about a certain young lady of Rio, whose skill was so scanty she played Andante instead of Allegro con brio!
I must be excused for drawing attention to the young lady of Rio, but it is because her case is true and typical of so many other young females and also males whose houses are much nearer London than Rio. I should like, therefore, to say a few words about attempting to play great masterpieces of pianoforte music without sufficient knowledge of technique, and especially of that immensely important branch of it, the mastery of scales.
It has been my experience that whenever particularly young and raw students come to play to me and want to show what they can do, they invariably attempt such giant works as the Brahms- Handel Variations, or the Appassionata Sonata of Beethoven, or the Chopin Ballads. After they have finished playing a sonata or two (most often in tempo andante, like our friend of Rio), I ask them to play me a scale. They usually evince astonishment at my request, and answer that they never practise scales at all.
If ever they do what I ask, their performance of them proves to be, as a rule, unrhythmical, uneven and altogether unsatisfactory. Yet most pianoforte works contain passage-writing which is directly based upon scale progressions. I have known many advanced pianoforte students who are quite unable to arrive at any high standard of performance through lack of technical knowledge and want of proficiency in scale-playing.
Who does not quote, at times, in referring to such performers, the hackneyed plea for indulgence: “He makes up in expression what he lacks in execution”? As if this excuse itself did not prove upon examination to be a sheer piece of nonsense. For where there is no sufficient command of execution the expression can only be halting, stilted, and ineffective. In a reproductive art, such as pianoforte-playing, the perfect rendering of all the emotions inspired by the music can only be obtained through unlimited control of technique, which, of course, implies absolute mastery of manual dexterity.
So many talented amateurs who really wish to study their art to the backbone and attain professional proficiency do not realize that they must first acquire what is generally known among artists as a good ” school” The world “school” used in this sense means a firm background of technical principles by which difficulties can be solved in the most logical and profitable manner. The acquirement of these principles can only be gained in the years of hard work which should precede any serious attempt at performance.
It was interesting to me, in the light of my views on this subject, to have been present recently at the Dancing School of the Russian Ballet. Here their greatest stars practise every day, for several hours, technical exercises and steps which eventually constitute a wonderful and intricate ballet. And though to the impatient the mere study of scales may seem intolerably dull, yet it is a wonderful feeling to notice power growing gradually, and things becoming easy which at first seemed insurmountable.