Learning Two Chopin Nocturnes (Eb and F minor) with a framing bass line/treble perspective

One of the biggest challenges in playing the Eb Major (Op. 9) and F minor (Op. 55) Nocturnes is preserving awareness of the fundamental bass note movement against the melody while after beat chords provide a harmonic enrichment in the overall voicing. Too often, however, these chords on the off beats (following the downbeat) somehow…

Experimentation and refinement are the ingredients of music teaching and learning

One of the joys of teaching piano is to experience awakenings with our students as we experiment with phrasing, and refine original perceptions. And while a piano teacher is considered a mentor to a student, he/she clearly realizes that roles are easily reversed when a pupil inspires further experimentation and clarification. In exploring the Romantic…

Piano Teacher Stories from the War Zone! (Part One)

So many of us in the field of teaching can hearken back to our earliest piano student years and flesh out a particular individual who was the "worst" teacher to ever come our way. In my case, it was my second teacher who earned the distinction of being the most inept mentor on record, though…

J.S. Bach Invention No. 13 in A minor: A Continuing Journey

Students who embark upon learning the beautifully woven Invention 13, have new awakenings about the Subject and its thread of sequences and development through three pages. And as they explore two independent, though complementary voices in counterpoint, they discover that the Subject and what pieces of it are borrowed as the music plays out, have…

Shaping a J.S. Bach Two-Part Invention

Many students play J.S. Bach's music with a typed out, articulated approach, forgetting to shape and contour phrases. In Bach's F Major Invention, BWV 779, the tendency is to overemphasize every element of broken chord F, A, C, F, in a perfunctory detachment, when musically the line tells us otherwise. Because the very first note…

A common chorus among adult piano students

As decades pass, and each adult piano student on his personal journey chimes in with a greeting at the start of a lesson, I've noticed a synchronized choir of commonly expressed thoughts. The riveting idée fixe that resonates LIVE and through SKYPE channels, is like the redundant motif of Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. "I really want…

Reviewing Chopin’s Nocturne in C# minor, Op. Posthumous (MOVIE THEME, THE PIANIST)

http://youtu.be/y7Kry7-jrME We have to give credit to movie-makers for putting this hauntingly beautiful composition on the popular marquee of Classical music favorites. It shares notoriety with Mozart's middle movement theme of Concerto no. 21 in C, which recurred throughout the film, Elvira Madigan. Chopin's Nocturne in C# minor was a perfect match for Roman Polanski's…

Revisiting Schubert Impromptu in Eb, Op. 90, No. 2

Since I have two students immersed in this gorgeously spun out Impromptu, my review has been perfectly timed. http://youtu.be/daHh9E1rNos Schubert's composition challenges the player to be lyrical through swaths of triplets. These roll out as fast but contoured melody. Laying a good learning foundation requires attentive listening and a well-conceived fingering tied to Slow practicing.…

Piano Lessons: A raw adult beginner moves along

Each piano student shapes his own journey with the help of a cooperating teacher. For one particular pupil, who came to his first lesson not reading a note of music, his burning desire to learn ignited a playful romp through a set of duets. These are sourced from Faber's Accelerated Adventures for the Older Beginner.…

Everyone’s obsessed with the fall-off in piano students

I evade the firing squad at any number of piano ped. forums by sticking to my guns. I say, in some parts of the world there may be a strong Classical music tradition bound up with a formidable work ethic. In remote parts of Romania, for example, and into the hills of Slavic countries, the…