Schubert Impromptu No. 2 in Eb, Op. 90: Looping and Grouping notes

"Looping" and "grouping" provide prompts for practicing relentless triplets in the opening section of Schubert's Eb Impromptu. Myriads of scale-like passages meander in unpredictable directions at times, often inserting half-steps under principle notes that carry a thread of melody that peaks with a sequence of secondary dominants to climax. But of poignant beauty is an…

Pianist, Christyna Kaczynski-Kozel, a local “classic” with an International profile

Christyna Kaczynski-Kozel is a credit to many nations. She's spun around Canada and the Continent, savoring ties to great music mentors, one of whom was a towering figure in the conducting world. In a thread of scintillating and informative conversation, Christyna paid tribute yesterday to her most influential teacher, Sergiu Celibidache. About the conductor: (WIKI)…

Harmonic rhythm awareness and blocking help phrasing

Besides having at least a rudimentary understanding of chord progressions, it's advantageous to be able to "sing" internally, or in full voice, as you accompany yourself through a cantabile movement. A good example, is the Andante of the supposedly "easy" (facile) Sonata of Mozart, K. 545, which is, to the contrary, a challenge to play…

“Clouds,” “cushions,” and “veils” permeate a Chopin Lesson (Waltz in A minor)

Floating arms, supple wrists, delicate relaxed ornaments and trills, and an oxymoron-driven, perfect parachute landing flowed into a lesson last night with a musically responsive adult student. The keyboard was transformed into a soft cushion receiving fingers energized with bigger channeled energies traveling down buoyant arms through springy wrists. Most of all, imagination fed a…

She plays “red-blooded” harpsichord!

It's well-known to a wide audience of admirers that Elaine Comparone has a commanding presence at the harpsichord. And while she sits this one out in a bedazzling reading of Bach's D minor concerto, she's made headlines standing before her beloved as Queen of a Chamber Band that's produced reams of high quality performances. Comparone,…

Happy Birthday, IRMA!

Today I posted a musical tribute to a dear friend who provides her acoustically divine living room for my weekly teaching journeys in El Cerrito, California. The space soars with resonance and complements a vintage Baldwin 1929 grand that lavishes its home in the Hills. Irma happens to be a student of mine for 4…

Adoption in the old piano universe

Today's good deed was my hands on effort to place a gorgeous sounding old upright in a deserving home. And judging by the attention this Emerson vintage piano eventually received after I played it for well past an hour at a Berkeley thrift store, there may be hope that an old veteran like this, can…

Piano Instruction: On the way to Velocity, doing the groundwork (Video)

When faced with a composition in Presto tempo, it's best to practice slowly, preferably separate hands, (at first) to secure a good fingering, understand HARMONIC flow (or progressions) and piece out the phrasing, that encompasses articulation and dynamics. In my own baby-step maiden journey this evening through Tchaikovsky's "Baba Yaga" (The Witch), Op. 39, No.…

Piano Instruction: Spinning Long Melodic lines in Romantic era music (Videos)

I'm about to fly off to a Skype lesson in UK, but while grounded here in Berkeley, I want to share epiphanies about spinning long melodic lines in the Romantic era genre. Using Schumann's supposedly less complex "Melody" from his Album for the Young, I found myself exploring physical motions that needed to be synthesized…

Piano Practicing: Infusing repetition with imagination

A popular discussion on Internet Piano forums is how to approach repetitions in the context of piano study. For many students the very act of going over a passage, scale, or five-finger position more than once, amounts to meaningless drudgery. In the same vein, “boring” is a rampant description children apply to warm-up routines. But…