A week of digital and acoustic pianos!

Every so often, I find myself at the local piano outlet, tinkering with the latest digitals on and off the shelf. (portables and consoles) And as the weekend rolled in, I was invited to DC Piano by a new student who'd purchased a Kawai CA 58 console electronic without my input. No doubt, my prodding…

A memorable Evgeny Kissin Piano Recital!

With our ultra exposure to You Tube, MP4s, CDs, etc. we often forget what it's like to experience a LIVE performer inhabiting an acoustical paradise such as Davies Hall, San Francisco. In a give and take between pianist and audience, a swell of dynamics and limpidly melting cadences elicit an intimate exchange of emotions that's…

Trills, Trills, Trills and how to practice them!

This week's post is, in part, a response to a Word Press inquiry about how to approach trills in Mozart's Sonata in F, K. 332. (Allegro) The measures under examination are those that lead toward the Development section with a modulation to the Dominant key of C Major. These same configured trills return at the…

How Bach should be played is Twitter-framed!

A wellspring of inspiration poured forth in a Tweet posted by virtuoso cellist, Steven Isserlis whose vivid musical imagination fuses with his seamless technique. (We share common Oberlin Conservatory "roots" and an insatiable love for J.S.) It was no accident that while unearthing a perfect gem among a collection of Bach Little Preludes, I encountered…

Piano Technique Tutorials abound this week!

I often enjoy a splurge of self-produced technique videos to assist my teaching, and to clarify my latest insights. This week I examined Staccato playing, using weight transfer for dynamic variation, as I employed a legato "floating arm" as a model for snipping out a stream of well-connected, scale-wise detached notes. In this undertaking, I'd…

Piano Adventures!

This past week brought a nearly insurmountable challenge to help a 90-year old sell her 7-foot Baldwin grand piano. Sight unseen, I'd enlisted a volunteer effort while facing a built-in pressure cooker deadline of 30 days to sale. The owner's move to Assisted Living could not include a lion's size instrument. With less than a…

Playing with Imagination!

Lately, I've been imbuing lessons with the word "imagination" particularly as it has applied to short pictorial works by Enrique Granados. Yet, drawing on the imagination crosses historical periods of musical composition, not limited to 19th Century "expressive" Romanticism and well beyond. In this vein, J.S. Bach Preludes, Fugues, movements from the French and English…

What you Learn by Teaching Piano

I was inspired by the sagacious words of Peter Takacs, Oberlin Conservatory piano faculty member, in response to a query by Zsolt Bognar. (Living the Classical Life interview) Zsolt: "Should a pianist teach?" (I was a bit surprised by a question that sowed doubt about the endeavor of mentoring--as if it proliferated the weak cliche…

This week’s ear-catcher: “Stay Loose and Keep Moving!”

There were a pile-up of competing events to fill a blog feature, but only one stole the show: Amidst a sweltering East Coast heat wave, harpsichordist friend, Elaine Comparone, messaged a BBC link to an astounding display of age-defying virtuosity. At her home in Paris, 103-year old, French pianist, "Colette," played mellifluous Debussy, "moving" gracefully…

Two Piano Teachers on common ground with a Bi-Coastal twist

A few years ago, I received an instant message from piano teacher, Gail Trattner Isenberg, a member of FACEBOOK's Art of Piano Pedagogy group and an avowed blog follower. Though we'd been "distant" cyber contacts, linked by common URLs, Gail's text that bubbled with enthusiasm in its introduction, had rapidly erupted into a full blown…