Adult piano student stumbling blocks and overcoming them

I sometimes offer a bit of counseling to my brood of adults who often fall into a pit of pervasive self-punishment. The beating up myself student, will often berate himself/herself for having played a scale or piece better before the lesson began. The pupil reasons, if only the teacher disappeared or never showed up, he/she…

A Teacher/Student fueled discovery about Staccato playing

I never cease to be amazed by a mutual discovery process that's ongoing between me and my adult students. Without our learning partnership, we would not have periodic awakenings that feed our reciprocal musical development. Case in point, is the attainment of Staccato refinement in its most crisp and animated form. In the past month,…

The Big Winner in the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition!

It would be easy to reel off a list of prizes in 4 separate Moscow competition categories and characterize all recipients as "winners,"--that is if we put music-making into the sports arena with a clear cut victor and an opposing loser. In pro-tennis, for example, where a point-scoring system is in part influenced by calls…

GRAND comparisons

It's always telling to compare a piano's tone, resonance and decay in the showroom where purchased to its performance in one's living space. Unfortunately, one cannot transport the piano to one's home while evaluating it at the store. In this regard, I can share a pertinent experience where a 7' ft. Grotrian grand whose bass…

Playing a Bach Invention: Say what you mean, and mean what HE said

My latest awakening occurred during a piano lesson last night with a student who loves Bach and nearly dotes upon his compositions exclusively. And that's fine with me who's a companion traveler sharing a comparable love for the composer and his diversity of keyboard works. Invention 1 in C, BWV 772 is one of my…

My New Baldwin Grand Piano Arrives! (on video)

https://youtu.be/u_YG7qNUpkU Baldwin Grand with lid up plays J.S. Bach Prelude in F minor, BWV 881 (WTC Book 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSNOvkbqbKw And J.S. Bach Prelude No. 1 in C, Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 https://youtu.be/TmGa78iBM04 Mozart Sonata in C, K. 545, Allegro https://youtu.be/qWDdJOG318I LINK: MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO ME! https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/my-birthday-present-to-me/

Technology as a valuable piano teaching tool

This is not a planned or staged informercial, but one of my students spontaneously reviewed the value of her piano lessons by Face Time, and I snatched her critique on my iPhone. NOTIFICATION: She was not impeded from sharing the down side of her piano learning experience so naturally I was riveted to what would…

Thoughts on learning Mozart Sonata No. 12 in F, K. 332 (first movement)

After my review of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Drawing Room" Sonata K. 545 in C, Allegro, I discovered by comparison that the opening movement of K. 332 in F Major, had a more complex mosaic. In the short space of its nearly three page exposition, K. 332's multiple themes weave through markedly contrasting sections. *A Sturm…

Tempo Rubato and Chopin Waltz in A minor No. 19, Op. Posthumous

Tempo Rubato as defined in Wikipedia: "Tempo rubato (free in the presentation, Italian for: stolen time) is a musical term referring to expressive and rhythmic freedom by a slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor." I think of it in…

Never say never to a finger-trapping passage (Mozart Rondo: Allegro K. 545)-Video

While we all experience head on collisions with tricky measures despite our best efforts to avoid repeated catastrophes, (through careful, methodical practicing) there comes a time, to let go, and give the whole undertaking a rest. In my case, it was at least a year before I revisited the last part of Mozart's Rondo: Allegro,…