When a Virtual Piano Student becomes a Reality!

A North Carolina ONLINE piano student comes to Berkeley, California for a LIVE lesson right before the Super Bowl!

What’s Frightening about Schumann’s “Frightening? ” (Kinderszenen, Op. 15, no. 11)

What convinces most pianists that Schumann's "Furchtenmachen" (Frightening) is an expression of fear or perhaps more specifically anxiety, are the markedly impulsive sections that contrast with lyrical, reflective ones. And not to be overlooked, are the interjections of syncopated SF's (accentuated outbursts) that are quite STARTLING and must be well communicated in measures 21-24, as…

Getting immersed in LEARNING Bach’s F minor Fugue, BWV 881 (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2)

My journey through the Baroque master's Fugue no. 12 has been a labor of love though the form enshrined by J.S. Bach can be intimidating by its structural nit-pickings. Wikipedia, for example, cites BWV 847 in C minor, (the Fugue) as a model of internal order, with a carefully marked out Subject;  Answer (a fifth…

Medici TV presents FREE LIVE stream of the XV INTERNATIONAL Tchaikovsky Competition from Moscow

http://tch15.medici.tv/en/live/piano This is a unique opportunity to savor performances by a roster of international contestants, one of whom is our very own, pianist, George Li, a loyal Facebook Friend to so many of his avid fans. We're tracking his global-wide performances with great interest. Li's scheduled opening Recital is THURSDAY, JUNE 18: 3:50 PM Piano:…

Chiming in the New Year with my favorite piano performance picks!

Grigory Sokolov grabs a deserved spotlight in this bedazzling performance of Schubert's Klavierstucke No. 1 http://youtu.be/zuwi9W3A3tM Bruno Sainmangeon, producer and documentarian captured Sokolov in the same acoustically favorable Berlin space that Murray Perahia chose to deliver the memorable Bach Partita in E minor: http://youtu.be/ELShZDVjoFw Add in Perahia's most recent tour de force in Japan: Beethoven's…

Piano Technique: Be a Blockhead when learning Bach

Blocking techniques can help to solidify tricky passages in Bach's A minor Invention (13), especially if intelligent decisions are made about landscaping broken chords with thumb shifts weaving through them. Examining measures 9 through 13 for example, I devised a blocking routine that helped me gain note security while contouring phrases with a supple wrist.…

J.S. Bach, the piano, harpsichord and early music tunings

Elaine Comparone, a well-regarded harpsichordist rendered a dance movement from J.S. Bach's French Suite No. 5 in G, (BWV 816) that I'd performed on the pianoforte. In the Loure, (written in G Major) I was immediately struck by a pitch disparity between our respective instruments. While Loure was composed in the key of G Major,…

Does approaching notes in different ways at the piano affect tone production?

Emanuel Ax, well-known concert pianist and teacher asserts that one note struck cannot be varied by physical approach (except for volume) and I'm assuming duration (a clipped staccato release vs. a lingering sustain without pedal) Yet he didn't provide enough specific details about duration, dynamics, and how delays into notes using supple wrist motions could…

Lesson supplement videos assist Transfer Students in their transition to a new teacher

Most transfer students that I've encountered over the years better brave the change from one teaching style to another, by watching recorded views of their lessons. Because there may be a tad of anxiety associated with approaching the piano in a different way than previously learned, watching instructional excerpts that focus on the piano as…

An in depth “Over”-view of J.S. Bach Little Prelude in C Minor, BWV 934

This evening I prepared a video supplement for an adult student who brought the gorgeously woven Little Prelude in C minor (BWV 934) to his first lesson. Since I had studied this work at the suggestion of another student, from faraway Greece, I had laid a firm foundation in my own layer by layer learning…