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.”

To begin with, there is no more usual failing, or one more damaging to good piano-playing, than too much use of the pedal, and its application in the wrong places. The pedal is really a very dangerous attraction to the inexperienced and yet enthusiastic performer. It is such an alluring temptation to hear the notes welling into one another, also the blur of sound produced by much pedalling covers up so many deficiencies of execution.

There is no doubt that the pedal carries with it a sort of special glamour of its own, so that even children when they first start learning the piano are always clamouring to be allowed to play with the pedal. It is their greatest ambition. Yet bad use of the pedal is quite capable of completely marring the effect of what might otherwise be a fine rendering of a piece of music. The pedal should be used to enhance, but never to cover up, and should be regarded as a means for producing certain definite tone-effects and variations of tone-colour at precise moments, and not as a sort of general mist of hot vapour or steam by which each note, passage and chord becomes enveloped.

Misuse of the pedal is a horrible fault, and can affect great and small alike; it should be carefully guarded against. Indeed, the state it produces on the mind of the listener is similar to that which overheated air creates in the lungs, namely, fatigue, nausea, lassitude, and even, alas, drowsiness!

When a student comes to play to the artist with whom he desires to study, how often does he ask, when he has finished his performance: ” Master, what I really want you to tell me is, whether I have any very serious faults in my playing? ”

Serious faults in his playing! Poor fellow! He probably has several which he has not yet discovered himself, and which most likely no one has ever drawn his attention to.

What, then, are some of the most common faults, and at the same time some of the worst of those which students of the piano may fall into unsuspectingly through careless tuition? Well, these are many and various, and are generally very difficult to eradicate. Moreover, they beset the most talented players, just as much as their less gifted brethren.