Sister and brother piano lessons in the Hills

I enjoy my weekly journey to a home way up in the Hills of El Cerrito (neighbor to Berkeley) There, I teach Lucy and Fritz who play a lovely, resonant Baldwin Acrosonic that I advised mom to purchase (over at DC Pianos) Acros happen to be among my favorites in the spinet/console category. The Back…

Artful piano playing: Rising above the notes by “feeling,” singing, and “shaping” phrases

Burmguller's "Sincerity," Op. 100 is the perfect vehicle for spinning limpidly beautiful phrases. But how does the pianist go beyond what appears to be strings of 8th notes that can easily sound typed out. To avoid the ponderous, vertical approach to these semi-quavers, a set of baby-step preliminaries can nurse along a heartfelt, well-"shaped" musical…

Romantic era piano repertoire: A murmuring stream and the supple wrist (Burgmuller creates beauty from simplicity)

"The Clear Stream" from Friedrich Burgmuller's Twenty-Five Progressive Pieces offers a student an opportunity to create limpidly beautiful phrases from unraveled broken chords spun out in triplets. In order to create the "mormorando" (murmuring effect) in the treble, it's best to first block out the "chord" patterns with a "spongy" wrist in slow motion before…

The Berkeley Rose Garden draped in photos and music

Today was my maiden journey to the paradise of Roses in Berkeley. No words can amply describe the effect such beauty had upon me. (Taking pictures was irresistible) Burgmuller's "Tender Flower" was the perfect musical framing. http://youtu.be/Som4mPzd9sc P.S. I made a passing cameo appearance amidst the heavenly, terraced bouquets LINK to FB Photo Album https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200446952169541.1073741827.1628726576&type=1&l=109128a237…

Piano Instruction: Don’t always accentuate the downbeat– Burgmuller’s music proves it (Video)

http://youtu.be/MgwB3JESuG0 "Inquietude" from Burgmuller's Op. 100 collection of Twenty-Five Progressive pieces, invites a player to examine harmonic progressions as a clue to phrasing a composition that's often pounded to death with unnecessary DOWNBEAT accents. Seymour Bernstein, distinguished pianist, teacher and author, noted in a recent conversation we shared in New York City, that our musical…

A Purr-fect sedative for a Cat

"Harmony of the Angels" has a soporific effect on Aiden cat while it provided a relaxing prelude to Rina's earliest piano lessons. Students, young and old, love its thread of sonorities.

Phrasing at the piano: Listening to the ends of notes as they flow into others

I've chosen Burgmuller's "Tender Flower" as the springboard to explore attentive listening and its relationship to phrasing. At the outset, the right moment to begin a piece is a challenge. The player has to experience the whole dimension of silence before a first note is played. That silence is not dead, but alive with cues…

Piano Study: Exploring the full gamut of emotions on the way to mastering a new piece (Videos)

Taking piano lessons should be a deep-level growth experience with a metaphorical tie-in to life. This means that pieces studied and technique applied should be interwoven to realize emotions of sadness, happiness, grieving, elation, disappointment and whatever comes to mind in the full panoply of human feelings. This is why hearing the word “fun” tossed…

For Intermediate Level students: A joyous way to improve piano technique while savoring the Romantic genre (Videos)

Piano students in the Intermediate range don't need to plod through method books to grow technique. In addition, they shouldn't be subjected to arrangements of the masterworks reduced to painful copies of the original. As example, "Fur Elise" often appears in dumb-down form, with a mid-section excision. What's left is the bare-bones beginning, usually transposed…

Burgmuller’s beautiful “Tendre Fleur” flows in and out of flower portraits (VIDEO)

On my walk from the El Cerrito Hills to BART Del Norte I snapped these pictures and interspersed them in my reading. Composed in the Romantic era, "Tender Flower" (English Tr.) is a gorgeous miniature that says so much in such a short space of time. A repository of nuance and expressive lines, it rivets…