My Piano Assessment adventure at Walnut Creek’s Steinway Piano Gallery

https://youtu.be/eXqw5iE2sIk Piano Teachers and performing pianists in the Bay area were tapped to evaluate the tone/touch dimension of Steinway, Boston and Essex pianos so I was pleased to be on the invite list--contacted by Justin Levitt, Manager at Steinway's showroom in Walnut Creek, CA. It was a reflection of good will spread far and wide…

Piano Lesson summary videos cut to the chase

I used to customarily record segments of lessons in progress that required sensitive editing before I uploaded them to you tube. It was not only a big job, but much of the video time was taken up with students lumbering through difficult passages, needing more settled post-lesson time to sift through teacher corrections, comments. Therefore…

Flower Piano in photos at the San Francisco Botanical Garden

For twelve days pianos of all shapes and sizes were sprinkled through a verdant paradise as players with diverse repertoire from jazz to Classical serenaded clusters of listeners and a large brood of Canadian Geese. Nature's backdrop was irresistible. This white grand was a challenge to navigate with its stiff, moisture-filled action, though some players…

Early Musical Exposure and its importance

I recall my early childhood in the East Bronx on Featherbed Lane. At age 2 or 3, I was exposed to music emanating from a victrola perched on a corner table in a small two-room flat. From sunrise to sunset, heart-throbbing violin concertos, interspersed with operatic solos of Puccini played endlessly. My mother, standing by…

Does any one piano method or playing approach work?

Most piano teachers get inquiries from parents who are riveted to "methods." The most frequently posed question is, "can you tell me how you teach?" Under duress and painted into a corner, a prospective mentor's perfect, all-encompassing answer seems unattainable. And upon closer consideration, a boundary limited approach for every student who crosses the threshold…

Piano Technique: No Pain, Much Gain

Sometimes we learn a floating, flowing path to beauty through the unfortunate school of HARD knocks. To this effect, I recall my esteemed Oberlin Conservatory piano teacher dealing in mindless, stressful repetitions of meaningless exercises that caused joint pain and unremarkable displays of flat-lined, tightly squeezed playing. His teaching, to an extreme level of adherence…

Tiers of dynamics, well-regulated pianos, and expressive playing

The legendary pianist, Shura Cherkassky made triple ppps (pianississimos) melt in his hands through a fluid keyboard approach that encompassed an array of colors and shadings. In Shura's exemplary performance of Saint-Saens' Swan the pianist's multi-voice tier of dynamics was particularly astounding for its repository of textural timbres. Not surprisingly, the artist's touch sensitivity intertwined…

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…

Van Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky No. 1 concerto revisited

Van Cliburn's named popped up on one of the piano forums. Would he have made the same formidable impression in today's Moscow Competition as he did in 1958? The answer is simply YES, and resurrecting a flashback of his winning performance sheds light on how and why his Tchaikovsky 1, at least for me, stands…

Haydn on the harpsichord or piano? (Competition interlude)

Elaine Comparone insists that playing Haydn's works on the harpsichord stirs her "imagination to new heights." The harpsichordist's upload of Haydn's eloquent Sonata No. 52 in Eb Major ironically paralleled Reed Tetzloff's piano performance in Moscow which introduces an aesthetic comparison or two. Reed's You Tube channel features the opening Allegro movement, https://youtu.be/q6l2qguKhik while his…