Pianist December 2017 January 2018

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Pianist 99

CONTENTS

December 2017-January 2018 The next issue of Pianist goes on sale 26 January 2018

76

80

82 4

Editor’s Note Plus three copies of the Editor’s Editor’s Choice CD to be won

6

Readers’ Letters

8

Bucharest; News Duo competition in Bucharest;  Argerich and Babayan Babayan in Cleveland Cleveland;; a new instrument museum online, plus win a Bartók T-shirt T-shirt

 Warwick arwick ompson 12 Duets in Focus  W talks to three partnerships: Anderson and Roe, the Jussen brothers and Apekisheva and Owen. How do they rehearse?  What do they like to play? Do they fight?

16 How to Play Masterclass 1 Mark Tanner Tanner encourages you to play to your strengths when it comes to the art of choosing (and maintaining) your repertoire 18 How to Play Masterclass 2 Graham Fitch unveils a technique to help you practise and play faster,  with contr controlled olled stops 20 How to Play 1 Melanie Spanswick gets you up to speed with a nippy little Scherzo by Moscheles (Scores pages 38)

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Newman coaches 22 How to Play 2  Janet Newman your listening skills in the Berceuse from Fauré’s Dolly  (Scores  (Scores page 54)

75 Subscribe Subscrib e today  for just £4.50 an issue by direct debit and receive Play the Piano and Keyboard and  Keyboard Made Easy , worth £9.99

24 How to Play 3 Lucy Parham takes you through one of Rachmaninov Rachmaninov’s ’s loveliest Preludes, Op 23 No 4 (Scores page 62)

76 Intimate alliances  Nils Franke explores the origins of piano duets and advises on the duets inside this issue

27 The Scores A 40-page pull-out section of sheet music for all levels: includes a Nielsen folk tune, a Christmas number from Respighi and Take the ‘A’-Train

80 How to be a piano teacher Sally Cathcart outlines some essentials, from a secure technique to passion, vision and good admin skills

45 Beginner Keyboard Class Hans-Günter Heumann’s Lesson No 26: Exercises for chords and arpeggios

82 Inside the Bechstein factory  John Evans Evans gets an exclusive exclusive tour of the German firm’s home

67 Worbey & Farrell Farrell Question time  with the duo who like like to put on a show 

86 Yamaha’s Yamaha’s new CLP series  A new Clavinova that accompanies you

70 Learning Jazz Piano  with Dave Dave Jones. Jones. Lesson No 1: Major-key chord progressions

88 Sheet Music Review  Handy duet books, film themes and Debussy’s Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune arranged for duet

72 Theory Nigel Scaife explores ternary form  with the help of a famo famous us Prélu Prélude de by by Chopin Chopin 73 Inside Issue 100 Looking forward to the highlights of our special anniversary issue, including extra scores

Cover photo: © Carli Hermès. Images this page, clockwise from top left: © Richard Watson; © Roger Mastroianni; © John Evans Notice: Every effort has been made to secure permission for copyrighted material in this magazine, however, should copyrighted material inadvertently have been used, copyright acknowledgement will be made in a later issue of the magazine.

89 CD Reviews  Duet versions of Debussy Debussy,, Richard Strauss and Brahms’s Piano Quartet; Poulenc and John Adams for two pianos 90 Classifieds

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Editor’s note

I

f you’re a recluse, the life of a solo pianist will suit you down to the ground. But if you’re a bit of a social animal, it’s harder. ink of the hours we spend at the piano, day in, day out, exchanging barely a word with anyone else of a musical nature (perhaps apart from a weekly session with our teacher). at’s  where duets bring both light relief but also meaningful interaction. Inside this issue we devote articles and scores to the world of the piano duet in the hope that they will prompt you to find your primo or secondo partner.  Warwick ompson speaks to three top duettists on the circuit today. ey might be quite different personalities from their partners, but they are 100% keyboard buddies. You can find out on page 67 about a more off-beat duo, Worbey & Farrell, their imaginative approach to repertoire and the fun they have, on and off the stage. Nils Franke takes us through the history of the piano duet, and he offers invaluable tips for playing the duets inside this issue’s Scores section. As a distinguished pianist himself, he’s keen to remark on the importance of ensemble playing. As he says, by listening and responding to others, we learn so much about our own playing which benefits our own solo playing. Five four-hand duets inside the Scores section include both unknown gems (Balakirev and Respighi) and classics such as the Berceuse from Fauré’s Dolly suite. We thought you might welcome some in-depth help with this one, so there’s a lesson by Janet Newman on page 22. However, you don’t need company for all the scores this month: there’s a wonderful arrangement of the hit number written for Duke Ellington by Billy Strayhorn, Take e ‘A’ Train. Finally, I’d like to touch on a topic that’s important to all pianists: How to keep the pieces we’ve learned in our fingers. We spend hours learning them; why forget them afterwards? I was recently discussing this subject with our regular contributor Mark Tanner, frustrated by having ‘lost’ Rachmaninov’s D major Prelude, which was a piece I learned so securely years ago. Mark has come up with some valuable advice on page 16. Graham Fitch touches on the same subject, two pages later, when he looks at Chopin’s Scherzo No 3. Having happy memories of playing the Rachmaninov Prelude in recitals, I have presented the score complete, with a detailed lesson from Lucy Parham. Do try learning it and take Mark’s advice, so that it remains under your fingers for a lifetime. P.S. Don’t forget that the next issue is our 100th anniversary issue! It’s going to be a bumper souvenir issue, with extra pages of Scores and articles celebrating our anniversary. ERICA WORTH, EDITOR

 Keep in touch with me for the latest news from the world of the piano. Don’t forget to sign up to our FREE newsletter to receive exclusive how-to-play tips from our experts, exciting news and special offers.  http://pianistm.ag/pia-signup

COMPETITION

ENTER ONLINE AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM

WIN THE NEW ‘COLORS’ RELEASE FROM DUO TAL & GROETHUYSEN  Answer the question below correctly, and you could be one of three lucky winners to receive this stunning release of Debussy and Richard Strauss transcriptions for two pianos. It’s the Editor’s Pick of our CD Reviews this month (see page 89). The deadline for entries is 25 January 2018.

 Who wrote two sets of Slavonic Dances for piano duet A: Dvořák B: Janáček C: Fibich   a   g   e   v   o    l   a    E   n    i   m   a    j    n   e    B    ©

 Answer to the competition in Pianist 97 : B: Schumann. e winners were to come to come to come to come to come to come to come to come to come

4• Pianist 99

Pianist www.pianistmagazine.com PUBLISHER  Warners Group Publications plc Director: Stephen Warner  Publisher: Collette Smith EDITORIAL  Warners Group Publications 31-32 Park Row, 5th Floor, Leeds LS1 5JD Editor: Erica Worth [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)20 7266 0760 Deputy Editor: Peter Quantrill [email protected] Marketing: Lauren Beharrell [email protected]  Senior Designer : Nathan Ward ADVERTISING Gareth Macfarlane, Advertising Manager  [email protected]  Tel: +44 (0)845 226 0477 Fax: +44 (0)845 226 0377

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2• Pianist 96

 Readers’    Letters Get in touch WRITE TO:The Editor, Pianist, 6 Warrington Crescent, Lond on, W9 1EL, UK OR EMAIL:  [email protected] STAR LETTER wins a surprise CD. Letters may be ed ited.

STAR LETTER  Jules MA SSENET  (1842-1912)

TRACK 9

Méditation  is

Méditat ion fr om T ha ïs 

my meditation

I have fallen in love with the Massenet  Méditation (Scores, Pianist  98). I had no idea this exquisite piece existed in a solo piano version – and transcribed by the composer himself! Even though it’s a little ambitious for my level of playing (I’m around Grade 4 standard), I’ve been working on it very slowly and aim to have it perfected by the New Year. It’s also good for helping improve dexterity in the left hand, which is always a bugbear for me. Even the marking above the score, ‘Andante religioso’, is inviting! ank you for featuring it. With every issue of the magazine comes a discovery. You’ve introduced me to the likes of Fibich, Lyadov, Cervantes and dozens more.  Yvonne Kemp, Norwich

The subjectofMassenet’shitope r awas a cour  te  san turnedsa int, fir strecordeda  s a  legendinthe10th centur y.Thestoryw  asfilledout a ndspicedup asana nti-clerical sat irebyA natole France inasca ndalousnovelpublishedin 1890.T heopera’spr emiere in 1894 alsoca useda stirwhenthesopranoSibylS anderson,for w homMassen etwrot e thetit lerole, ‘accid entally ’exposedherbustmid -aria.T  hea rtofthe opera ,butre turnsin Act3tounderscore heMéditationisplacedat the thepr iestAthanaël’s anguishover  t he dea t hbedof the sensualThaïs,who is atthe lastgr an  teda vision of hea ve  n. Play ingtips : Lots of slow , precise practice w ill revea l that the notes fit under t he

INT E RMEDIAT E

f ingers more comfor tably t han you mig ht think from the page. Don’tre  ly  on t he given finger ings, but use them a s a guide. A mple pedalling also means you don’t  need to rely on t he fing ers to create legato. The L H is challeng ing and should be practised on it s own, v eryslowly.Ev en if t h e tempo is a calm Andant e, there’s lots of  jumping around a nd, of course, it al l needs to sound ef fortless! Sav our those gorg eous,f loating  moments such as t he descending  RH t r ipletsin bars 14-15. Pedalt ips : One peda l chang e perbaratth e outset, but more la teron (two changes perba r in bar s 7-8, 14-15a n dsoon). Yourear will be yourbestguide.

 A ndante re ligi oso 3

2  1  2  3

5

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3

2  1

très soutenu

5  3  2  1  2  1  2

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con Ped.

5  5  3  5

2  1

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rall.

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5 4

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52• Pianist 98

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assenet- INAL.indd

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We suggest that you read Mark Tanner’s article on page 16 in which he talks about building and maintaining repertoire. e Méditation is the type of piece that you want to keep in your fingers for years to come! We’re sure you will also enjoy many pieces inside this issue, such as the Nielsen and Moscheles.  A couple of the duets – the Balakirev and Respighi, for example – may come as a welcome surprise.  Meanwhile, a surprise CD is on its way to you.

Composition critiques I have recently started writing pieces for the piano. Entering the first Pianist  Composing Competition gave me additional focus, made me consider more  what I was trying to convey, and made me evaluate my music in more detail and depth. I am sure I speak for many of the entrants when I say, ‘Feedback would be much appreciated’. I realise it may not be possible to publish a review of all entries, perhaps only the top 10. And, if you felt that it might not be wise to publish this, perhaps a short private review could be made available. David Green, Leicestershire is year we will feature the top shortlisted compositions at www.pianistmagazine.com, so that everyone can see them. e winning score will be  published inside the magazine. Unfortunately, we cannot offer feedback to everyone, but you are welcome to contact the editor after the event; she may be able to respond personally.

Left-hand problems I recently retired and now have more time to spend playing the piano. I have looked forward to this but I have developed a problem with my left hand. I find myself pressing down with my left arm, which results in tension and unusual arm movements as I try counter this and play with a relaxed arm. I have tried a few piano teachers locally but they have not been able to help me. Could you suggest any lines of action to pursue? It is extremely frustrating when my right arm/ hand does not have a problem. I should know  what’s required to improve my left arm/hand,

article (Pianist  97) reminds me of the advice from the Open University, to make a place to  work and set aside a regular time each day. If only! On occasion I worked for my degree in hospital, or halfway up a mountain, and once for six hours in a National Trust car park. Sometimes I managed a regular time for a week or so but mostly it was done as and when I could grab the time. I still got a First and had tremendous fun doing it. I find the same is true now I am learning the piano again. I grab what time I can, the piano is digital, I rely on advice from a couple of friends  who play professionally, and if I waited for the conditions to be right, I wouldn’t even have started. In fact the only thing that is nonnegotiable is ‘practise intelligently’. I’m still having tremendous fun. Cherri Graebe, Yorkshire, UK   JA ZZ

but I can’t make progress as I try to work out how to overcome this problem. David Walker, Sheffield 

LEARNING

JAZZ PIANO

 Any diagnosis offered remotely would be unwise. Do look for a teacher who is used to dealing with injuries. e British Association for Performing Arts  Medicine should have a list of accredited or at least recommended teachers: http://www.bapam.org.uk/. Good luck!

I

’mverypleasedtosaythatI’mthenew jazzwriterfor Pianist  magazine,and overthe nextfew issues I’llbe providingaseries of lessons to teach you howto begin playing jazz piano. Where does a  pianistwith little orno experience of jazz piano begin? Bybuying this magazine – I hope – butin this introductorypiece I’dlike to share some of myown musical experiences, to explain howI gotinto jazz andwhat I hope you’lllearn fromthis column.  Ata young age I wantedto ‘playmad piano’, as I calledit, andI began lessons atthe age of five. anks initially to mysister’s interestin the piano, andalso to the music ringingaroundthe family home (an eclectic mixof popularclassical, vocal andbig-band jazz, motownandglam rock), I became enthusedenough to work myway through afewbeginner books andearly   ABRSMgrades. Having changedteacher I discovereda widervariety of piano music, andthe beginnings of composition. Doing the ABRSMGrade 8 got me to music college, andinto the widermusical world. During mylater piano studies withPhilipMead, I startedto develop acuriosity forjazz thattook rootwhen I attendedthe first-everJazz and Rock SummerSchool atthe Guildhall School of Music andDrama in 1983. is inspiring week changedthe course of mymusic making, as I met some of the UK’s bestjazz musicians andteachers, including the late pianistJohn Taylorand the jazz education authorLionel Grigson. Astaff-memberat the Guildhall, Lionel gave me ahandful of private lessons during the following months, buthe was one of those teachers who couldoffer you more in afew  hours than mostcouldin years.  With the exception of afewjazz weekend courses andworkshops, I did the restof myjazz learning myself andfrom fellowmusicians. Opportunities  with bands came myway, andprofessional gigs followed. Mydebut CD was releasedin 1997 andentitled Have youMet Mr. Jones  (PARCD507). is was followedby astring of albums of originalmaterial undermy own name, including Journeys  (DJT004)in 2010, which was chosen byjazz critic  Jack Massarik as Jazz CD of h t e Week in the London EveningStandard .

Mechanical marvels I was tickled to read in Pianist  98 that Selfridges is installing a self-playing Steinway Spirio piano in its Oxford Street store, as part of the company’s drive to promote live music. I’m sure the Steinway instrument is magnificent, but a self-playing piano isn’t exactly what I understand as ‘live music’! at being said, I confess to having long had a fascination with mechanical instruments. Last month I visited the Musical Museum at Brentford in West London – something I have  wanted to do for years – and was bowled over by the variety of reproducing pianos, orchestrions and other self-playing instruments invented by our clever ancestors. One highlight was hearing Rachmaninov play e Flight of the Bumblebee , recorded over 100 years ago on a piano roll.  Age has not dimmed his passagework. Orlando Murrin, Exeter

No time for waiting I started reviving my piano playing last year, having learnt a few other instruments in the intervening 50-odd years. Melanie Spanswick’s 6• Pianist 99

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DaveJonesisapianist,composer,producer, teacherandwriter.Hisworkasa jazzpianist takeshimtothe US,India,Franceand Ireland,performingatfestivalsandgiving masterclassesandworkshops.Hehas taughtstudentsofallagesandup to Masterslevel,andco-devisedandauthored BAprogrammesinmusic,includinganew moduleonimprovisation.Criticallyacclaimed recordingshaveledto commissionsforTV andfilm,andsomeof histrackshave recentlybeenusedin TheBigBangTheory  , LateNightwithSethMeyers and Location, Location,Location.Davealsowritesfor Jazz  Journal  magazine. www.davejonesjazz.com

Since then Ihave taughtmusic for decades to everystage of learnerfrom beginners upto degree and masters students. I write for JazzJournal  magazine: ‘e Classical Tinge’was a series of articles in which I exploredthe influence of classical music (in the western European tradition)in jazz, with reference to improvisation in classical music. I also compose music forTV andfilm, and run aprivate practice forpiano tuition, sometimes viathe technological wonderof Skype. What to expect?

Pianist  readers often write in on the subjectof improvisation. I sawsome of those letters, andI wanted to help. Improvisation is notunique to jazz – it can be foundto some extentin most types of music –but in these lessons I’ll concentrateonhelpingyouto developamethod forimprovisingina jazzcontext. Initially, ti’s all aboutthe chords, andhow to voice them, so thatthey  soundlike jazz chords. en it’s acase of understanding andapplying various

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More jazz, please! I really enjoyed Dave Jones’s introductory article, ‘Learning Jazz Piano’, in Pianist  98. Not many music magazines are sent over to Cyprus, so you can imagine the difficulty of even finding one that suits your music tastes. So I have been glad to find a magazine which not only deals with classical music but also helps pianists improve their playing. Even though my musical background centres on classical music, I am trying to broaden my knowledge in other music genres, including jazz. I am looking forward to more of Mr Jones’s articles, examples and ideas as far as jazz piano improvisation is concerned. Ioanna Kyprianidou, Nicosia, Cyprus

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News 

 All the latest news from the world of the piano

DUOS TRIUMPH IN BUCHAREST

ARGERICH AND BABAYAN IN CLEVELAND

It’s a happy coincidence that  just as this special duet issue of Pianist  went to press, the  winners were announced of one of Europe’s premier duo competitions, held in the Romanian capital over 10 days at the end of October. Te Suzana Szörenyi International Duo Competition began in 2016 and is named after the pianist who, born in the city in 1929, returned there to join the newly founded conservatoire as a student after a childhood spent in Hungary. Szörenyi was a member of the piano faculty until her retirement in 2010; she died three years later at the age of 84. She specialised in teaching the art of accompaniment and duo playing: ‘Between the t wo partners of a duo,’ she remarked, ‘it is impossible for life not to exist, because in a duo, the partners are equal in importance. A competition is the desire of the two artists to always make real art.’ Te second year of the competition attracted 56 applications; it is one of the worldwide piano competitions recognised by the Alink-Argerich foundation (www.alink-argerich.org). An elimination round leads directly into the final, where competitors p resent a 15-minute recital including one Classical-era piece. Te main jury included Chenyin Li, who (we are proud to say) records the covermount CD for Pianist . In the four-hands section of the competition, third prize went to the Chinese duo of Z hang ianran and Chen Chaoi. No second prize was awarded, but first prize was shared between another Chinese duo, Yujie Kang/Yuxin Jiao, and the Japanese duo of Mika Yamamoto/Mimoe odo. In the two pianos section, Ekaterina Berezan/Alina Sherniakova took third prize, and second prize went to the German siblings Ada Aria and Ead Anner Rückschloss; first prize of 4000 Euros was won by the Romanian pair of Florian Mitrea and Alexandra Văduva (pictured above), who have both been resident in the UK for several years; they formed their duet while studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London.  A third category in the competition was dedicated to ‘lyric-dramatic’ duos: the prize-winners were Florina Ilie/Daniel Dascălu (third), Michael Rakotoarivony/eodora Oproşor (second) and the winners were George Ion Vîrban/Mirian Elena Draşovean, another Romanian duo. A section of the competition is also dedicated to amateurs, and the Audience Prize went to Rakotoarivony/Oproşor.

Te debut of Martha Argerich on the stage of Severance Hall, Cleveland,  was announced in the last issue of Pianist . She gave a recital on 30 October with one of her most frequent duo partners, the Russian pianist Sergei Babayan, and happily the distinguished US journalist and long-time reporter on the Cleveland musical scene Donald Rosenberg  was on hand to report on the occ asion exclusively for Pianist . He writes: Tis was not an occ asion to bask only in Argerich’s supreme artistry. With Steinway pianos placed side by side, she sat at the instrument upstage for the programme’s first two works. Any notions that Argerich  would play second fiddle, so to speak, to Babayan were dispelled when they immersed themselves with fierce resolve into his two-piano transcription of 12 movements from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet  ballet. Some of their tempos were so quick that dancers would have been forced to cross eyes, not to mention limbs. But the visceral impact of hearing two keyboard wizards in urgent action, notably in the whirlwind episode in ‘Te Death of ybalt’ that usually challenges a st ring section, prompted the audience to respond with gasps of delight. Babayan and Argerich maintained the same positions for Mozart’s Sonata for wo Pianos in D K448, which they shaped with heightened elegance and buoyancy. If you didn’t peek, you would never had known  which pianist was playing what – so seamless was their sharing and shaping of material. Te Andante  wove its miraculous spell as the collaborators answered one another like friends engaged in intimate conversation. Prokofiev was back at the printed programme’s end, with Argerich taking the first part in Babayan’s transcription of Seven Piano Pieces, in their US premiere. Te collection comprises selections from incidental music to stage versions of Hamlet   and Eugene Onegin, the unfinished film Te Queen of Spades , and the opera War and Peace , all written in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Te pianists were showered with flowers at the end, some of which they handed to their fearless page-turners, and then returned for the night’s most enchanting music-making, two Rachmaninov selections. In the Barcarolle from the Suite No 1 Op 15, and Waltz from the Suite No 2, Op 17, Argerich and Babayan savoured every rhapsodic turn of phrase and virtuosic swirl.

Est

1910

7 - 8 chester court. albany st. london. nw1 4bu

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www.marksonpianos.com 8. Pianist 99

EXHILARATING PIANO EXPERIENCE IN CREMONA Erica Worth reports

from the Italian trade-fair where the world’s piano-makers gather every September

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Te city of Cremona, an hour’s drive from Milan, has been known for centuries as the centre of great violinmaking, home to Stradivari, Guarneri and thousands more over the centuries. Since 2002 the city has hosted the Mondomusica trade-fair, an important annual fixture in the calendar for stringinstrument makers and dealers. Six years ago the city’s Musica International Exhibitions expanded into other instruments including pianos, but the 2017 Piano Experience stepped up a level to host a piano-lover’s haven, as I found during a whirlwind 48 hours. Piano Experience is based around one main hall. Well-known brands such as Steinway, Steingraeber, Schimmel, Bösendorfer were on show, as well as the ever-present Yamaha (with a hall to themselves), Pearl River, and some lesser-known makes, all with models available to try out. Te central largest stand was naturally reserved for king of Italian piano makers, Fazioli. Cremona has brought in the charismatic Italian pianist Roberto Prosseda as artistic advisor, and he’s done an amazing job. Corridors lead off to quieter venues hosting full-length recitals, masterclasses and lectures and conversations where expert piano technicians talk about the newest models. Te choice of events was impressive: Itamar Golan and his wife Natsuko Inoue played duets as part of the Steinway Piano Festival; Inna Faliks played Beethoven, Liszt and Assad as part of the Fazioli Piano Festival (followed by a Q&A with Paolo Fazioli); Clara Murnig played on Steingraeber’s ‘ransducer’ piano as part of the Steingraeber Piano Festival. In another room Steinway presented its Spirio model, and Valentina Lisitsa was showing off the Bösendorfer sound with Chopin, and Chopin only, to a crowd in raptures (pictured). Tat’s just scratching the surface. Tere was still time, however, to walk around the charming old town, visit the violin museum and purchase a box of violin-shaped chocolates to bring home. Piano Experience is well worth a visit for all piano-lovers: the next edition takes place in Cremona 28-30 September 2018. www.cremonamusica.com

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OLD KEYBOARDS, NEW TECHNOLOGY Unrivalled online museum of musical curiosities opens its digital doors  A virtual museum featuring sound, pictures and information about the UK’s most important musical instruments has been launched at www.minim.ac.uk. From ancient Egyptian bone clappers in the form of human hands to instruments owned by Charles II, Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria and composers such as Elgar and Chopin, and the earliest-known stringed keyboard instrument in the world, the public will be able to visit a single virtual location for the first t ime and freely explore the UK’s most important musical instruments. Te instruments, currently held in 200 separate collections across the UK, have been gathered together in a virtual museum at www.minim.ac.uk thanks to a major project led by the Royal College of Music, in partnership with the Horniman Museum and Gardens, Royal Academy of Music, University of Edinburgh, and Google Arts and Culture, with funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Many of these collections have not been easily accessible to the public before, many of them hidden in local collections and remote locations, unseen in storage, or not previously documented online. MINIM-UK has brought together the resources that were already online (such as collections held by Victoria & Albert and British Museums) and, for the first time, fully documented and digitised others. Its cataloguers travelled over 10,000 miles for 200 days to collect photographs, video and sound recordings and stories spanning from the Scottish Highlands to the South coast.  Among the precious instruments whose sound is available online for the first time is the earliest known stringed keyboard instrument in the  world, which dates from ca. 1480. So far the sound of over 400 musical instruments has been captured, and this is set to grow in future years. Gabriele Rossi Rognoni, Curator of the Royal College of Music Museum, explained: ‘Te instruments collected at www.minim.ac.uk are an important part of our national heritage. It is tremendously exciting to work with Google to enable so many people to connect with these beautiful and fascinating objects in a myriad of new ways. We are also delighted that thanks to the wonders of modern technology we have so many ways to allow people t o explore these treasures.’

If you love your Bartók, then this could be the ideal piece of clothing to complete your  wardrobe! Pianist  and the publisher Boosey & Hawkes have teamed up to present a unique competition (which does, of course, involve some piano-playing skills). All you need to do is send in a short video of you playing an extract from Mikrokosmos in order to be in with a chance to win a -shirt. Just follow these steps: 1. Choose a piece from Bartók’s Mikrokosmos . Don’t  worry if you’ve only just started playing; in the spirit of Mikrokosmos , we encourage pianists of all ages and abilities to enter, so choose any piece you like. If you don’t own any of the  Mikrokosmos  books, you can download a selection of the pieces from www.boosey.com/mikrokosmos for free. 2. Film yourself playing your chosen piece. Your performance doesn’t have to be note-perfect, either. Just show us you love Bartók! 3. weet your video to @Boosey_London, including t he hashtag #bartoksmikrokosmos Tere are six -Shirts to win. Te competition’s closing date for entries is 31 January 2018, and winners will be announced on 1 February. All details at www.boosey.com/mikrokosmos.

THE NUTCRACKER AND I One pianist’s personal take on Tchaikovsky’s Christmas story ‘Here is a pianist with something spec ial to say,’ observed Pianist ’s reviewer Marius Dawn in issue 94, listening to an arrangement of Te Nutcracker  played by  Alexandra Dariescu. Te Romanian pianist, now resident in the UK, has taken her passion for chaikovsky’s magical ballet to another level with a Christmas show, ‘Te Nutcracker and I’.  A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Dariescu presents the 50-minute show on 19 December at the school’s associate venue, Milton Court Concert Hall. Te matinee is already sold out; t ickets were still available at the time of going to press for the evening show at 8pm. Dariescu will then tour ‘Te Nutcracker and I’ to Russia, Norway and China. On stage will be a g rand piano, played by Dariescu herself, and a ballerina behind a see-through gauze screen. Projected onto the gauze and bringing the story to life are hand-drawn digital animations, created in advance by Yeast Culture. Tey follow the music and engage live with the p ianist and ballerina as they ‘dance’ across the screen.  Alexandra Dariescu said: ‘I believe my responsibility as a young artist is to reach out to as many people as possible and to build bridges for those new to classical music. During one of my education workshops, a 12-year-old asked me  what I think of when I play. I told him I like to step into a different world by creating little stories in my mind. It wasn’t until a little l ater when I realised that perhaps there is a way to share some of this magic during the moment when it actually happens on stage. “Te Nutcracker and I” takes one of these stories and re-imagines it in a very personal context making use of some amazing technology that has never been seen quite like this before in a piano recital.’ 10. Pianist 99

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DUET SPECIAL – INTERVIEW

What makes a successful piano duo? Where does the repertoire come from? Friendship and determination lie behind the lives of three couples at the keyboard, finds Warwick Thompson

I

magine two violinists playing a duet, but with each bowing the other’s instrument. Or two clarinettists together, but with one occasionally stopping to blow on the other’s reed. Quite aside from the practical difficulties, the idea is absurd, isn’t it? Why would anyone even consider such nonsense? But they do – and that is what makes the phenomenon of the four-hand piano duet absolutely unique. ‘It’s the ultimate in closeness in music. Two people on one instrument – it can’t get any closer,’ says piano duettist Charles Owen. ere are plenty of reasons why playing and watching piano duets (and, by further extension, two-piano works) is such fun, but the closeness of the participants is surely a big part of it. ere is the extended range of colours possible with two players; the sheer size and grandeur of the sound they can make; and the rich pedagogical possibilities for a nice easy primo for the student, and a more complex secondo for the teacher to fill out the texture. Finally, and not to be overlooked, there’s the sheer unadulterated fun of getting tipsy and sight-bashing through piles of Mendelssohn and Mozskowski with a keyboard chum. (I may be oversharing on that last one.) But the world of piano duettists isn’t all roses-round-the-door. ere are often practical problems in finding venues which c an host two-piano recitals. e repertoire for orchestral c oncertos is pitifully small. Four-hand textures present problems of their own: ‘ere’s a danger it can be too percussive,’ remarks pianist Katya Apekisheva, Owen’s duet partner among many other roles. ‘Like a parody of pianists bashing at the instrument.’ Prejudice persists among promoters and concert-goers about the genre itself. e stigma of all those ‘just for teaching’ works, and those over-sloshed amateur fumblings, seems to hover over the form, and put people off. ‘Once I suggested playing a duet with Charles in quite a major festival,’ says Apekisheva. ‘Charles and I had both performed individually at this festival. But the promoter wrote quite an offensive email back. He couldn’t think of anything more boring or depressing than a four-handed recital, and how pointless it was. He was saying that about 30 per cent of my musical life is just rubbish.’

Why do they do it?  Why do perfectly sensible and talented musicians devote huge amounts of their professional energy to this ‘boring, depressing, pointless’ genre? I spoke to three pairs of musicians, who each take a different approach to their duet work, to find out what keeps them going, and to discover what the upsides and downsides of this world might be. Along with O wen and Apekisheva, I chatted to the young Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen, a photogenic pair of musical wizards  who are tipped for big things (e late Sir Neville Marriner, who conducted their disc of Mozart double concertos for Deutsche Grammophon, said,

‘You realise that this is not usual, this is not just two good pianists playing together: they sense each other’s most small, individual little bit of interpretation.’). And I also spoke to fabulously razzle-dazzle and tech-savvy duettists Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe from America, who have been  joyfully kicking at the restraints of the duet genre for the last 15 years with their technically astounding and brilliant music videos. e driving force behind each of t hese duo couples is quite different. For Anderson and Roe, the eureka moment – when they knew they were onto something special – came during the third year of their studies at the Juilliard School in 2002. ‘We knew each other wel l, and had respect for each ot her as musicians,’ says Liz Roe. ‘And then just for a lark – and for a chamber music credit – we decided to play a duet. We sight-read the Haydn Variations of Brahms to start. And immediately Greg had this joyous expression, because it was so seamless, so unified, so synchronized. ere was no thought – it was automatic. But the other thing which led us to work together was our shared belief that classical music can be energising, and colourful, and reflective of the world we live in.’ Log on to www.andersonroe.com and you’ll see that ‘energising’ and ‘colourful’ barely do justice to their funky music videos, or to their joyous arrangements of ever ything from Mozart to Coldplay. Try their arrangement of Schubert’s Erlkönig, as much for their perfect prestissimo repeated triplets as for the witty mise-en-scène.

It can teach you a lot about partnerships in life: you have to make sure you’re listening to the other person. Charles Owen    )   m   o   t   t   o    b  ,    3    1   e   g   a   p    (   e    k   r   a    l    C    y   t   t   e   n   a    C   m    i    S    ©   ;    )   p   o   t  ,    3    1

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Roe wanted to blow away some preconceptions of duetting. ‘My first experience of duetting was wit h my sister, when we were children, sitting at the piano in identical ruffl ed dresses. And that’s how people often still see duets: as something enjoyable and fun, but fluffy and not serious. I think the glue that has held Greg and me toge ther is our desire to blow the cobwebs off the genre. at’s been at the crux of our activities.’  Anderson says, ‘From the very first concert, we refused to treat duets as something tame or precious. When we play, and especially in our own arrangements, we want t o showcase the physicality, the sensuality, the aggressiveness, and the raucousness which occurs when you’re seated at the same instrument, and you’re in each other’s way.’ For Anderson and Roe, duet work occupies much the greater part of their professional lives. (Duetting is also the main focus for the Jussen brothers,

representing about four-fifths of their work. For Owen and Apekisheva it’s less, between a quarter and a third of their activity as musicians.) ‘ We write about half of our music ourselves,’ says Anderson. ‘ ere are the videos,  which we produce ourselves. en there’s learning the repertoire, practising, performing, touring… Liz recently recorded the Britten and Barber concertos  with the London Symphony Orchestra for Decca, but generally we don’t have time to do more solo projects.’ eir arrangements (available for purchase on their website) are written to exploit both their own physical strengths, and their joint sense of fun. ‘ey’re composed for our own bodies,’ says Anderson. ‘Liz has a tall torso, so I can reach underneath her if I want to. And I have longer hands and bigger stretch. I like to play with gender dynamics too. In our arrangement of the Papageno/Papagena duet from e Magic Flute, I wrote it so that the male sits on top, but is constantly reaching down to play the notes sung by Papageno, and the woman is underneath, stretching over him to get the notes of Papagena. It’s fun and flirtatious. It’s a musical game of Twister.’

Click and chemistry e physicality is vitally important too for the Jussen brothers. Aged three years apart, and still in their early 20s, they have played together since early childhood. ey’ve already recorded four albums for Deutsche Grammophon, and with their easy-to-promote looks and fine musicianship skills, they look ▲ likely to become better and better known. ‘Between me and Arthur,

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DUET SPECIAL – INTERVIEW

it’s a very special thing,’ says Lucas. ‘ We don’t have to pay attention to “being together” as musicians, because it’s so natural.’ Arthur continues the theme: ‘I’ve heard Lucas play the piano every day for over 20 years. It’s almost like breathing.’

 We don’t have to pay attention to “being together” as musicians,  because it’s so natural.  Arthur Jussen Each brother was recently required to play duets with other performers as part of their studies, and both of them found it uncomfortable. Arthur: ‘Normally I don’t have to think about lots of things: everything we do has the same vision, the same atmosphere, the s ame articulation… but then  with someone else I had to think about all those things. It was strange.’ Lucas: ‘Te first thing I noticed when I played with someone else was the physical aspect. I’d never noticed it with Arthur. Te touching each other, the bumping into each other, knocking your heads… I don’t mind it, and  Arthur doesn’t mind it. But with someone else, it’s difficult to find that click and chemistry.’ Te shared physicality can also be an important part of the pleasure of performing in a pair, and ameliorate some of the regular trials and tribulations of a musician’s life. ‘When you’re in a dressing room, waiting to go on stage, it’s nice to know there’s someone else who feels exactly the same as you do,’ says Lucas Jussen. ‘And if you have to tour to places which aren’t so exciting, or aren’t that nice, it really makes the time more bearable.’ For Owen and Apekisheva there’s another benefit. ‘When either of us accompanies a violinist or cellist, say, the concert is usually arranged by that

person’s management. It can feel like an imbalance,’ says Charles Owen. ‘But for us as a duet, the work is completely equal. Neither of us c ould be in the background… it’s a very equal business role model. I think it can teach you a lot about partnerships in life: you always have to make sure you’re listening very closely to the other person.’ Unlike Anderson and Roe, who pretty quickly turned their energies into duetting after meeting, Owen and Apekisheva took the process more slowly. Tey started performing together at around the same time as their American colleagues, but took things at a steadier pace. ‘We never set out to be a duo:  we just gradually did more,’ says Owen. But recently things have taken off: they’ve recorded Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Petrushka on the Quartz label, and in 2016 they founded the annual London Piano Festival at Kings Place to celebrate all things keyboard, including duetting.

What are the downsides of duetting? ‘For me, it’s the p edalling,’ says Katya Apekisheva. ‘It’s a big responsibility, and it requires extra sensitivity and skill. You’re not pedalling for your own convenience, but for your partner.’ For Charles Owen, the problems can be even more basic. ‘After playing four hands on one piano, it can be quite uncomfortable. After a full concert, I usually go and see the osteopath. It’s an unnatural position.’ I put the same question to Anderson and Roe: what, for them, are the drawbacks? ‘I wish the duo concerto repertoire were greater,’ says Liz Roe. ‘Obviously we perform the standard works, and we’ve created a version of the Brahms Double Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, but I wish it  were more expansive.’ Anything else? ‘o be perfectly candid, for me, it’s difficult to have a personal life, because of the touring and travelling. I think people respond to the c hemistry that Greg and I have on stage, and think I’m married to him.’ ‘My husband and Liz get on wonderfully well,’ says Greg. ‘She even officiated at our wedding. We’re a weird sort of thrupple.’ ‘ Not literally!’ she gig gles.

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For Greg, who seems to be a gl ass-half-full kind of guy, even the downsides of duetting are mostly positive. ‘I like the odd restraints of the form,’ he says. ‘It forces creativity. I get inspired by it. But the one thing I hate is the inconvenience of moving pianos for our music videos. Sometimes it just costs too much. Sometimes we have to shape a whole video around the fact that someone already has a piano in a weird location, and we can use it. I would love to take more creative control with that.’ For the Jussen brothers, the downsides have an almost Nabokovian flavour.  According to Arthur: ‘Sometimes after concerts people come to me and say:  Arthur, you are the one who plays with your mind, and Lucas is the one  who plays with his heart. But then the next person says the exact opposite.’ Lucas continues: ‘It’s true. People talk about us, but they don’t always really know which brother they mean. It’s one big confusion. But we l ike that. In the end I don’t think it’s important. e most important thing is if people enjoy the music. at sounds like a cliché but it’s true. e music is more important.’

The alchemy of a happy duo partnership ere are many things that all three duet coupl es have in common. All of them mix up two-piano pieces and four-hand works as much as they can in their concerts. None of them has a fixed ‘primo/secondo’ dynamic, and regularly take different roles. ‘Sometimes we toss a c oin to see who’ll play  which part,’ says Katya Apekisheva. ‘When we played Stravinsky, the coin gave Charles the top part in the Rite. So then I took the top in Petrushka. But it can also be about other things. Usually the p rimo is more diffi cult, so if one of us has more on their plate, the other person will take the less demanding part to make things easier.’ Interestingly, however, none of the musicians swaps after they’ve learned a piece; they stick to their first positions. For Greg Anderson, this is because of the physicality which is directly written into their arrangements: ‘ey’re literally written for our own bodies,’ he explains. ‘Plus, they’re incredibly difficult!’ For the Jussens, who are near the beginning of their careers, the explanation is simpler: ‘ We haven’t played the pieces so much that we’ve got bored with them,’ says Arthur. ‘Maybe in t he future we will. But for now,  we’re just too lazy.’

 We want to showcase the physicality  which occurs when you’re seated at the same instrument, and you’re in each other’s way. Greg Anderson Laziness would not seem the most obvious word to associate with these hard-working, driven brothers. Especially when I learn of the amount of sport they do to keep fit. ‘Playing the piano is great for your fingers, but not your body,’ says Arthur. ‘So we both do a lot of s port: we run a lot, play tennis, go to the g ym. It’s all the exact oppos ite of playing the piano.’ e brothers – who both have girlfriends (who, fortunately, get on well) – admit that ‘it sounds crazy’ but they still spend a lot of time together outside making music. For the other two pairs, a certain amount of time apart is necessary to their creativity. Roe says that she needs space to process her own ideas, and her own experiences. ‘I want to remain an individual in the duo, and bring back more things t o the table.’ Even though Owen and Apekisheva perform less frequently as a duo than Anderson and Roe, the balance for them feels about right. ‘We like the variety of other work; it keeps us fresh,’ says Charles Owen. ‘We’re both professors at the Guildhall, and we play lot s of chamber music. I think if  we performed together every week of the year, it wouldn’t be good for our playing, or our relationship.’ Each couple works out the dynamics for themselves. Ultimately, I sense that the bond which holds any duet couple together is a wonderful mystery – and as with any relationship between two people, nobody really knows  what goes on inside. And perhaps that’s why duets continue to fascinate us – it’s like watching the closest of relationships in action. ■ andersonroe.com · arthurandlucasjussen.com · owenapekishevaduo.com

eight DUETS TO TREASURE Mozart: Concerto for Two Pianos Emil and Elena Gilels Deutsche Grammophon 463652-2  A father-daughter partnership, immortalised here in the spacious, carefree concerto which Mozart wrote for himself and his sister Nannerl to play, though father Leopold also wrote out some of the parts: an affair of truly happy families. Fauré: Dolly  Gaby and Robert Casadesus Sony/RCA G010003519214I (download only) Now a musical marriage, though husband and wife practised separately in sound-proofed rooms so as not to disturb the other. Robert and Gaby both knew Fauré; Gaby later wrote a tender memoir of their time, My Musical Marriage. Debussy: En blanc et noir Benjamin Britten, Sviatoslav Richter Decca 466821-2 Richter was one of several Russian musicians to hit it off with Britten in the 1960s; Richter was unused to playing in duet and spread his elbows wide, meaning that Britten had to squeeze in the secondo part, but theirs is a uniquely searching and dynamic partnership, a meeting of brilliant minds. Mozart: Sonata for two pianos Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia  Sony/RCA 8869-785811-2 Two famously refined musicians, live at Aldeburgh, like Britten and Richter, in the sonata written by Mozart for himself and a talented pupil, Josepha Auernhammer. Schubert: Fantasia in F minor Imogen Cooper, Anne Queffélec  Warner/Erato 0927-49812-2  A set which put two young pianists on the map, in surely the single most sublime work written for duet; Cooper remembers how the producer had to leave her desk and creep into the studio in her stockinged feet in order to turn the pages. Brahms: Hungarian Dances Katia and Marielle Labèque Philips 416459-2 Brahms lets his hair down: there’s an irrepressible sense of fun in the partnership of the Labèque sisters,  who have played together for over 30 years and have commissioned new duet works from Philip Glass and Nico Muhly, among others. Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals Martha Argerich, Antonio Pappano  Warner Classics 9029-57555-5 Martha Argerich has been an enthusiastic duo player  with several partners over the years, including Stephen Kovacevich, more recently Daniel Barenboim and now Sir Antonio Pappano, on this superbly mischievous new Carnival . Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen Christina and Michelle Naughton  Warner Classics 2564-60113-6  A pair of American sisters, the Naughtons have set new standards in the cycle written in 1943 by Olivier Messiaen for himself and his pupil (and later wife) Yvonne Loriod to play together. A 20th-century classic of the duet repertoire.

See CD Reviews for the latest duo recordings under scrutiny.

  play  HOW TO

Building and maintaining repertoire  REFRESH & REVIVE We all like to play to our strengths. But, says Mark Tanner, we’ll be stronger, happier musicians if we stretch ourselves without venturing beyond our abilities

P

ianists lack drive and focus  without encouragement to learn new repertoire; it is music itself that fires our imagination and helps us to forge ahead. Yet equal value and pleasure may be found in revisiting and maintaining repertoire. Many of us struggle to do this, but deciding which repertoire to play, and over what timescale, is a pressing concern. Te irony is that despite the piano’s enormous repertoire, many of us end up making  what turn out to be unwise choices.

Mark Tanner is a pianist, composer, writer and educator. His PhD addressed the music of Franz Liszt. For the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) he has undertaken 35 international tours; he is also a Moderator, Trainer and co-author of Teaching Notes , which accompanies the latest ABRSM Piano Syllabus. Mark has over 20 pieces on current examination syllabuses. His music is published in 65 volumes, and his book, The Mindful Pianist, is published by Faber Music. His forthcoming book, Mindfulness in Music: Notes on finding life’s rhythm, will be published by Leaping Hare Press early in 2018.

If you have a dozen five-minute pieces and a couple of sonatas up your sleeve, don’t let the dust settle on them. Keep an up-to-date repertoire list handy: you could sort each item with a star rating according to difficulty/stage of learning:  v.v. hard, learned last year, never memorised  learned six months ago and successfully unveiled in an exam/festival  moderately hard, learned two months ago and awaiting a second re-learn Te mere process of leaving a piece to gestate often helps it to sink in. It follows that on each subsequent relearn, a piece  will likely continue to improve itself! For advanced players I’d suggest devoting at least an hour per week t o refreshing repertoire, and for those with less time to spare, perhaps 15 minutes.

A bridge too far

Inappropriate repertoire – too technically challenging, or beyond realistic grasp of style, rhythm or harmony – is bound to produce disappointing results. Te phrase ‘fake it till you make it’ will only take an ambitious player so far. Te desire to play a piece is not enough: we need the tools to do it justice. On the other hand, stagnating with overworked repertoire is as real a threat to our pianistic wellbeing as overstretching ourselves. I have known adult players persist year after year with inappropriate pieces, which even then fail to reach fruition. Allowing ourselves to feel the thrill of tackling new challenges should not make a whiteknuckle ride out of our playing. For each of us, the tipping point will be subtly different, so if we’re not sure, we should seek advice from someone we trust. Consolidation and revision

Many readers will be familiar with the frustration of losing repertoire that was once confidently under the fingers. Tis can often be remedied with surprising ease. Muscle memory fades more slowly than cognitive memory. If you learned a piece thoroughly, it’s likely to be in your fingers, somewhere. Most advanced pianists have learned Rachmaninov’s Prelude Op 23 No 4 at some point. Te score inside this issue should offer them a refresher. A five-minute armchair survey once a fortnight, foll owed by a play-through, should keep it afloat. But if a month or more goes by without at least revisiting the climax at bars 50-53, you may need to wind back the learning clock a stage further with some methodical, hands-separate work.

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Finding a balance

For the college pianist, balancing practice

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TOP TIPS

1

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT Aim to balance ‘work’ (practice) and ‘play’, which you might regard as the sheer enjoyment of running through repertoire.

 2 

Keep longer-term repertoire firmly in view, but fix your immediate attention on now.

 3 

Refresh previously learned pieces regularly in order to evolve a slowly growing bank of ‘repertoire’ pieces.

4   5 

Not all your playing needs to aspire to a pinnacle of quality. Reserve perfectionism for specific pieces or occasions and settle for a slightly rougher cast elsewhere. Play to your strengths, but be adventurous in your choices and catholic in your tastes.

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time tends to be about fulfilling course requirements, working up solo or competition pieces alongside the slow-burn study of chunkier works that may eventually thread into an end-ofyear performance; not f orgetting ‘fun’ learning or chamber music projects.  Weighing up these conflicting demands is a constant struggle. It is all too easy to become sidetracked by a compulsion to learn a wonderful piece one has just heard on the radio. For the serious learner, the difference between a successful year with new pieces under one’s belt, and what feels like a disappointing year, comes down to a discipline of self-knowledge and effective time-management coupled with sensible choices over repertoire. Te self-imposed goals of the amateur pianist may be different – preparing for an exam or a friend’s wedding – but many of the factors are similar. o be an ‘amateur’ is, etymologically speaking, to love what one is doing: why should we not dip into an endlessly rich repertoire and fall under the spell of whatever pieces happen to be under the radar?  We should avoid practising out of duty, for this reduces learning the piano to a kind of character-building exercise. Practice should rejuvenate us and leave us even better equipped to contemplate new repertoire. Know how you learn best

 An able teacher can certainly help you to make the right repertoire choices, but you should not be frightened to c ome up  with your own ideas. Tis all boils down to knowing how you learn best, and to the importance of sourcing music that  will keep your candle burning brightly. Exam-chasing easily takes over a diligent pianist’s life: don’t be the Grade 8 player

  play  HOW TO

Controlled stops 

HOW TO SPEED UP YOUR PIECES: 2 Moving on from the ‘little bits fast’ technique discussed in the last issue, Graham Fitch outlines another strategy to help keep your practice-time engaged and fun

F

ast pieces can be scary to some pianists, but success or failure Pianist, teacher, writer and adjudicator Graham Fitch gives depends to a large extent on our practice habits. Te secret is to  work on forming the reflexes for fast playing as early as possible masterclasses and workshops on piano playing internationally. in the learning stages, using s low practice wisely and consciously. He is also in high demand as Slow practice will take us to our destination only partially. a private teacher in London. It may feel like an old friend but practising slowly may be an impediment Graham is a regular tutor at the if we overdo it or use it at the wrong time. Summer School for Pianists in Different techniques will develop and strengthen the fine motor control Walsall and a tutor for the Piano required to manage a fast piece, but we need to be patient. Tink in terms of process rather than expecting instant results. A teacher once told me: Teachers’ Course EPTA (UK). He writes a popular piano blog ‘Excess motion is inefficient technique’, and there’s no arguing with that! and has recently launched an Te most common obstacle to playing fast is moving excessively. Tis problem online piano academy. might manifest itself in fingers that lift too far from the key surfaces, the arm www.practisingthepiano.com making too high an arc in position shifts, or key bedding (wasting time and effort at the bottom of the key) – to list but a few possibilities. If we want to make progress with gaining speed we will look for every opportunity to minimise our movements until we can play with the utmost economy. bar (this will temporarily change Bach’s 3/4 time signature to four in a bar): In my first article on how to speed up your pieces (Pianist  98), I explored  what I believe is the most efficient way to take a piece or a passage from an initial slow tempo (having already worked out notes, rhythms, fingerings, etc.) to a fast one. My name for the technique is ‘little bits fast’, but it’s also known as ‘chaining’. If the focus in slow practice is on each and every note, ‘little bits fast’ is all to do with creating impulses that take in ever-longer groups of  After you’re happy with this, change where you put the rest – now after the second beat: notes. We start with a short burst of music at full speed (it might be just two or three notes to start with), insisting on the full energy of a performance. Gradually we add a few more notes with each repetition until we have whole bars, and then phrases. Let’s now develop this idea of using controlled stops in our practice with a highly effective process that mixes sl ow practice with up-to-speed playing. It will be challenging at first, yet you may find it quite addictive once it’s Move the rest to the second beat, and practise the section in segments again. incorporated within your practice routine. Unprocessed playing brings slips, stops and pauses while we figure out Tereafter you can extend the unit you’re working in to two bars, and then four bars. Before you know it you’ll have whole sections up to spe ed.  what is supposed to be happening next. In the last article I used the analogy of buffering: like a video clip that hasn’t fully loaded. All goes well for a few Rhythm practice bars, but then there is a hiatus while the fingers stall and the brainbox grinds into gear to rescue the fingers. In order to get to the autopilot stage where  Another way to make controlled stops is to take a passage written in fast notes everything happens automatically (without the need for conscious thought and subject it to a variety of different rhythmic groupings. By insisting on full rhythmic control with each different rhythm, the idea is that motor about which finger goes where), we can actually plan our stops. control of the passage when it is played as written is thereby enhanced. Play, recover and plan ahead, play  Many famous concert pianists and teachers swear by this (and some don’t Let’s begin by deliberately interspersing rests and silent bars into our playing. recommend it at all – like any practice tool or exercise, it is how we do it  Here’s the first movement of Bach’s C minor Partita BWV826 (from bar 13 that is important). Rhythm practice done sloppily is a waste of time; done  with attention and careful listening, it can greatly assist us. Here’s the of the fugue): opening of Schubert’s Impromptu in E .  All egr o

legato

Tis technique assumes that you have already done the necessary groundwork to prepare yourself for up-to-speed playing. Play up to tempo, making a stop either at the very end of each bar, or on the downbeat of the next bar if that feels more natural and more comfortable. Ten stop. Insert a whole bar’s rest (or two if you feel you need more space) before going on to the next bar. Don’t go on if you were not happy with the result: the playing should be not only accurate but also sound and feel g ood in the body. Once you can play bar units fluently, shrink the gap by introducing a beat’s rest at the end of the

Rhythm practice can help us to organise the uninterrupted chain of RH triplets into groups of notes. By elongating the first note of each triplet group,  we more easily feel those notes that fall on the main beats. Sense how the fast notes lead to the long ones, and aim for the fast notes to be at performance tempo (or even faster).

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@ etc.

 When we play this rhythm the other way around, we build in a controlled stop just before the main beat; this is an excellent way to prevent any tendency to rush when playing at sp eed.

GET IN TOUCH

Graham Fitch would like to hear from readers who have piano-playing questions, whether about a certain  technique or a passage in a piece of music. Please write  to the editor at [email protected]. Due to the large number of requests, Graham may not be able to answer each one submitted.

One Bar Fast; One Bar Slowly  etc.

Recently I have been practising Chopin’s Scherzo No 3, a work I have played regularly over the years. I discovered that the piece needed dusting off to recover the required sparkle and security for performance. I decided to mix up practising at full sp eed with slow practice. We play one bar at the tempo and the next bar at exactly half the speed. If you haven’t tried this technique before, you’re going to enjoy it and derive great benefit from it. From the coda, bar 573:

 When we can play these rhythms with impeccable control, we progress to a longer rhythm. Try using the first note of each bar as an anchor. When you move off, you will sense how the quavers flow smoothly towards the next long note, in one impulse.

Presto con fuoco =

etc.

etc.

en try changing where you put the stopping note. Instead of the first beat of each bar, stop on the second beat. en repeat the process, this time stopping on the third beat. Using accents in your practice is another way to group notes into ever-longer impulses. Start by accenting each RH note equally, then go back and place the accent on every third quaver (those notes that fall on the main beats). Finally, accent just the first note of each bar.  You might try rhythm practice one day, and accent practice the next. In these examples of rhythm practice, you will notice that the long notes have a precise length. Being able t o maintain a rock-steady beat is indispensable for control, but sometimes in practice we may choose to play  with greater rhythmic freedom. If we put an imaginary fermata (pause) over the notes we planned to stop on, we could suspend the pulse and take as much time as necessary. I call this practice tool e Floating Fermata. The Floating Fermata

e pausing notes might be equidistant from each other or placed at strategic points within phrases. ey are like watering holes on our journey; we halt for a moment or two to recover and regroup before moving on. e beauty of this approach is that the pause is not p recisely timed. We can take as long  we need, and we’ll sense when we are focused and ready to move on to the next section. To organise the opening of Ginastera’s ‘Danza del gaucho matrero’ (No 3 of the Danzas Argentinas ), play it at full tempo and pause on the last note of each sub-phrase: Furiosamente ritmico e energico

.  =

Be ultra-precise when switching between full tempo and half-speed. is needs to happen without any fumbling or loss of rhythmic control (use a metronome if it helps you). When you can comfortably alternate between one bar at the tempo with one bar at slow tempo, reverse the practice: start with the slow bar (one bar half speed, the next bar fast). en practise two bars fast, two bars half-speed (and then reverse this in the same way as before). Extend the length of the sections and work in four-bar units, and so on. Try also one bar fast followed by three slow bars, and similar variations. One Soft, One Loud

Here’s another variation for practice: contrasting dynamic levels. Play the fast bar(s) lightly, the slow bar(s) more firmly and deliberately; then try it the other way round (this is much harder!).  You may ask, what are the benefits of this kind of practice? As you change from one tempo to the other, all the while keeping hold of a rock-steady pulse, you are challenging, interrupting and thereby strengthening your motor skills. Deep learning and tangible progress tend to happen when the mind is focused and engaged in what we are doing; this type of practice demands our full concentration. We simply won’t be able to do this if we’re daydreaming or thinking about something other than the job at hand. Making our practice effective relies on variety. If we do the same things over and over we stop listening and concentrating because we have habituated. is pair of articles has outlined several ways to build up speed in our practice. Please try them out and find which of them work best for you. en let us know how you get on! ■ WATCH GRAHAM ONLINE

152

Hold the fermata long enough to mentally rehearse the next segment before playing it. Make sure that you are hearing the music inwardly and visualising the hands in action. You may decide to use the fermata as an opportunity to check in with your body, consciously letting go of any tension that may have crept in. e pauses may feel lengthy to begin with. While assimilating the material we shorten and then remove the fermatas one by one, until they aren’t needed at all. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link: unless we have managed the section between one pause and the next flawlessly, we’ll need to go back and do it again until we can.

Don’t miss Graham’s video lessons, which you’ll find on the Pianist  website, www.pianistmagazine.com. Graham demonstrates everything he discusses on these pages – and more. His lessons are presently filmed at Steinway Hall, London, on a Model D concert grand. There’s nothing like watching an expert.

19• Pianist 99

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 I S S  N ’ T M  N I E  D O  M E LA  IC K ’ S  N S W  N  S PA  S O  S H  E C E  L E  I S P I  E  O N T  G

TRACK 6

Ignaz MOSCHELES (1794-1870) Scherzo Op55 No 3

 PA 0  2

HOW TO

In 1825 Moscheles married the sister of the poet Heinrich Heine and settled in London,where he taughtatthe Royal Academyof Music forthe nexttwo decades andproducedthe Bonbonnièremusicale  fromwhichthisScherzoistaken. Playingtips :AdefttouchisrequiredforthistenderScherzoinA minor,whichmeans goodfingerarticulationandfindingtherightfingerweightinordertoproduceaclear butlightsound.Youcouldtrypractisingitat pianissimo,whichshouldmakeyourjob

 Allegro 2

FULL SCORE ON PAGE 38

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

easierwhenyoureverttothemarked  piano.Thethreerepeatedstaccatocrotchetsin theRH–apatternthatappearsregularly–shouldnotbelumpybutpullthemusical momentumtowardsthefollowingbar.ThesunnyAmajorepisodebeginningatbar 33 brightens the tone:take care of the dolce  (sweet)marking here.Make each note of the LH chords sound,andbe strictlytogether:notso easy when playing softly. ReadMelanieSpanswick’sstep-by-stepless ononthispieceonpage20.

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A lively little piece by a friend of Beethoven requires nimble ngerwork: follow the advice of Melanie Spanswick and you’ll get up to speed  Ability rating Beginner/Intermediate Info Key: A minor empo: Allegro Style: Early Romantic

3

Chordal balance

3 Articulation 3 Quick

Born in Prague in 1794, Moscheles is best known as a young admirer of Beethoven in Vienna. He became a formidable performer, a friend of Clementi and a teacher of the t eenage Mendelssohn in Berlin. He wrote a great deal of teaching material such as nine pieces in a Bonbonnière musicale  (Musical Sweetmeats) box, of which this elegant little Scherzo is the third movement.  At around crotchet = 176, this Scherzo fairly zips along. It requires nimble fingerwork around the keyboard, but don’t be put off by the pace of the notes on the page: they are written in straightforward patterns. In fact these patterns can become repetitive if not coloured imaginatively and played with rhythmic poise. Let’s focus first on the LH. Tis largely consists of dotted minim chords. Te tonic chord of A minor features heavily, often moving to the dominant. When playing these triads, follow the fingering carefully (or add your own in the score), and keep your fingers close to the keys.  A relaxed wrist will help you to balance chords so that all three notes sound at the same time. Look at the first chord in bar 2. Using the fingering 1, 2 and 4 (or 1, 3 and 5, but I find it easier to control the sound and speed with a 4th finger) play each note separately, using the tips of your fingers, and taking the key down into the key bed to produce a full sound. Now play the C and A together, locating the point in the key bed where the notes actually sound. Tis may take practice and patience but you will learn how to make them sound at exactly the same time.

  o   t   a   z   z    i    R   e   c    i   r    b   a    F    ©

Melanie Spanswick is a pianist, author and music educator. She selected the repertoire for The Faber Music Piano Anthology , and is the author of a new two-book piano course, Play It Again: PIANO  (Schott Music) intended for those returning to piano playing after a break. Her popular guidebook, So You Want To Play The Piano? , is reprinted in a second edition by Alfred Music. Melanie has recently adjudicated and given workshops in the USA and the Far East, and runs a bilingual piano project in Germany. She is a tutor at Jackdaws Music Education Trust and curator of the Classical Conversations series on YouTube, where she interviews pi anists on camera. www.melaniespanswick.com

Will improve your

Next, play all three notes together. ake the E, C and A up and down repeatedly, without your fingers leaving the keys. o improve the sensitivity of your touch, and become accustomed to the weight required for different dynamics, experiment with these chords by playing them from fortissimo to pianissimo. Te hand may need to be slightl y

finger movement

 weighted to the left (with the wrist moving to the left) to support the 4th finger, balancing it with thumb and 2nd finger. Listen to the balance of tone as you play. Once you’ve mastered playing the chord together, you could use the flatter part of the fingers for a softer, more muted sound. Te chords should still sound together, but they will be lighter and therefore make a more sensitive accompaniment to the RH.  Aim to join chords wherever possible. Te first three chords (bars 2-4) are identical: keep the keys held down until the last moment, repeating them swiftly and softly, barely lifting the chord at the end of the bar, without moving the fingers. However, the wrist and arm should remain loose, light and relaxed.

strength and energy behind your weaker fingers as your stronger ones. ake note of all the phrase marks. Shaping the music in short phrases, such as bars 2-4, will bring fluency to your playing. Articulation marks at the ends of bars 10 and 11 (and elsewhere) encourage you to find a tiny breathing space before the following bar, without losing the pulse.

 Learning Tip A firm pulse is crucial: count purposefully when practising, perhaps in semiquavers at a slow speed, accounting for every note.

 At bars 21 and 46 there are longer slurs in the RH. Tese phrases may need Te RH plays the melody line throughout. Agan, keep the fingers as further reinforcement from the arm, hand close to the keys as possible Tat way you and wrist. Even the 5th finger should be  forte  here with a full, warm tone. Tere is give your fingers a better chance of learning the pattern of the notes, and a major-key interlude at bars 33-40. Spend time over the accidentals in bars your playing will be more accurate. 34 and 36, positioning your hands and fingers over the keys so that you can play Te first phrase uses a repeated motif. them as evenly as possible. Establish a  You could use a fingering of 2-3-2-5-2 (E-F-E-A-E in bars 2-4) but I find connection with each key as you strike it, taking note of your fingertips for the 1-2-1-4-1 more convenient. Changing fingers on the last beat of the first bar ideal position and grip so that you don’t fall off black notes when playing at speed. from a 2 to a thumb s hould facilitate a light staccato articulation for this motif. Ten play all the notes in bar 2 together  When you play hands together, you (the term for this is ‘blocking out’) in  will look to increase your practice order to find the appropriate hand and speed gradually. Move your hands finger shape and position. When playing quickly into position before playing: at the motif as written, move the hand and bar 4, for example, move the fingers in  wrist slightly to the right as you approach preparation for bar 5, so you can foc us and sound the A. Your playing will be on producing a warm timbre. Te more even and more clearly articulated. passagework in both the RH and LH can One issue that arises when using weaker be practised with a deep, heavy touch for fingers is a tendency to rush and not clarity, then when you play at full speed, ‘sound’ notes fully. o counter this, lighten that touch in order to find an support your hand and wrist with suitable even, delicate tonal quality which is best arm movements, so that there is as much suited to this lively scherzo. ■ 20• Pianist 99

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TRACK 10

 I S S  ’ T M  N ’S  D O N E W MA  JA N E T N S O N  E S  I S P I E C E  L  O N T HA  G E

Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924)

INTERMEDIATE DUET

Berceusefrom Dolly 

 P 2 2

HOW TO

 What,youmaywonder,everhappene dtoDolly?BornasHélèneBardactoSigismond BardacandhiswifeEmma,shebecameknownasHélènedeTinanaftershemarried

in1911.HerhusbandGastondiedin1958,buts helivedonuntil1985,fullof memoriesbothofFauréandherstepfatherDebussy:Dolly,however,waschildless.

Secondo  Allegretto moderato 1

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 Berceuse from Dolly Learn how to listen to yourself and your partner, says  Janet Newman , and you’ll capture the elusive charm of this gentle lullaby  Ability rating Info Key: E major empo: Allegretto moderato Style:  French Romantic

Intermediate

Will improve your Understanding of balance to the other player 3Seamless legato playing 3

3 Listening

Dolly was otherwise known as Hélène. She was the daughter of the soprano Emma Bardac, with whom Fauré enjoyed a brief affair in the 1890s. Emma later became the second wife of Claude Debussy, who wrote L’isle joyeuse  on their honeymoon. Fauré began this suite by composing the Berceuse in 1894 when Dolly was just two years old, and added another five movements over the next two years to mark birthdays and other events in her life. Inevitably, gossip (of no foundation) has sprung up t hat Fauré had a paternal interest in Dolly.

The Berceuse is often played rather indulgently; keep the music flowing simply  Te Berceuse outgrew its place within the suite. It became known to millions of UK listeners in the middle of the last century as the signature theme to Listen with Mother , the ‘BBC Light Programme for mothers and children at home’. Its popularity has endured through the orchestration of the whole suite made in 1906 by Fauré’s colleague Henri Rabaud. Playing duets challenges you to listen.  You and your partner have to make decisions about who has prominence and  when, which line needs to be projected or how to balance the accompaniment,  which may not necessarily be in the same hand as the other player. Pedalling becomes the domain of one player, the secondo. He or she should take into account the pedalling demands of both players. When playing together, issues such as ensemble and musical shaping usually outweigh any intrinsic technical difficulties, unless you’re attempting Petrushka ! First choose a tempo that you both agree upon. It should impart the lilting feel of a gentle lullaby: crotchet = 60 feels about right. Listen hard as you begin the piece, in order to balance your parts.

Janet Newman is Head of Keyboard at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford. In addition to her teaching, she is in demand as a freelance pianist and is an examiner for the ABRSM.

Te Berceuse is often played rather indulgently; resist this temptation, and keep the music flowing simply. Te secondo player should offer warm support to the cantabile line in the primo part.  Watch out that the final B in bar 6 (primo) doesn’t bulge above the accompaniment. Fauré chose and marked his dynamics  with fastidious care. Keep to a subdued dynamic in the opening section in order to give due weight to the first climax of the piece at bar 31. If you peak too soon, the top B in the primo part tends to sound desperate rather than ecstatic! Troughout this opening, the primo player should cultivate their legato technique, overlapping the tone quality and listening out for a truly g raded melodic line – the secondo player will support this by having an unruffled and even accompaniment moving underneath as well as pedalling with care.

taking out the parts within the chords to attain complete mastery of the fingering and chord shapes. Tis will help you to shape and play this phrase with a lovely,  warm legato touch. Te secondo part should also look at this little phrase. It is the emotional climax of the piece and demands a reliable sense of direction and firm underpinning. I have reorganised some of the fingering here so that it lies more comfortably under the hands.

 Learning Tip Try practising the RH in the primo part with your partner’s LH to perfect your timing and balancing.

Te secondo player comes to the fore in the final section. Here, at bar 59, the melody is heard in imitation. Practise the melody entries separately, on their own: the top line of bars 59 and 60, and then the ‘echo’ melody line that starts on the thumb (bar 61-62). It’s helpful to split the notes as shown on the score, but you may find other ways to achieve an even voicing. Whichever fingering you choose, the secondo takes the lead here, while the primo part should be listening c arefully and adapting their playing to offer a sensitive accompaniment.

 A new section begins at bar 35. Te modulation from E major to C major should be handled sensitively, winding down in the preceding bars and easing into the new key. Te melody is split between both hands of the primo part, but make the change as seamless as possible so that the shape of the melody is smoothly contoured, almost as if it  were improvised. Te bass line in the Te transition from bar 66 into bar 67 secondo part – the minims on the first beat – should be joined up: I recommend can be a bumpy area. It’s up to you that you use the fingering and project  whether to place the primo part on the bottom A of the LH secondo part, or to these notes slightly so that they have their proper place as the harmonic place it on the melody top E (RH secondo). I prefer the primo player to foundation. Te dynamic level is still place it on the beat as it makes pedalling hushed and intimate, but as the easier and the direction feels less harmonic progressions intensify, so interrupted. You will also need to decide should the tone quality from both players, towards the lead back into the how to spread the final chord: I would dominant key of B major (bar 57). Tere put the primo chord with the bottom E should be a natural feeling of inevitability of the LH in the secondo. Tis solution resolves the pedalling issue for your about the return to the home key at bar partner, and brings a more fluid and 59. In his later works such as the expressive sound. Nocturnes, Faure explored more daring harmonies; occasional foreshadowings of them can be heard in Dolly , and Tink of the Berceuse as a cue to learn the remainder of Dolly . Later especially in the ‘endresse’ movement. movements bring more technical challenges, but the effort you put in will Perhaps Fauré had in mind the chance to sit at the piano with Emma when he pay dividends in improving your overall  wrote Dolly. At any rate, the Berceuse musicianship – which should bring presents few technical challenges. Te most satisfaction in itself. ■ awkward point arrives in the transition Go to page 76 for Nils Franke’s article on back to the main theme at bar 59. In the duets for further four-hand playing tips. primo part, practise this section by 22• Pianist 99

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RACHMANINOV Prelude in D major Op 23 No 4  An outpouring of love from a composer with a big heart and even bigger hands: getting your hands around the notes is just the start, says Lucy Parham  Ability rating Info Key: D major empo: Andante cantabile Style: Late Romantic

Advanced

Will improve your 3

Cantabile

3 Balancing 3Sense

Te D major Prelude sits at the heart of the Op 23 set. Rachmaninov wrote it during the spring of 1903. He had married his cousin, Natalia Satin, the previous May, and she was by now pregnant with their first child. In common with other Preludes in the set, No 4 in D can be heard as an outpouring of love from a composer who did not often enjoy such peace and contentment. Cherished by pianists and public alike, it will repay your study for years to come. You will need to put in a lot of legwork, but it will be worth all the hours you give to it!  A word of warning. As the V series has it, curb your enthusiasm. Rachmaninov is well known for his romantic melodies and lush harmonies: it is these qualities that draw us to his music, as he identifies so profoundly with the sufferings and the  joys of the human spirit. However, this is not an invitation to wear your heart on your sleeve. Rachmaninov himself  was not an outwardly emotional character (a six-and-a-half-foot scowl, Stravinsky called him, rather cattily) and he had an aversion to indulgent or exaggerated gestures. Te emotional charge of his music will speak for itself if it is played with taste and integrity.  At all times, the melody of this Prelude should flow unhindered.

of parts/voices of line

 You will have your work cut out later on to put all the parts together while remembering where and if you are going to move notes from the LH into the RH or vice versa. Te constant triplet figuration reminds me of a lilting barcarolle; this rhythm should be maintained at a constant pulse throughout the Prelude, even in the climax at bar 51. Once you have begun to master this figuration, turn to the RH melody. ry playing it in chordal blocks, like a chorale. Omit all the accompaniment and focus on the melodic line with a basic chord beneath it. If you do this in tempo, it will give you a sense of the structure that you need to maintain in performance.

Lucy Parham performs Rêverie – The life and loves of Claude Debussy on 23 January at the Perse School, Cambridge, with Alex Jennings as narrator. On 28 January she performs it again at St John’s Smith Square, London, with Simon Russell Beale, as part of her Sheaffer Sunday Matinee Series. Her new CD of Elegie – Rachmaninoff: A Heart in Exile  is released on the Deux-Elles label. The narrator is Henry Goodman. For more details, please visit www.lucyparham.com

Before you begin, make sure that the sustaining pedal is already down. Play the first two bars evenly, at a restrained pp dynamic and without any bulging quavers. Save a full weight and depth of tone for the F  which opens the RH melody in bar 3: Sink into this note, and draw the sound out of the piano  with your forearm so that it can be heard above the LH texture. Te dynamic marking is only mf   but bear in mind that the melody is fully projected throughout the Prelude. Te LH triplet on the last beat of bar 3 could be split between the hands. Tat is, you could take the C at the bottom of the chord and the following A with the LH, with the upper G and A handled by the RH. It’s the same principle in bar 4: take the D of the two-note chord in

Te LH part is occupied by a continuous triplet figuration. Playing this within just the five fingers of one hand is quite a challenge for most of us. Unlike Rachmaninov, we are not blessed  with the hand-span of a 13th! Some  judicious re-arranging is in order, but everyone has hands of different shapes and sizes. o acknowledge this, we have chosen not to include fingerings on the score. However, as a starting point, you may find it practical to take the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 9th quavers in t he RH.   n    i   e   t   s   n   r    A   n   e   v    S    ©

the LH and also the l ower A. Te RH takes the upper A. Pianists with large hands will not need to do this and could play these three notes in the LH with the thumb taking the top two notes. Tere are portamento markings over the last two notes in the RH of bar 5. Give extra arm weight to these notes, then carry the music over the barline between bars 6 and 7, emphasizing the RH F and the subsequent triplet in the LH which, as it is split, you can take

 Learning Tip Spend time away from the piano looking at the structure of this Prelude so that you always have a firm grasp both of the melody and its destination.

your time over, or even distribute between both hands as before. Troughout this opening statement you should aim for the F minor chord at the beginning of a bar 11: the first small climax of the Prelude. Te modulation into B minor in bar 15 is a heart-stopping moment. Give this a special colour but don’t hang around, because the harmony is heading towards bar 16. Te first chord of bar 16 is quite a stretch unless you can take the lower two notes (C and D) with the thumb on its own, which is what I would suggest. Notice how quickly the dynamic changes from bars 16 to 17, quietening from forte  to piano within one bar. In bar 17 the LH is extremely important as all these notes have a melodic quality of their own: think of a beautiful, quiet cello solo as you play this bar. In bar 19 the melody shifts from the top to the middle voice. Tus the accompanying figuration moves up to the soprano line. Tis is a test of balance, not least because your hand position is changing constantly in order to accommodate both lines. ry singing the melody as you play, so that the RH triplet figuration never dominates the melody.

Te famous melody can wait. Begin your practice by addressing the triplet figuration on its own. I would break this into small sections, tackling a few bars at a time.

Notice the crescendo at bar 25. ake it through to bar 28, and only begin your diminuendo under the three RH portamento triplets at the end of the bar. 24• Pianist 99

November8-25, 2018 Hamamatsu, Japan Organized by

Age limit Pianists born on or after January 1, 1988 Application Available February 1 - April 15, 2018  JURY

OGAWA Noriko ... Chairperson, Japan  Janina FI ALKOWSKA ... Poland/Canada Paul HUGHES ... UK  Jan JIR ACEK VON ARN IM ... Germany Alexander KOBRIN ... USA/Russia MOON Ick Choo ... Korea Ronan O’HORA ... UK SAKO Akiyoshi ... Japan Elisso VIRSALADZE ... Russia WU Ying ... China Dina YOFFE ... Israel/Germany

For further Information Secretariat of the HIPIC E -mail : info@h ipic.jp Tel : ( +81 )53- 451-1148 Fax : ( +81 )53-451-1123

www.hipic.jp 2• Pianist 96

Leopold MOZART (1719-1787)

TRACK 1

BEGINNER

Minuet in C In the Notebook for Nannerl , Leopold wrote out simple pieces for his daughter and more prodigious son to learn and play, such as this minuet: the book was filled up after being presented to Nannerl on her eighth birthday on 26 July 1759, and before the Mozarts’ visit to London in the spring of 1764, when th ey all promptly caught colds. Playing tips : This is a good exercise for tackling different rhythms in the RH, what with Start out with a bold forte in both hands.

the dotted quaver/semiquaver motifs and the triplets. We suggest use of a metronome, starting out very slowly. Notice the RH octave leaps as well (bar 1, bar 3 and so on). Get the fifth finger ready for the high note, but avoid tensing up the hand. Once you have played the top note, immediately relax the thumb and retract it so tha t it’s closer to the hand. Look closely at the technical tips within the score.

The dotted quaver/semiquaver pattern needs to be rhythmically spot on, as does the triplet that follows.

= 120 5

4

1

Think in two-bar phrases. Bar 2 answers bar 1, and so on.

2

4

1

Reduce the dynamic a little to mezzo-forte.

2

3

1

C major: no sharps or flats.

5

3

1

2

4

2

1

3

The LH crotchets should be non legato, though not staccato. They should ‘walk’ evenly over the keyboard. Back to mezzo-forte for a resolute end to the first half of this minuet.

Bars 5 and 6 are repeated, but at a softer dynamic.. 6

5

3

1

1

2

4

1

3

2

11

5

4

5

1

1

3

4

2

5

5

2 5

2

4

1

2

1

4

1

1

3

1

5

2

3

2

1

2

2

1

5

5

2

4

3

1

3

Finish with a flourish, and don’t slow down. Notice how the RH needs to lift from the keys for the third beat (same as in bar 10).

The dynamic is suddenly forte.

1

1

2

4

Lower the sound to piano. 3

5

Keep your fingers and hands close to the keyboard to avoid smudging notes. Follow the fingerings on the score – they are there to help.

The second part of the minuet follows in similar style.

16

Go back to the beginning and repeat.

5

2

1

2

1

5

2

1

2 5

28• Pianist 99

The double barline takes you back to bar 11 for a repeat.

 Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)

TRACK 2

BEGINNER

Minuet in D minor Anh 132 Leopold Mozart wrote out pieces for his children; Bach did so for his young (second)  wife, Anna Magdalena, who was just 20 when Bach married her in Cöthen; an occasion for which the receipt of his festive purchas e of wine (and a good deal of it) survives. Playing tips : The pulse should be even throughout; try using a metronome.

Pay attention to the RH slurs (bar 5 onwards) and the dynamic markings. There should be a detached quality to your articulation (listen to the CD for help). It’s not imperative to play the mordent at bar 6, but the notes are F-E-F with the first F played on the beat. Do consult your teacher! Look closely at the technical tips within the score.

Start out quietly, but in strict time.

Moderato 1

Bar 3 requires good work in the RH. Every single finger is being used.

= 108

5

1

4

1

2

1

2

3

5

2

1

1

2

1

The key is D minor: B flat in the key signature and a sharpened 7th, C sharp 3

The fingering is there to help you. Even if it allows you to join up the notes , the style of the piece requires a detached articulation in both hands. The slurs over the RH notes (short curves) require you to join the two notes, releasing the hand with an upward motion on the second note. 5

1

2

3

1

2

4

1

4

(

)

Because the RH and LH parts are very different, practise hands separately until you have the notes firmly under the fingers.

See text above regarding the mordent over the top F in bar 6. 1

5

1. 1

3

2

2

2.

3

4

1

5

4

1

2

5

Tail off with a small decrescendo before repeating bars 1-7. Second time around, go straight to the bar labelled ‘2’.

9

Prepare your RH thumb for the octave stretch in bars 9 and 11. Try not to tense the hand. 5

5

2

1

1

3

5

1

1

2

2

2

5

13

The RH moves around in bar 1 4. Slow ‘hands-separately’ practice will help. Place the top B flat with care. 5

4

1

1

2

1

1

1

 At the end of bar 16, repeat from bar 9, going straight to the ‘second-time bar’ (labelled ‘2’): this is the end of the Minuet. 3

2.

1. 4

2

3

Bring out the LH below.

1

2

3

5

1

2

2

 Again, make the most of the LH melodic line here. We want to hear it!

Bring out the melody of the LH above. This RH scale passage requires a quick movement of the thumb under the third finger.

1

1

29• Pianist 99

3

2

1

1 5

2

1

 Anton DIABELLI (1781-1858)

TRACK 3

BEGINNER DUET

No 18 from Melodische Ubüngstucke Op 149 There are 28 exercises in this collection of duets, full of the unpretentious tunefulness that distinguishes the little waltz composed by the music publisher and sent on to

every accomplished composer he knew. The responses naturally varied in quality, but produced one enduring masterpiece, the Diabelli Variations of Beethoven.

Secondo  An dant e cant ab il e 1

2

5

2

1

1

4

2

= 92

2

1

4 1

5

3

2

3

5

2.

5

2

1

5

1

2

5 1

5

3

1

2

3

2

3

5

4

3

4

1.

5

3

3

2

1.

3

2

1

2 3

5

3

5

1

2

13

2.

4

4

3

16

2

2 3

8

2

4

5 1

4 1 2

30• Pianist  99

3

2

4

1

2

 Anton DIABELLI (1781-1858)

TRACK 3

BEGINNER DUET

No 18 from Melodische Ubüngstucke Op 149 Playing tips : The secondo part has the calm accompaniment, to be played evenly,  with a slight emphasis on the first and third beats. The primo part carries the sweet

melody, which is played in unison. Shape the lines. Try singing the melody before playing it. For further playing tips, turn to Nils Franke’s article on page 76.

Primo  An da nte ca ntab il e

= 92 4

3

1

dolce

5

3

4

5

2

3

1.

1

8

5

9

2.

4

13

1.

1

16

2.

1

2

4 31• Pianist  99

 Anton DIABELLI (1781-1858)

TRACK 4

BEGINNER DUET

No 26 from Melodische Ubüngstucke Op 149 The brisk march rhythm, stamping Secondo chords and minor-key Primo melody make this an archetypal example of the Classical-era craze for wild, ‘Turkish’-style music, noted examples of which include the second movement of Haydn’s ‘Military’

Symphony, the finales of Mozart’s Sonata K311 and Violin Concerto No 5 (both also cast in A minor) – not to mention his Abduction from the Seraglio opera – and the uproarious march written by Beethoven for his Ruins of Athens  incidental music.

Secondo  Alle gro al la tu rca

= 144

5 3

5 3 1

5 3 2 1

9

13

5 3 1

5 3 1

5

5 3 1

5 3 1

5 2 1

3 1

5 2 1

5 3 1

4 2 1

5 2 1

5 3 1

32• Pianist  99

5 3 2

 Anton DIABELLI (1781-1858)

TRACK 4

No 26 from Melodische Ubüngstucke Op 149 Playing tips : This piece should be played with conviction and with a great sense of rhythm. A brisk tempo is required in order to make it stamp and dance! The secondo part carries the loud ‘um-pa-pa-pa’ accompaniment. Make sure to raise the hands off the keyboard for the rests. And remember to always keep in strict time.

The primo part needs to sound clipped. Good finger articulation is needed: Don’t ‘swallow’ up the notes too quickly. The tempo is Allegro, but every si ngle note should be clearly articulated. Turn to the duets article on page 76 for further playing tips.

Primo  Al le gro al la tu rca 1 2

3

5 4

3

BEGINNER DUET

= 144

5

9

13

33• Pianist  99

Mily BALAKIREV (1837-1910)

TRACK 5

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE DUET

On the Volga  It was in reviewing a concert conducted by Balakirev in May 1967 that the critic Vladimir Stasov coined the ‘Mighty Handful’ term to encompass the works of Balakirev and four colleagues who determined to create a distinctively Russian idiom,  without recourse to the dominant German strain of musical form.

Playing tips (secondo): The secondo part should form the calm, swaying accompaniment. Make the switch between LH and RH seamless. Keep the pulse steady, and try not to let any notes stick out. Notice that dynamics rarely go beyond piano. Pedal tips : See the markings on the score: they are relatively straighforward.

Secondo

 An dant in o

= 112 5 4 2

1

5

sim.

6

5 1

2

12

2 1

5 1

5 2

5 3

5 4 2

18

5 3 1

2

1

4 2

5 4 2

5 3 2

5 4

34• Pianist  99

1

5 3 2

Mily BALAKIREV (1837-1910)

TRACK 5

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE DUET

On the Volga  Playing tips (primo): The primo part carries the sweet piano melody. At the start, the RH plays ‘solo’. Take note of the phrase markings so that the melodic line flows with a calm finesse. The melody reappears an octave higher at bar 20, now with the LH

 joining in in unison. The dynamic is now mezzo piano so make the melody sing. Dig deep into the keys to produce a warm tone. You can read further learning tips by Nils Franke in his article on page 76.

Primo  An da nt in o 5

5

6

3

12

4

1

2

3

4

5

3

4

2

5

18

1

1

5

1

35• Pianist  99

1

3

3

 I S S  ’ T M  N  I  O  N  D  E LA  E K ’ S

 M  W I C  S  S PA N  O  S  P I N  E  S  E  L N T H I S  E E C  G  O A

TRACK 6

Ignaz MOSCHELES (1794-1870) Scherzo Op 55 No 3

 P  0  2

In 1825 Moscheles married the sister of the poet Heinrich Heine and settled in London, where he taught at the Royal Academy of Music for the next two decades and produced the Bonbonnière musicale  from which this Scherzo is taken. Playing tips : A deft touch is required for this tender Scherzo in A minor, which means good finger articulation and finding the right finger weight in order to produce a clear but light sound. You could try practising it at pianissimo, which should make your job

 Al le gro 2

easier when you revert to the marked piano. The three repeated staccato crotchets in the RH – a pattern that appears regularly – sh ould not be lumpy but pull the musical momentum towards the following bar. The sunny A major episode beginning at bar 33 brightens the tone: take care of the dolce  (sweet) marking here. Make each note of the LH chords sound, and be strictly together: not so easy when playing softly. Read Melanie Spanswick’s step-by-step lesson on this piece on page 20.

= 176 1

2

1

1

4 1

1 2 4

5

4

5

1

2

3

2 4

9

2

cresc.

13

3

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

5 1

1 2 5

38• Pianist  99

Ignaz MOSCHELES (1794-1870)

TRACK 6

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

Scherzo Op 55 No 3 17 

1

2

1

2

(   )

1 3 5

1 2 4

5 4

 21

1

4

3

4

1 2

 25

3

1 3

5

4

1

dim.

2 5

 29

5

1

2

1

2

1 3

 33 2

1

2

1

5

3

1

dolce

39• Pianist  99

3

1 3 5

5

2

2

5

Ignaz MOSCHELES (1794-1870)

TRACK 6

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

Scherzo Op 55 No 3 5

 37 

4

4

cresc.

1 2

 41

 45

5

4

5

2

3

1

4

5

5

5

1

2

1

2

2

1

1

cresc.

1 3 5

 49

3

3

4 1

52

5

3

1.

1

2.

1

40• Pianist 99

2

4

Stephen HELLER (1813-1888)

TRACK 7

INTERMEDIATE

No 18 from Etudes Mélodiques Op 45 If you enjoy playing this flowing RH stud y, look out Pianist  94 for a ‘Curious Story’ from this well-travelled and well-connected pedagogue and composer, who met Beethoven and Schubert early in life before coming under the patronage of the magnificently titled Count Friedrich Fugger-Kircheim-Hoheneck. Playing tips : This delightful piece is perfect for RH scale practic e. The groups of runs should sound fluent and effortless (follow the phrase markings). To jump from one phrase to the next, your hand should move quickly to the top note of the next group in the quaver rest. Try making a slight emphasis on the second beat of the LH: jump

 Al le gro

4

 = 116

1

4

2

1 2 3

2

4

2

3

2

2

 4

off the base note as if from a springboard, then lean into the top chord and tail off on the last note. The cantando marking at the end of bar 9 encourages you to bring out the melody line. Bar 15 forms the climax of the first section a nd should sound as one long, sweeping phrase through to bar 21 where the LH has taken you back to the opening theme. Bar 27 deviates from the opening and t he coda begins at bar 36, with triumphant dotted quaver/semiquaver chords. Pedal tips : See markings on the score. Make sure to lift the pedal on the third beat (or a fraction after). Don’t over-pedal or you will loose the lightness that’s needed.

1 2 3

1

3

2

4

3

2

2

4

2

2

2

1 2 3

sim.

1

7 

3

2

4

3

3

4

2

cantando

3

1 2 3

2

10 2

2

3

2 5

1 5

2

4

41• Pianist 99

Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)

TRACK 8

INTERMEDIATE

Folk Tune Op 3 No 1 Nielsen’s Op 3 encompasses all manner of early works, unpublished in his lifetime, from brass and string quartets to a pair of piano pieces of which this is the first. He probably wrote it as a teenager, while he was still growing up on the island of Funen: a (mostly) idyllic childhood which he would later recall affectionately in a cantata. Playing tips : For those of you who don’t know Danish, the word nynnende  at the start of the piece means humming; this is a folk t une tinged with melancholy, to be sung in a subdued manner. A sad A minor tonality prevails throughout, along with the

 An da nte

frail heartbeat of the dotted quaver/s emiquaver motif. The modulation into A major at 25 brings a brief but belated ray of sunshine. The element of repetition demands a creative approach to the score: give the melody a fresh turn at eac h new appearance. The LH should make itself known in bar 3, bar 7 and wherever it echoes th e dotted quaver/semiquaver figure. At bar 11, and again at bar 19, keep the RH relaxed through the octave chords. The hand should remain stable, but the wrist can relax slightly between each chord. Pedal tips : See markings on the score.

 = 54

5 1

2 1

3 1

1

4 1

5 1

5 2 1

5 1

4

(nynnende)

1 5

 4

5 3 1

5 3 2

2

1

2

1

sim.

7 

5 1

4 1

5 1

5 1

4

1 2

10

2 1

1 4

1 3

continuted on page 49... 44• Pianist 99

HANS-GÜNTER HEUMANN KEYBOARD CLASS

A Arpeggio Z E REtude T Y Chord Study No 1: Grand PLAGE

XXXX (XXXXX) This study by Hans-Günter Heumann covers the whole span of the keyboard. Notice the legato marking, which encourages you to join up the notes across each four-bar span, so that it sounds seamless from the bottom note to the top. Dig deep into the keys in order to produce a rich forte sound. The liberal metronome marking allows you to play at a tempo of your choosing, from fairly slow to rather quick.

zerty

A

du faux texte Bella terra et mari civi lia externaque toto in orbe terrarum saepe gessi , victorque omnibus veniam petentibus civibus peperci. Externas gentes, quibus tuto ignosci potuit, conservare quam excidere malui. Millia civium Romanorum sub sacramento meo fuerunt circiter quingenta. Ex quibus deduxi in colonias aut Hans-Günter Heumann  =sua 120-168 remisi in municipia stipendis emeritis millia aliquanto plura quam trecenta, et iis omnibus agros ads ignavi aut pecuniam pro praemiis militiae dedi. Naves cepi 5 externaque toto in orbe terrarum saepe gessi, victorque sescentas praeter eas, si quae minores quam triremes fuerunt.Bella terra et omnibus veniam petentibus 1 3 mari civilia 1 civibus peperci. Externas gentes, quibu s tuto ignosci potuit, conservare quam excidere malui. Millia civium Romanorum sub sacramento meo fuerunt ci rciter quingenta. Ex quibus deduxi in colonias aut remisi in municipia sua st ipendis emeritis millia aliquanto plura quam trecenta, et iis omnibus agros adsignavi aut pecuniam pro praemiis militiae dedi. Naves cepi sescentas praeter ea s, si quae minores quam triremes fuerunt.Bella terra et mari civilia externaque tot.

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5

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46• Pianist 99

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HANS-GÜNTER HEUMANN KEYBOARD CLASS

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     21

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29

3

1

2

L. H.

1

L. H.

3

R. H. 5

3

1

5

1

L. H.

47• Pianist 99

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WATCH CHENYIN LI AND IAGO NUNEZ PLA PLAY Y THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM

INTERMEDIATE DUET

Ottorino RESPIGHI (1879-1936)

TRACK 9

Natale, Natale! No 4 from Six Little Pieces seco ndo part bears the brunt of the hard work here! Turn to Nils Franke’s article on page 76 to read further learning Playing tips : There’s no doubt that the secondo l earning tips.

 Alle  Al le gr et etto to vi va vace ce

= 58

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5 51• Pianist 99

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WATCH CHENYIN LI AND IAGO NUNEZ PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM

INTERMEDIATE DUET

Ottorino RESPIGHI (1879-1936)

TRACK 9

Natale, Natale! No 4 from Six Little Pieces 15

5

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2 52• Pianist 99

5

WATCH CHENYIN LI AND IAGO NUNEZ PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM

INTERMEDIATE DUET

Ottorino RESPIGHI (1879-1936)

TRACK 9

Natale, Natale! No 4 from Six Little Pieces 15

cresc.

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53• Pianist  99

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TRACK 10

 S S  I S  S  T M  ’ T A N ’ S  N  M  O  W  D  N E

Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924)

 N E  S O  S  E C  I  E  P    S S  L N T H I  E E

 JA N E T  JA

INTERMEDIATE DUET

Berceuse from Dolly 

 O  PA G  2 2

 What, you may won wonder der,, ever happ happened ened to Dol Dolly? ly? Born as Hél Hélène ène Bar Bardac dac to Sigi Sigismon smondd Bardac and his wife wi fe Emma, she became known kn own as Hélène de Tinan after she married

in 1911. Her husband Gaston died in 1958, but she lived on until 1985, full of memories both of Fauré and her stepfather Debussy: Dolly, however, was childless.

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54• Pianist 99

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Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924)

TRACK 10

INTERMEDIATE DUET

Berceuse from Dolly 

Playing tips : There are many helpful ideas for playing this popular duet inside the Newman’s step-by-step step-by-step lesson on page 22 . There are further issue. Read Janet Newman’s

playing tips by Nils Franke in his duets article on page 76. Pedal tips : Janet Newman has added some pedalling, to be played by the secondo part.

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55• Pianist 99

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Billy STRAYHORN (1915-1967)

TRACK 11

INTERMEDIATE

Take the ‘A’ Train This song was the signature tune of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, but in fact the melody was written in 1939 by the composer Billy Strayhorn, then just 24 years of age. The lyrics were added five years lat er by Joya Sherrill, but the song’s most famous recording is of Strayhorn’s instrumental original, made in February 1941. Ellington had given Strayhorn directions to find him in New York City, and his first line became the song’s title.

Lively

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Playing tips : ‘Lively’ is specified, and the metronome marking is spot on: you could try using the metronome when starting out. Rhythm is everyt hing in this piece. Play a little with the melody as you see fit, but the underlying pulse should be rock-solid. The RH has some tricky leaps here and there, so keep the hand close to the keyboard. Make the most of all the syncopations and really ‘fall’ into that syncopated last chord. Pedal tips : Change the pedal for each chord change. The chord symbols will help.

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60• Pianist 99

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IN

TUNE

WITH

CHRISTMAS Bring home the joy of music with your favourite Christmas tunes & carols from Musicroom

2• Pianist 96

musicroom.com/christmas

D U E T S P E C I A L – P I A N I S T S AT W O R K  

 WORBEY  FARRELL 

Stephen Worbey from the duo with a difference explains to Pianist  why they love arrangements – but it may be a while before they play on another ocean liner…

How did you form the duo?  We met at the Royal College of Music in London  where Kevin was studying piano and composition, and I was doing piano performance. We got on  well and after graduating we would meet socially at least once a year. One afternoon we found ourselves accidentally locked in my King’s Cross flat. Instead of going out drinking we had t o stay in, so we opened a few bottles of wine. We began playing some duets and improvising together and  we found we had such a creative spark. We knew immediately that we had something together at the piano that we didn’t have separately. Did either of you ever want to be a soloist? I had aspirations of a career playing solo and achieved this to some extent. I also performed a series of duet concerts with the late Peter Katin. is was long before we formed our duo. Kevin always wanted to be part of a comedy duo, as he loved the likes of Victor Borge and Dudley Moore.

Is it a full-time job? Or do you teach and do other forms of work? It’s a full-time job! Because of our busy schedule  we wouldn’t be able to provide commitment to piano students. We also decided early on that if  we were to make a real success we would need to work exclusively together and not accept offers of work separately. You wouldn’t see Ant without Dec, would you? How many hours do you practise separately before getting together?  We practise separately probably an hour a day each (time and location permitting). We find that it is vital to practise separately as there are always sections and passages that need extra attention without the other player. Strangely enough it feels rather odd to be sat at a piano alone in the ‘solo’ pianist position. I sometimes find myself accidentally veering to the side even  when playing solo. 67. Pianist 99

 And then how many hours together? Ideally two to three. If we’re on tour we sometimes go for days without having quality rehearsal but this doesn’t matter, as we’re always extremely well prepared and there’s always an hour or so before a performance to rehearse. So it’s pretty much 70% together, 30% separate. Kevin used to find it difficult practising alone, particularly as he is only allowed the black notes (not really!). But we each practise in slightly different ways – Kevin prefers to hear the other part.  What makes you different to the ‘usual’ piano duo?  We like to engage with the audience more, and not just musically. We talk to the audience in a lighthearted way before we play, and between the pieces. When you walk onto the stage, the audience doesn’t really know if they like you. If you can get them to like you, then they’re certainly going to enjoy the music more.  We’ve been to some amazing performances by concert pianists who look so glum.  What type of repertoire do you play? Not the regular duet repertoire. We only play our own arrangements – often of orchestral pieces or organ works. We wanted to play the famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach.  We looked at Max Reger’s transcription, but it seemed rather thin in parts and lacking t he majesty of a cathedral organ. So we decided to create our own arrangement that replicates what Bach had intended, but for the piano.  We wouldn’t take a sacrosanct piano piece by, say, Chopin, and arrange it for four hands – that  would spoil it. We like to think of the piano as our own orchestra. With the use of four hands and some trickery it’s amazing how much you can make a piano sound like a lush s tring section, a muted trumpet or a percussion section with triangles and glockenspiels.  We like to push the piano to its boundaries.  We’ll cross hands and sometimes get into unusual positions to create the right colour and texture. Not many four-hands one-piano arrangements require the players to cross hands, but t he sounds and possibilities you can create by doing so are astounding.  When playing four hands, do you stick to the same position?  We switch around. In fact when we perform our four-hands one-piano arrangement of the ree-Hands Concerto which Malcolm Arnold  wrote for Phyllis Sellick and Cyril Smith, we switch positions on the piano stool between the second and final movements – that goes down well! Quite often Kevin will be playing t he very high end of the keyboard and the low bass at the same time, leaving me in the middle. In terms of orchestration, it’s as if I am in charge of the strings and brass and Kevin is the p ercussion, flutes and piccolos. Is it always one piano, never two?  We only ever play on one piano. When we started playing together, the idea was to be a two-piano ▲ team, but most venues only have one piano.

D U E T S P E C I A L – P I A N I S T S AT W O R K   In 2009 we spent the autumn playing in Vienna.  We appeared in a play at the English eatre,  2 pianos 4 hands , and played 24 different characters between us! It was quite a challenge to perform it six nights a week for six weeks. And at the end of each performance we had to play Bach’s D minor keyboard concerto. Kevin lost a lot of  weight during that period!  What can we expect at a W&F concert? e Toccata and Fugue in D minor; the 1812 Overture, Rhapsody in Blue , maybe the Pomp and Circumstance  March No 1, all done with comic banter and what we call ‘lollipops’. ey might include Russ Conway’s Sidesaddle , some boogie woogie, medleys, even Lady Gaga. We have also introduced a multimedia aspect where our hands are projected on to a large s creen so the audience can see the choreography of our hands. Tell us more about the composing/arranging.  We made a set of Paganini Variations entitled Deviations on a Caprice . ere are 24 variations ranging in diffi culty and all in different styles. at’s our favourite, but we have also composed a piano concerto between us, and we always enjoy playing Widor’s Toccata and the Bach/Gounod  Ave Maria . All of our compositions and arrangements are written so that they fall under the hands well. You can buy several of them from our website, www.worbeyandfarrell.com.

‘We decided early on that we needed  to work exclusively  together. You wouldn’t see Ant without Dec, would you?’

 Any downsides to being a piano duo?  We both agree, there are no downsides!

a tango by Piazzolla. It’s St Andrew’s Day, so expect something Scottish!

 And the upsides? Being paid to do what we love is a gift. Travelling and performing with someone is much more fun than being alone. We get on extremely well.

 What’s next?  We’ll be touring the UK and elsewhere. We’re particularly looking forward to performing our  Arnold concerto arrangement (thanks to the original publisher, Faber Music) with the Brighton Philharmonic and Barry Wordsworth on 25 March.  We will also be doing Carnival of the Animals   with our own narration, where the animals are disgruntled with the ‘fake news’ about them on swine flu, bird flu and ‘mad cow’ disease. is is a chance for the animals to relaunch their image! Tilly the Tortoise reminisces about her days doing the Can-Can at the Moulin Rouge while she sits smoking and drinking her booze. e Cuckoo has OCD and the fish in the aquarium are all very flamboyant! We will also be playing at Glamis Castle Proms next year to over 3,000 people and touring South Korea again in the summer. ■

 You’ve toured so often, there must have been some misadventures.  We’ve arrived at a concert venue to be told there’s no piano. We’ve been stranded on an island off Madagascar. We performed on a piano on an ocean liner that was tied by all three legs  with ropes to the walls, the sea was so rough!  We were performing at the Grassington Festival and during a comedy moment a young boy on the front row burst out laughing and simply couldn’t stop. His father was holding his hand in front of his mouth and had to take him out.  We later received an email from the father thanking us for introducing his boy to music and fun. It was very moving for us.  You’re playing at the Usher Hall on 30 November. at concert is the result of 15 years of work!  We’ll be playing the Rhapsody in Blue  along with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody  (which was originally composed at the piano). en the 1812 Overture and

www.worbeyandfarrell.com Worbey & Farrell perform at Usher Hall, Edinburgh, on 30 November, www.usherhall.co.uk.

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2• Pianist 96

 J A Z Z

L

ike many other jazz pianists, I learnt jazz fol lowing an initial grounding in classical music. ere are plenty of similarities between jazz and classical, but jazz brings its own specifi c set of challenges. e genre of jazz has undergone numerous, rapid changes since its beginnings around a century ago. Many different styles have evolved during that period, and this plethora of styles can be the cause of some initial confusion. Many musicians who are new to jazz have started by voicing chords in a jazz way in the LH. is forms the basis for improvised lines in t he RH,  which are often in single notes, but sometimes in pairs such as 3rds, 4ths, 6ths and octaves. One of the most common c hord progressions in jazz is the ii7-V7-Imaj7 (in major keys – see Example 1a) or ii7b5-V7-i7 in minor keys – we’ll look at these in the next issue. e chord structures for many ‘standard’ jazz tunes are either comprised of these c hords, temporarily moving through different keys, or they form a substantial p art of them. e jazz pianist needs to be able to play these progressions in the LH (see Example 1b) almost without thinking, so that you can gradually begin to improvise over these chord ‘changes’ with the RH. You may notice a similarity here between these generic chord symbols (using roman numerals) and figured bass in Baroque music.  Author John Mehegan based an entire method on this jazz version of figured bass, which a good number of jazz musicians adopted for themselves. In these examples, as is typical in most jazz, the voicings are extended from triads and dominant 7th chords to include higher parts of the chord such as the 9th and 13th. e three chords of the C major ii7-V7-Imaj7 progression might typically be labelled as Dm9 (D minor 9), G13, and Cmaj9 (C major 9). ere’s a strong connection between this t ype of chord extension and voicing in jazz (typically by Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson) and the music of early 20th-century composers such as Debussy, and by extension, to a degree, to Romantic composers such as Chopin, who often adds ‘colouring’ notes to chords. Example 1a  Two-handed full chords, with root notes: voicings for ii7-V7-Imaj7 progression in C major. ere are several ways to voice chords in this progression, typically to accompany another instrument or singer:

Dave Jones is a pianist, composer, producer, teacher and writer. His work as a jazz pianist takes him to the US, India, France and Ireland, performing at festivals and giving workshops. He has taught students of all ages and up to Masters level, and co-devised and authored BA programmes in music, including a new module on improvisation. Acclaimed recordings have led to commissions for TV and film, and some of his tracks have recently been used in The Big Bang Theory , Late Night with Seth Meyers  and Location, Location, Location. Dave also writes for Jazz Journal . www.davejonesjazz.com/workshops.asp.

Example 1b LH rootless voicings for ii7-V7-Imaj7 in C major, in preparation for RH improvisation. is is one of numerous ways of voicing LH chords for this purpose:

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Note in particular the rootless LH voicings in 1b, where the LH takes over the notes that the RH p lays in the full two-handed chords in 1a. ese rootless voicings are the basis over which RH improvisation takes place. is has been the most common type of LH chord voicing in jazz since the 1950s. Many great jazz pianists use this technique such as Bill Evans (there are links to him playing Autumn Leaves  at the end of the article) and Herbie Hancock. You’ll notice in these films that the pianists don’t always play the LH chords on the first beat of the bar where the harmony changes – they may delay the chord slightly, or even play it slightly early, at the end of the previous bar (the question of timing is something that we’ll look at in a future less on). Over to the RH

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Once these rootless voicings have been mastered in the LH, ultimately in as many keys as possible, how do we improvise with the RH? Jazz pianists may give the initial impression that they are whizzing up and down all the scales  with their RH – and that’s improvisation – but a closer look reveals that something quite different is happening. Yes, they do utilise numerous scales, and often at speed, but at t he heart of any good improvisation is melody. 70• Pianist 99

 What does a melody look like on the page? A melody is comprised of a series of pitches, sometimes moving step-wise on a particular scale, using intervallic leaps and rhythms grouped in phrases. is is what we do in the RH when we improvise: make melody. Imagine how very different and les s interesting the first few bars of Autumn Leaves  would sound, without that leap of a perfect 4th at the end of each of the opening phrases. Example 2 Autumn Leaves  opening phrase:

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Example 3b C major pentatonic scale:

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Example 3c 4-note group from the C major pentatonic scale:

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!  \ E \ & . . . . . . . . . . . -# . . , ,, ,, ,,,, % \\ ,,, Let’s go through the same process, but now using the four-note group from the C major pentatonic scale (from Example 3c above). Try playing the following two examples. Example 4c Improvised phrase using the 4-note group from the C major pentatonic scale:

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Example 4d  Improvised phrase using the 4-note group in an alternative position, centred around the tonic note, C:

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Example 3a  C major scale:

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Example 4b Improvised phrase using the C major pentatonic scale in an alternative position, centred around the tonic C:

e notes chosen in the RH improvisation should fit harmonically with the LH chord. Improvising in the RH over LH chords brings two basic approaches into play, vertical or linear. A vertical approach takes into account  which improvised notes would fit with each chord. In real time this is difficult for a beginner. e linear approach is much easier, allowing the learner to use a single scale or collection of notes through a string of chords within a progression. is gives them more time to think about the aspects of their improvisation that will make it sound melodic and musical: the rhythm and phrasing. Here’s an example of note choices for improvisation in the RH. Over the given LH progression of ii7-V7-Imaj7 in C major, the most obvious linear approach would be to use a C major scale (see example 3a) or a C major pentatonic scale (3b). ere’s a distinct advantage to pentatonic scales, because they naturally include not only stepwise, major-scale movement but also some larger intervals. Using pentatonic scales will make an improvisation sound more melodic and less like an endless series of scale runs. e same could be said of a four-note group chosen from these scales (see Example 3c): many jazz musicians use this approach to g reat effect, extracting as much melody as possible from this small group of notes, before moving on to the next part of the chord str ucture. is is a highly effective tool in jazz improvisation. e technique of repeating short phrases has its roots in the blues, which we’ll look at in a future lesson.

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Example 4a  Improvised phrase using the C major pentatonic sc ale:

.

 We have chosen collections of notes for the RH that will fit with the underlying chords in the LH, but what do we do with them? Example 4a shows a phrase based on the C major pentatonic scale. Try playing this, and then 4b, which is also based on a C major pentatonic scale. e second example uses the same note names but in a different position, still centred around the tonic C. inking laterally like this will bring variety when repeatedly improvising over a progression, and the result is more likely to make a rounded and more satisfying musical phrase.  You’ll notice that the rhythm of these RH phrases is predominantly in quavers. is tends to be the norm in jazz improvisation, but there are two  ways of playing them: straight (which is suitable for Latin American, funk and rock grooves) and swung (for playing over swing grooves). Swung quavers are not readily committed t o paper. Various attempts have been made to notate them accurately, but none are perfect. ‘Swing’ or ‘Swung’ is often found at the head of the score for a jazz swing piece, and the tradition relies on you to do the rest. Remember that jazz is more of an aural tradition than a written one. e best way to pick up swung rhythm is by listening to others play it, so tune in t o the accompanying videos where I play all the examples in straight and swung rhythm. Try out both quaver approaches on the examples that follow: play four bars using straight quavers, and then the same four bars using swung quavers.

Now try making up your own improvised phrases in the RH over these LH chords, using the methods above. Experiment with different note values (quaver triplets, and ultimately semiquavers) to vary your phrases. As you g ain confidence in playing these RH phrases and coordinating them with the LH chords, bring a metronome into play, initially at a moderate tempo of around 120 crotchet beats per minute, then gradually increasing the tempo to something brighter. In the next issue we’ll explore how to improvise in the minor, using a similar method to the major, but adjusting scale and note choices to account for the greater complexity of the minor. ■ WATCH DAVE ONLINE

Don’t miss Dave’s video lessons, which you’ll find at pianistmagazine.com under ‘Piano Lessons’. Dave demonstrates everything he discusses on these pages. Seeing him in action will make learning jazz piano clearer! Watch the Bill Evans excerpts here: pianistm.ag/bevans1; pianistm.ag/bevans2

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EDUCATION

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n the previous issue we began to look at binary form, using a simple but charming minuet by Mozart as our illustration. A p iece in binary form has two sections, each of them usually marked with repeat signs. Each section of the minuet was eight bars long and the str ucture could be described in a diagram like this:

Nigel Scaife began his musical l ife as a chorister at Exeter Cathedral. He graduated from the Royal College of Music, where he studied the piano with Yonty Solomon, receiving a Master’s degree in Performance Studies. He was awarded a doctorate from Oxford University and has subsequently had wide experience as a teacher, performer, examiner and presenter. Nigel has contributed to many publications as a writer on music and music education.

Symmetrical binary form  A  I

B  V 

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e theme of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a classic example of symmetrical binary form in which the first A section ends with an ‘open’ cadence in the dominant. e B section, of equal duration, works its way back to end with a ‘close’ cadence in the tonic. ere is much beauty in such well-crafted balance and sense of even proportion. Sometimes this symmetrical structure is extended a little by a short codetta (from the Italian coda  meaning ‘tail’). e opening Allemande of Bach’s French Suite No 6 is one example, which cadences back to the tonic four bars before its conclusion. ese short codettas elaborate the tonic simply and round the piece off smoothly. In other binary pieces the B section is much longer than the A section, perhaps twice as long or more, and passes through different keys before returning to the tonic at the end. e Menuet of the French Suite No 6 is a good example. is is known as asymmetrical binary form. Asymmetrical binary form  A  I

B  V 

 V 

modulations

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is two-part concept is extended further in many Baroque keyboard pieces such as dance movements within suites, or the self -contained sonatas of Scarlatti. It’s also encountered in shorter Romantic genre p ieces by Schumann, Mendelssohn and others. What might have been a short codetta becomes a more significant feature of the structure overall as it makes greater reference to the opening A section in the tonic. When this is the case it is usually called rounded binary form .

Rounded binary form  A  I

B  V 

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modulations

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Such a form is clearly heading towards being more properly considered as a three-part structure and some theorists have preferred the term ‘incipient ternary’ to describe it. A piece in ternary form has three sections. In A-B-A the A sections are the same; in A-B-A 1 the return of the A section is varied in some way. So while the two outer A sections use the same musical ideas, the B section – sometimes called an ‘episode’ – provides contrast and a sense of departure prior to the restatement of the original material in the tonic key. e beauty of ternary form l ies in the restatement of the main idea following a period of digression. is is a basic rhetorical concept found in music and language around the world. In a performance of a jazz standard, for example, the ‘head’ – the main theme heard at the start which is then subjected to variation and improvisation – is usually reprised at the end following a variety of solos. Repetition of some kind – melodic shapes, rhythmic patterns or harmonic progressions – is generally thought necessary in order to bring cohesion to a piece. Without repetition it can be diffi cult to grasp the ideas on first hearing; the music may seem to wander aimlessly or to lack shape and balance. On the other hand, too much repetition and the music risks becoming monotonous and dull. Composers may introduce formal contrast and variety with a new melodic idea, perhaps involving a modulation to a new key, or through ▲ 1changing the texture, the rhythm or the metre: the possibilities are endless!

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EDUCATION Ternary form

 A

B

C

Statement of idea(s)

Episode: Restatement of idea(s) Contrasted idea(s)

 When the initial ideas are restated they can now be heard in a new light, viewed through the contrasting ideas of the B section. e restatement may be an exact repetition of the opening ideas or it may slightly varied, with some melodic embellishment or harmonic twist. If the first section is to be repeated exactly then it is not necessary to have the music written out for a second time. In these cases the composer can use the Italian phrase da capo (often shortened to D.C.), meaning ‘from the start’ and the word fine – the end – will be written at the end of the A section. The ‘Raindrop’ Prélude Here is a classic example of ternary form, which Pianist  100 will print in full. (Alfred Cortot’s poetic title for the piece was ‘ Mais la Morte est là, dans l’ombre’ – ‘But death is here, in the shadows’ – which is perhaps more appropriate than the nickname derived from George Sand’s recollection of the work’s origins.) e opening section has a luminous theme which is dominated by a mesmerising A  . is note acts as an inner dominant pedal point : it is the anchor for the entire prélude.  A pedal point is a note which is sustained through harmonic changes. e term derives from organ playing, as the organist is able to hold a note  with a pedal while continuing to play moving parts on the keyboard ‘manuals’. e note that is sustained is very often the tonic or dominant and is usually found in the bass part. However, it may occur in an inner part, as in our Chopin example, in which case it is called an inner pedal, or occasionally it may be in the top part, in which case it is called an inverted pedal. Sometimes two notes are sustained through harmonic changes, usually the tonic and dominant, and these are called, unsurprisingly, a double pedal. Back to Chopin. e title of the prélude derives from this A  pedal point, enharmonically changed to G in the B section, and heard by many as an imitation of falling rain. Here is the famous opening idea:

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3 1

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3

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smorzando

slentando

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5 1

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1 3

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3

ritenuto

Considered purely in terms of bar numbers, the ternary form of this prélude is quite unbalanced: A (27 bars); B (48 bars); A1 (14 bars). However, many ternary-form pieces share this feature. One reason is that simple A-B-A forms are rare in folk and other kinds of popular song, which tend to be structured in verses of four rather than three or six lines. Take the A-A-B-A form of e Ash Grove  as an example:  A 

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4 2

4 5

7 

2.

B

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3 4 3 1

G

Sostenuto 5

has switched from RH to LH. e contrast is stark and brings a dramatic change to the character of the melody. is B section is considerably longer than the outer sections and modulates through several keys, rising twice to impassioned fortissimo climaxes.  When the opening theme returns the septuplet in bar 4 is further embellished in an improvisatory way – a very Chopinesque feature. e theme is cut short and the pedal point is suspended for two bars. A single thread of melody begins an eight-bar coda in which dominant/dominant 7th and tonic chords are emphasised in a cadential fashion, bringing the p rélude to a sombre resolution.

1 3

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 A 

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D:

e B section is full of foreboding, the death and shadows of Cortot’s imagination. From the D major tonality of the A section there is a modulation to the tonic minor, now spelt as C minor, and the melody

Ternary form is a basic rhetorical concept found in music and language around the world

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I have written out this Welsh folksong with first- and second-time bars, in order to show that the tune divides into two parts. Does that make it a binary structure? Which is more important: e quality of length, or repetition of melodic material? If you think the former is the most important aspect then it is a binary form, but if you think the latter then it is ternary. However, the return of strong melodic material tends to make a greater impact than our awareness of the relative length of sections, so this type of structure is usually considered as ternary. Harmonic structure also carries implications for form (and vice versa). e A section of e Ash Grove  cadences on the tonic. It is a short but self-contained piece, whereas in a binary structure the A section usually modulates to the dominant and is therefore less able to stand on its own: it is dependent on the B section to return us to the tonic. In e Ash Grove  the music modulates to the dominant at the end of the B section – here to D major, with the C being harmonised by an A major chord (the dominant of D) followed by the tonic in a perfect cadence. Different as they are, both the ‘Raindrop’ Prélude and e Ash Grove  demonstrate the potential richness of a ternary structure. Idea – digression – restatement: there are so many possibilities within the form for creating both variety and unity. ■ Chopin’s Prélude in D  Op 28 No 15, ‘Raindrop’, will be included in the scores section of Pianist 100.

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Digital was never more natural With a beautiful Yamaha U1 acoustic piano at its heart, TransAcoustic will change your perception of what a piano can do. Incorporating specially developed transducers, TransAcoustic lets you play digital samples of other instruments, including our CFX concert grand, through the soundboard, with total control over their volume. Thanks to the piano’s natural resonance, samples come alive like never before and digital sounds can be blended with the acoustic sound too. Visit uk.yamaha.com to discover more.

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D U E T S P E C I A L – H I S TO R Y

Intimate alliances 

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here is something about the keyboard that invites interwoven, even orchestral textures: the range of available pitches, perhaps, the reliability of reproduction and the rich timbral palette. Beethoven, Liszt and Rachmaninov wrote for e very available key and tonality in their solo piano writing for two hands. Godowsky then did the same, but (to the l asting anguish of many a pianist since) achieved something similar by using only the left hand. e piano keyboard has always challenged composers to explore and refine new timbres, previously unimagined weights of sound, fresh imaginative  journeys. Two players at a single keyboard was a facet of composition for the instrument long before it evolved into the instrument we know t oday. So how did it all start?

Education or entertainment?

Piano duets from the second half of the 18th century onwards served a range of purposes. Composers adapted accordingly when writing both the primo (treble) and secondo (bass) parts. Relatively short and easy works were aimed at students. David Rowland argues that ‘from the 1760s onwards there was a rapid expansion of duet composition, almost all of it for the domestic market’. Pieces written for teachers and students tend to feature a lower part pitched at a more difficult level than the upper part; this approach to scoring remains an attractive one for motivating students, because the overall outcome sounds that bit more impressive. en there are works that demand virtuosity from both players, such as the Sonata K497 by Mozart and the fabulous  Allegro brillant  by Mendelssohn; both probably written with the composers to play with their own sisters,  who were accomplished pianists in their own right.

In the beginning

 According to the pianist and scholar Howard Ferguson, ‘the earliest undisputed keyboard duets that have sur vived were written by English  virginalist composers in the 16th and early 17th centuries.’ e Fancy for Two to Play  by omas Tomkins (1572-1640) ‘is a genuinely idiomatic duet,’ he observes. ‘Its antiphonal and imitative procedures were undoubtedly derived from choral techniques; but they are also well suited to establishing the separate identity of the two players.’ Ferguson is astute in highlighting that the nature of a duet does not preclude a true musical dialogue in which each performer has his or her own, individual role to play. As the fortepiano of the late 18th century became a focal point at musical soirées, and then a symbol of social mobility and standing during the 19th century, these roles became more sharply defined in the music composed for piano duet.

The radio of the 19th century 

Families and groups of music-lovers came to know the symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms in duet arrangements, often long before they could take a rare opportunity to hear them played in their original, orchestral clothing. Music for piano trios, string quartet and many other formations also appeared in duet versions, whether transcribed by the composers themselves, favoured arrangers (such as eodor Kirchner for Brahms), or hacks of varying competence employed by music publishers. e relationship also worked in reverse. Ravel wrote the piano duet version of Rapsodie espagnole  before orchestrating it.  With the arrival of recording technology in the last decade of the 19th century, the appetite for piano duets began to wane. Fast forward another

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Chetham’s International Summer School & Festival for Pianists 2018

Duets to dive into 

Artistic Director: Murray McLachlan Part One: 17–23 August 2018 Part Two: 23–29 August 2018

Schubert is the corner-stone of the duet repertoire, says Nils Franke, but look farther afield

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Romantic duets The Six Pieces Op 11 of Rachmaninov must top the list of works from the late-19th century, written at a time when the composer still taught the piano! The parts are written with a notable economy of means, especially the Barcarolle.

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Early 20th century Try Stravinsky. There are two sets: Three Easy Pieces of 1914-15 (a march, a waltz and a polka) and Five Easy Pieces composed in 1917 along similar lines. The former has an easier secondo part, the latter an easier primo.

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Faculty to include: W or ld   !    Marcella Crudeli, Christopher Elton, Margaret Fingerhut, Norma Fisher, Peter Frankl, Harry Harris, Leslie Howard, Eugen Indjic, Piers Lane, Leon McCawley, Pascal Nemirovski, Artur Pizarro, Martin Roscoe, Ory Shihor, Claudius Tanski, Seta Tanyel, Ashley Wass

Schubert The range of Schubert’s music for piano duet never ceases to amaze. Yes, there is Hausmusik , music for the home, but there are also astonishingly profound works for this medium. Open almost any volume of his piano duets, and you will find music of never-failing pleasure and refinement.

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T he F ri e   nd li e   s t  P ia   no S um   mer  S ch   ool i n t he

With daily concerts, lectures, improvisation, jazz, composition, intensive one-to-one coaching, duets, organ and harpsichord

Booking opens 10 January 2018

For further information, call +44 (0)1625 266899 or email [email protected]

www.pianosummerschool.com

The Italian job Ottorino Respighi’s Six Little Pieces are wonderful, late-Romantic and easily accessible works (No 4 is included in this issue). Unsurprisingly for a former student of Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi writes with an orchestral depth and breadth of sonority; the pieces are involved without becoming too demanding. British Music William Walton’s Piano Duets for Children. There are 10 pieces, written for the composer’s niece and nephew. Clever writing, as one would expect, and top-notch from a musical point of view.

Above left: Mozart and his sister Maria Anna (‘Nannerl’) with their father Leopold. Painting by Johann Nepomuk della Croce c1780

The best selection of pianos in the South East: upright and grand; new and restored; i acoustic and digital.

century and the piano duet is still popular, albeit mostly as a pedagogical tool. us the history of the piano duet has turned full circle. The pianist, an unlikely chamber musician

Unlike melody instruments, which can be played in ensembles such as string groups and symphonic wind or brass bands, playing the piano can be a solitary task. Learning by listening and responding to others is not as much a part of a young p ianist’s training as it might be. Supplying both melody and harmony, varying the tempo, altering the t one; all of this is done solo,  without recourse to the reactions or judgement of others. us playing in duet is a valuable exercise in its own right. Quite apart from developing sight-reading, duet playing requires the solo pianist to think beyond a strictly triangular relationship between reading, playing and listening to oneself. Responding to another musician is the educational spanner in the works that is of inestimable value for the development of general musicianship. ere are also broader musical skills that duet players tend to develop.  Agreeing who takes on what responsibility involves experimentation, discussion and decision-making, all of which are transferable life skills.  Who will do the pedalling, for example? Dvořák kindly specified in his Slavonic Dance Op 72 No 1, where the pedal marks are written below ▲ the secondo part. He was an exception to the rule.

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The perfect piano for everyone!

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Pianissimo The fantastic repertoire resource • Huge anthologies of some of the most well know and best loved piano pieces compiled by Hans-Günter Heumann • Each volume contains at least 50 pieces, each with fingerings, tempo suggestions and notes on ornaments • Ideal for lessons as well as for enjoyment at home • Plenty of music to keep you going through the holidays!

Piano piccolo   · 111 short and very easy original classical pieces for piano Für Elise · 100 original pieces for easy piano Liebestraum · 50 original pieces for intermediate piano Eine kleine Nachtmusik   · 60 arrangements of masterpieces for easy piano Modern Piano · 90 pieces from the 20th century for easy piano The Entertainer · 100 original pieces from classic to pop for easy piano The Great Book of Studies · 100 studies for easy to intermediate piano Piano Duets · 50 original pieces for intermedi ate piano duet

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EDUCATION

 Wanted: Piano Teacher

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f you play the piano to a reasonable standard there’s a good chance that someone has asked you the question: ‘Do you g ive lessons? Because I [or my child, or partner] would love to learn’. You may have wondered to yourself: Could I teach the piano? What would it involve? In fact anyone can call themselves a p iano teacher, both in the UK and in other parts of the world. You aren’t obliged to present qualifications for the job, and you can charge whatever you wish. However, you may not have many pupils for very long! Teaching the piano is a s erious and professional commitment. Imagine how you would feel if you discovered that a young relative was being taught maths by an unqualified person. Some professional qualifications are generally considered necessary: at least Grade 8 or an associate-level performing diploma to beg in with. Within the first three years of teaching, you should be looking to earn an assoc iatelevel teaching diploma such as a DipABRSM, ATCL, CME or ALCM; after that, a Licentiate Teaching Diploma such as the LRSM, LTCL or LLCM. e Curious Piano Teachers offer an Online Diploma course to help students prepare for the DipABRSM and ATCL. If you live in the UK, you should consider taking e Piano Teachers’ Course (PTC), a part-time, ten-month course of study. Directed by Lucinda Mackworth-Young, students attend residential weekends with instruction from tutors including Graham Fitch,

Heli Ignatius-Fleet, Ilga Pitkevica (and indeed me). In addition to the Certificate of e Piano Teachers’ Course UK, students can work towards the teaching DipABRSM and ATCL. However, all the qualifications in the world won’t make you into a teacher  who can coach, correct and inspire your pupils. Having founded e Curious Piano Teachers, we have often encountered people who would like to get started as a piano teacher but have found it a daunting prospect. Below are 12 points to consider if you want to take the first steps towards making a career out of teaching the p iano. ey are divided into four areas of expertise: Being a Pianist, a Musician, a Teacher and a Business O wner. Not all these areas are equal in importance; the percentages are offered as a rough guide. PIANIST (35%)

Perhaps it’s stating the obvious to reiterate that in order to teach the piano you have to be able to play it. However, it’s worth bearing in mind some foundation principles. Passion You

need to love, and we mean really love, playing the piano and everything that surrounds it. Teaching the piano has to be a holistic experience and pupils will only be inspired if you are inspired by music.

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Competence Your own playing must be at a reasonably advanced standard. Te PC is open only to pianists who have passed their Grade 8 exam.  As a rough guide, consider the repertoire that you have mastered. If you have a Bach prelude and fugue, a Beethoven sonata and a Debussy prélude (or other pieces of a similar standard) under your fingers, you may be sufficiently competent to take the next step. aking lessons yourself on a regular basis will help to keep your technique and progress up to date.

It is up to you to inspire  the student with your playing echnique We have established that you can play the piano. Is your technique up to scratch? How are your scales and arpeggios? Te fundamentals of technique really make you think about how every aspect of learning the piano is connected. You can learn a tremendous amount about technique through having to teach it, but you need to start with the fundamentals in place. Sight-reading Imagine that a student comes to a lesson and brings an intermediate-level piece; they would like to hear how it goes, but you’ve never seen it before. Could you play it there and then, with a good sense of the style? Being able to do this, and do it well, is essential: it is up to you to inspire the student with your playing. MUSICIAN (25%)

It is important to recognise that the piano is just our instrument of choice. First and foremost we are all musicians. Certain skills are needed irrespective of the instrument you teach. Teory  Te technical skills of a good teacher will be backed up by a sound grasp of theory. If it is a l ong time since you did any type of theory you  will need to brush up on this area. Are you confident to study a score and understand its structure, harmonic development, chord progressions, use of motives and so on? Could you then pass on an understanding of these theoretical concepts to a pupil according to their level of attainment? If you are unsure, find out by reading over one of the theory books published by the ABRSM and others; you could even examine yourself with a past paper of Grade 5 theory and see how you g et on.

Experience What was your own piano teacher like? How did you learn to read notation? Many teachers begin by teaching in the way they were taught, even though our understanding of how to teach (pedagogy) always moves on over time, adapting to the concerns, the values, the needs and the strengths of each new g eneration of students. Do you have previous experiences as a teacher/coach/trainer that are transferable to this new situation? If not, will you spend time learning about pedagogy? As a new piano teacher, you will soon encounter a pupil who can’t read notation. How would you teach them?  Vision Perhaps your teacher responded to different problems each week as you brought them to the lesson. Tis is a reactive approach that modern pedagogical practice finds limiting. It’s unlikely to lead to a smooth or comprehensive learning experience – or more importantly, to a love for the piano and for music. We often find that the reactive approach coincides  with a rigid adherence to the graded exam system. ime spent before and after lessons, planning and reflecting, is always time well spent.  As a 21st-century piano teacher you have to offer your students more than note-to-note, week-to-week coaching. SMALL-BUSINESS OWNER (15%)

 As well as making sure that your pianistic skills and teaching abilities are up to scratch, you will need to think about all the aspects of becoming a small-business owner. Organisation Even if you begin with a handful of pupils you need to consider the practicalities of running your own business. Organisational skills are necessary to sort out practical timetables and to establish and maintain lines of communication with parents and adult students. You may have trained this skill in a previous career; there again, you may never taken on this responsibility. Be honest with yourself about how organised you are in daily life and assess what systems you currently use that work for you.  Admin Your fees should be set in line with your level of experience. A teacher  who is starting out will charge lower fees than the experienced teacher down the road. Contracts, invoices, marketing, website development and studio maintenance: all these aspects need to be considered and then managed as a small-business owner.  As you can see, being able to play the piano is only one arrow in the quiver of a good piano teacher. Every student will bring their own, individual needs. Coaching them on a journey towards technical success and musical appreciation can be deeply rewarding, especially when you recognise that you are on your own journey of discovery. n

Playing by ear Because so many of us are taught directly and only from the score (that includes me), the majority of teachers struggle to play without ‘the dots’. Yet the ability to play by ear and improvise is fundamental to being a musician, and it’s a skill we should be passing on to our pupils. Can you go to the piano now – right now – and pick out the tune of Happy Birthday ? Can you then harmonise it using primary triads? If you struggle to do this, check out Piano by Ear  by Lucinda Mackworth-Young.  Aural Playing by ear relies on your aural skills. As teachers we listen to our pupils and evaluate their performance. We will know when they play  wrong notes, chords or rhythms. ry going to Youube and finding two versions of the same piece. Compare and contrast differences such as tempo, dynamics, phrase shape and other musical values. Do you prefer one version over the other? Can you work out why, and communicate those differences? TEACHER (25%)

Of course, being a musician and being able to play the piano is only part of the stor y. Outstanding piano teachers combine their pl aying skills  with refined and effective teaching skills. Communication How good are your leadership and communication skills? Can you inspire people and give them precise feedback on how to reach the next level? Let’s imagine a young pupil who is losing motivation over a piece of music he is actually close to completing. Can you help him over this temporary block by asking him the right questions and pointing him in a helpful direction? In his book Te Coaching Habit , Michael Bungay Stainer offers many good ideas for asking the right type of questions: nothing to do  with piano teaching, but a lot to do with becoming an effective communicator. 81. Pianist 99

Dr Sally Cathcart is a co-founder and director with Sharon Mark-Teggart (pictured far left with a pupil) of The Curious Piano Teachers. This online community was created in 2015 and quickly established itself as the leading provider of online support and teacher training for piano teachers. Membership of TCPT is by annual subscription. This gives members access to monthly topics known as Curiosity Boxes. Each box is presented in manageable, bite-sized chunks with videos and workbooks for members to develop new teaching skills over time and at their own pace. There is also a monthly live webinar. Thanks to the success of TCPT, there are now hundreds of Curious Piano Teachers across the world, ranging from experienced individuals to those just starting out on their teaching adventure. https://www.facebook.com/  thecuriouspianoteachers/  www.pianoteacherscourse.org

MAKERS

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THE BEAUTY OF

BECHSTEIN New hammers, old skills: as this venerable German rm turns 165, John Evans meets the workers and leaders producing a new generation of pianos

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ery few pianos leave Bechstein’s factory without Matthias Klingsing having checked and signed them off. He’s been making pianos for 39 years and at Bechstein goes by the magnificent title of one Master. His position means he’s at the end of the production line, running final checks on the voicing and regulation of each factory-fresh piano, before tuning it.  With 350 grand pianos and 1200 uprights leaving the plant each year, that’s a lot of tone mastering. Fortunately, Klingsing knows exactly  what he’s listening for: ‘A warm but also colourful and brilliant sound – the Bechstein sound,’ he tells me when I meet him towards the end of my tour of Bechstein’s factory in the town of Seifhennersdorf, lying 60 miles east of Dresden on the German border with the Czech Republic and Poland.  A couple of years ago, Klingsing’s job  was made a lot easier by Bechstein’s decision to begin manufacturing its own hammers, rather than sourcing them from suppliers. Only three piano-makers do this, the others being Yamaha and Pearl River. Given how critical the hammer is to a piano’s sound, I’m surprised a company of Bechstein’s standing hasn’t always produced its own hammers. Te catalyst came from the company changing hands in 2013. Stefan Freymuth did what new owners do, and asked questions. ‘I just  wondered how difficult it could be to  join three parts to a hammer-head,’ he says to me – and he was pushing at an open door, given a frustration within the company at the standard of the hammerheads it was being supplied with.

 whether the hammer should be used in the piano’s upper, middle or lower registers. Once assembled and fitted to the piano, the hammers are pre-voiced in the tuning and voicing room. Voicing involves gently pricking each hammerhead with a small needle to loosen and relax the felt, before refitting it to the instrument and listening to the effect as it strikes the string. Tis, plus tuning and levelling the strings, takes one technician around six hours on a single instrument. Te piano is then played to recompress the hammer-felt and voiced once more to release it, a process that takes a further four hours, before the piano enters the most extraordinary stage in the whole process: the playing-in room.  Accompanied by the ear-piercing hiss of compressed air, a machine pummels the keyboard – a total of 50,000 key-strokes over a period of 20 minutes at full volume. It’s so loud and frenzied you have to wear ear-defenders. Playing-in complete, the instrument is checked to make sure nothing’s broken and that the keys are sitting as they should (if necessary, thin paper washers can be inserted to level a stray one). Only now is the piano considered worthy of the attentions of the one Master. Klingsing relishes the improvement in hammer quality as a result of moving production in-house. ‘It is now much more uniform,’ he says. ‘I know exactly  what to expect and what I must do to achieve the Bechstein sound. For example, it’s now much easier to stick the voicing needle into the hammer-heads, meaning you don’t have to use force. Te result is a voicing of much greater precision, as every needle-prick is efficient.’

Hammering away at innovation

Challenging times, changing markets

Te new owner tasked his colleagues  with overhauling the production process. op quality had to be maintained, for one thing. Te heads can now be more finely tailored to specific piano models – for example, hornbeam cores for Bechstein’s W. Hoffmann brand, mahogany cores for Bechstein and top-spec Hoffmanns, and walnut cores for C. Bechstein instruments. Te process involves conditioning the hammer felt in a climatic chamber, before measuring, cutting and glueing it to the cores. Quality control takes place at every stage; the felt is weighed in order to assure the correct mass (an invisible hole inside the felt layer would mean one hammer is lighter than its neighbours). In front of me, a worker gently bends a hammer shank (the part that connects the hammer-head to the mechanism) to see if it is sufficiently supple or if it will snap. If it passes the test it’s then dropped some six inches onto a metal plate. Te pitch of the resulting s ound determines

Efficiency: it’s a renowned German characteristic, of course, and one that’s much in evidence on my tour. However, as Ralf Dewor, director of sales at Bechstein Group, reminds me, these are challenging times for piano manufacturers, meaning efficiency is one quality none of them can afford to be without. ‘Worldwide sales of acoustic pianos are falling year on year,’ he says. ‘A century ago, Berlin had 100 piano makers. Now there’s just Bechstein. Once, every middle-class family had a piano but that’s not the case today. Families and children have many more leisure choices.’ Not that Dewor is downhearted. In fact, he’s bullish about Bechstein’s future. Te market may be down but his aim is to grow Bechstein Group’s share of what remains by roughly 3-5 per cent a year, to be achieved organically as  well as by recruiting new dealers. In September 2017, Bechstein took ▲ over distribution of its Bechstein and 83• Pianist 99

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 W. Hoffmann ranges in the UK, cutting out the middleman to be in direct contact with the people who sell and service its instruments. Dewor is confident the move will strengthen relationships and boost sales. Te company’s sales of grand pianos are up worldwide, a trend attributed by Dewor to professional couples who have children later in life, once their finances are healthier. Meanwhile, the Bechstein Vario, the company’s digital, ‘silent’ piano range, now accounts for 30 per cent of sales. Te statistics are impressive: Bechstein manufactures 4000 instruments each year and employs 400 people, including a nine-strong team in research and development and a group of 30 apprentices. Six enrol each year on the company’s training programme. Over the course of three-and-a-half years they learn to build a piano from scratch, and tune and regulate it. It amounts to Germany’s sole comprehensive piano technology course, with a mix of factory

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Images: 1. At the C. Bechstein factory in Saxony 2. Grand piano rims awaiting their bodies 3. Computer numerical control (CNC) procedures at the C. Bechstein factory  4. Wood in the waiting at the C. Bechstein factory  All other images (Nos 5-14) are annotated within the article

late in life. ‘I have been playing your pianos for 28 years now and they have ever confirmed their superiority.’ Other admirers included Brahms and Debussy. Bechstein himself had a long and happy association with London. It was natural that, the year after his death in 1900, the firm should open a concert hall on Wigmore Street in the West End of London. However, the firm lost ownership of it during the First World  War, when the hall (and its contents, including 137 pianos) was seized as ‘enemy property’ and eventually reopened as Wigmore Hall. C. Bechstein continued operation in family hands, but an Allied bombing raid in 1945 destroyed the company’s principal factory in Berlin. Te Bechstein name became part of the US-based Baldwin manufacturer in 1963. Tere it remained until 1986, when Noble beginnings the firm was bought by Karl Schulze. Te history of Pleyel in Pianist  98 observed how Carl Bechstein had worked He was just 38 years old, a master piano-builder and entrepreneur who at the company’s atelier in Dresden as a saw real potential in a company that young man. From there he travelled to Berlin to refine his understanding of the since the end of the Second World War had bumped along, making fewer pianos, craft and gain practical business a understanding with the Perau firm, and albeit all of them to the firm’s then in Paris with Pape and Kriegelstein. traditionally high standards. On returning to Berlin in 1853, at just Schulze had an astute awareness of Bechstein’s international brand 27 years old, he founded the firm that recognition, despite its troubles. His bears his name today. arrival marked the company’s rebirth. One of their hallmarks was power: Tere followed fresh investment in a turning point in the firm’s reputation came with a concert in January 1857 factories, in research and development, and in manufacturing techniques that when Hans von Bülow performed the combine the accuracy and consistency B minor Sonata of Liszt on Bechstein’s of computer-controlled production first grand piano, to which he had with traditional craftsmanship. cannily given the serial number of 100.  Along the way, in 1992 Bechstein ‘Distinctly better than an Érard piano,’ moved production from Berlin to remarked the pianist to the composer afterwards, and thus began a long and Seifhennersdorf, taking over the Zimmerman piano factory and fruitful partnership between von Bülow transforming it into a state-of-the-art and Bechstein. ‘o judge your facility. In 2007 it acquired Bohemia, instruments means nothing else but to one of the Czech Republic’s premier praise them,’ wrote Liszt to Bechstein,

placement and theoretical training. Te most recent graduates from the programme are all now employed by the Bechstein Group, and the company is planning an international apprenticeship scheme for English-speaking students. Te Bechstein Group has its headquarters and principal showroom in Berlin. A second factory can be found in the Czech Republic town of Hradec Králové, where Bechstein makes its more mainstream range of W. Hoffmann pianos (1800 uprights and 300 grands each year), as well as parts for the group.  A further 350 Zimmermann-brand upright and grand pianos are annually produced by a manufacturing partner in China. ‘In a shrinking industry, we’re successful, growing and profitable,’ claims Dewor.

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piano makers, turning its factory in Hradec Králové into the home of  W. Hoffmann pianos. Enter Stefan Freymuth, whose company took a controlling 90 per cent stake in the Bechstein Group in 2013. Freymuth learnt to play the piano on the family’s Bechstein grand, and he is evidently committed to the company’s continued status and independence; profits are re-invested in order to drive standards, innovation and more sales. Shrewdly, he has retained the services of the man without whom none of this  would be possible. Te 69-year-old Schulze continues to be involved with the company, not only advising the management team but also taking an active interest in the company’s day-today affairs. When I enter the Berlin showroom one morning at 10am he’s there already, checking the pianos. He asks if he can help. I mistake him for a salesman and ask if he’d please let Ralf Dewor know I’ve arrived. He doesn’t volunteer his name, instead promptly disappearing into the showroom’s back offices to track down Dewor. ‘Tat’s Karl,’ says Dewor to me later. ‘Unassuming and absolutely focused on the business.’ It’s a focus shared by those at the Bechstein factory in Seifhennersdorf, a three-hour drive from Berlin. Katrin Schmidt will be my guide. She joined Bechstein as an apprentice in 2003 (she can build, tune and regulate pianos) and is now manager of the firm’s service department. Guided tour

 We begin in the frame storage area (Photo 5) where up to a year’s worth of sand-casted grand and upright frames produced at the Hoffmann factory sit in racks awaiting selection. Next door, in a climate-controlled area, they’re sorting and crafting the veneers for the inner and outer rims of the grand pianos ( 6; C. Bechstein instruments have two extra layers). Tese go to the next stage for gluing and clamping before being put to one side for eight weeks to settle down and acclimatise. Now the supporting beams are added to the rim. Detailed plans on the walls show technicians precisely where the clamp feet must be located. Te pin block is added at this stage, too. In another part of the factor y, the soundboards (pre-shaped by Bechstein’s Italian supplier) are fitted with their ribs, dried, seasoned ( 7) and finally installed. Te ‘crown’, or raised area of the soundboard, that gives it its warmth and resonance, arises as a consequence of the ribs and bridge being fitted. Te ends of the ribs are chamfered in the CNC room by computer-controlled mechanism (this process is performed on C. Bechstein

pianos after  the ribs have been fitted, so that the crown can be p laced with maximum precision). Te bridge is shaped here, too. For security and stability, the tuning pins are fired into it by compressed air, like a bullet from a gun. Before being fitted to the frame, the soundboard is lacquered. Ten, because the grain rises, it is sanded before a second coat of lacquer is applied. Te frame’s relationship to the soundboard is now finalised. Tere’s a specification for this but the technician uses a test bridge and strings to double-check since each soundboard behaves differently. Upright piano strings are fitted to the frames before the frame itself is fitted to the piano ( 8). During the tour, we pass through the large wood storage-area ( 9), a powerful reminder of just how ‘natural’ a piano is, and how careful management of the material at the production stage is necessary to ensure its stability in centrally heated homes and concert halls later on.  A rack of piano falls catches my eye, described by a group of young visitors  who passed by earlier as looking like giraffes. Tey’re right. Even these apparently simple components are made of different layers of wood to prevent warping. Ten we enter the keyboard construction and installation area. In one room a grand piano action is screwed to the key bed (10). Nearby, a technician voices the hammers of a grand piano, pricking them to soften the felt heads ( 11). Katrin demonstrates how they select hammer shanks, testing them to make sure they bend rather than snap.  A nearby technician assembles and adjusts the action of an upright ( 12).  Assembled, voiced and regulated, the pianos are ready for their turn in the playing-in room ( 13), the piano equivalent of Dante’s Inferno. I sense the one Master can’t be far away. Sure enough, we’re ushered into Matthias Klingsing’s room (14) where all pianos are put through their paces for one last time, to ensure they perform and sound like a Bechstein. Some stages such as the lacquering area have escaped my notice. No matter: my abiding impression from an absorbing tour is of a smart and  well-organized factory, staffed by motivated craftsmen and women employing painstaking traditional skills and the latest production technology in order to build beautiful pianos. Te year 2018 marks the 165th anniversary of Bechstein. Pianists everywhere should raise a toast to a distinguished history and, more importantly, a promising future. n 85• Pianist 99

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A VERY SMART PIANO An instrument that accompanies you, and even corrects your mistakes? Yamaha’s new digital range impresses John Evans with its connectivity and fexibility

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ard on the heels of the new CLP series of Clavinova digital pianos (reviewed in Pianist  97), Yamaha has unveiled a follow-up range  with a new interactive feature  which it claims will inspire and help pianists of all abilities, but especially those who either don’t favour the idea of traditional learning or  whose lives are so busy they have little time for it.  According to the company, 80 per cent of people aged over 18 have a ‘smart’ device such as a mobile phone or a tablet. Research co-sponsored by the US National Association of Music Merchants indicated the potential existence of a large number of would-be musicians who are keen to play the piano but who can’t find the time to commit to a course of study. Linking this group to smart technology represents a significant commercial opportunity, according to Yamaha. Te aim of the new Clavinova CSP is to unite these two groups – the connected and the musically aspirational – with the aid of an app. Smart Pianist has been developed by Yamaha in harness with the CSP series. It presently works only with Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad that run Apple’s OS10 operating system, but an Android-compatible platform is scheduled for release in 2018. Once installed on your Apple device, the app ‘talks’ to the Clavinova CSP: here’s the link between the digital generation and those aspiring piano players. Te technology of the CSP models is based on the CLP series, so they share several features. Tat said, if you want the last word in Clavinova touch, sound and responsiveness you need to forgo the

CSP’s smart compatibility and invest in the top-spec CLP-685. Tere are two CSP models. In common with the CLP, both the CSP-150 and CSP-170 feature an escapement action for that grand piano feel .  Yamaha’s ‘Graded Hammer 3X’ system provides three different key weights and responses, with the heaviest in the bass and the lightest in the treble, rather like a grand piano.  A choice of piano sounds is offered, between the  Yamaha CFX and Bösendorfer Imperial grands, and an upright. Several pre-programmed vocal

and instrumental sounds and accompaniment styles are also available. Both models feature Virtual Resonance Modelling (VRM) technology  which, it is claimed, replicates the sympathetic vibrations of a piano as a note is struck, in order to give a fuller, more realistic sound. Headphone listening is improved by recording and playback technology that has been designed to give the sensation of an all-encompassing sound. Te CSP-170 features additional refinements including natural wood keys, more powerful amplifiers and more speakers. The launch of Yamaha’s Clavinova CSP

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Yamaha’s Smart Pianist app takes the CSP models to a new level of interactivity 

Thinking outside the box

So much for the piano aspects of the piano. It’s  with the Smart Pianist app that the Yamaha CSP really gets clever. Pick a track or song from the music library on your computer (an iTunes file  will do) and load it into the app. An ‘audio to score’ feature analyses the music and instantly creates a score which it displays on your iPad device. So-called stream lights, located above each key, indicate which keys you should play (red for  white notes, blue for black) while the Clavinova provides the accompaniment. One technical, but important, point: the Smart Pianist app requires the music to be recorded as a MIDI file (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) rather than any other kind of audio file. e technology behind MIDI files allow the musical data to be modified and manipulated; it’s the language all digital musical instruments speak.  As a result, MIDI files for Smart Pianist are widely available, including from yamahamusicsoft.com and any number of websites. However, the MIDI files don’t display fingering. You could view a downloaded score with fingering on your iPad but it wouldn’t have the same functionality as a MIDI-generated score.  At the launch of the CSP, Yamaha presented a vocalist sitting at the instrument. She sang along to backing tracks which had been stored on the instrument, while accompanying herself with the score displayed on her iPad. In itself the performance was an impressive demonstration of the CSP’s capabilities, but, frankly, it was difficult to see what readers of Pianist  would gain from the technology – until the point when she played a simple Beyer finger exercise in the right hand.  As before, Smart Pianist displayed the score on her iPad. A shaded area on the stave helpfully tracked her progress, while lights above each key indicated the next note to be p layed. We braced ourselves for a dull five-finger exercise and then the Clavinova did a remarkable thing: it supported the performer’s right hand with a chordal accompaniment that immediately warmed up the exercise and made it more enjoyable. Crucially, when our multitalented vocalist/ pianist played a wrong note, the accompaniment ceased, while the stream light indicated the one she should have played (had she not enabled this feature, I learned later, the accompaniment would have continued regardless). No less remarkably, the CSP varied the pace of the accompaniment in time with her playing. Regardless of whether she speeded up, slowed down or paused, the Clavinova’s accompaniment supported her all the way.

Given the CSP’s ability to accompany a pianist in real time I was curious to see how it might work Open Smart Pianist on your mobile device, and in a concerto context. Here it really shines. Smart click the screen to establish a connection with the Pianist carries a recording of the Larghetto from Clavinova. From the settings menu, c hoose the Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1, with the orchestral piano sound and acoustic you want (for example, part arranged for the piano. In the role of the recital room or concert hall) and the position of orchestra, the CSP followed my playing perfec tly. the piano lid (open, part-open or closed). Locate a MIDI music file, perhaps by A gateway to the piano connecting to yamahamusicsoft.com. Smart Pianist contains 50 standard classical pieces, some for four I’ve only scratched the surface of the CSP’s potential; as well as two hands, 50 pop songs, and 303 lesson even so, I’d say that it opens a new chapter in the evolution of the digital piano. e instrument has pieces by Hanon and Beyer, among others. been freed from its role as a passive device to Elsewhere, the ABRSM syllabus, up to and something much more supportive and inspiring. including Grade 5, is available as MIDI files. It could be a gateway to the piano for musical From Smart Pianist’s library I chose a Hanon newcomers, helping them to spend rewarding time finger exercise; hardly the most challenging piece but I wanted to understand how the CSP could be  with the instrument in almost no time at all. However, given the CSP’s potential to entertain and used in a learning situation. Guide mode was top of my list. Using this I played the right hand while inspire, it would be a tragedy if a beginner didn’t the Clavinova played the left – and in perfect time support their fumblings with traditional lessons. For the more advanced pianist, the CSP’s ability  with me, speeding up, slowing down or pausing. to accompany in real time is wonderful and I followed the stream lights rather than the genuinely inspiring. Imagine taking a piece of  Yamaha score (which, as noted above, has no fingering). e absence of fingering c ould be a real chamber music, a piano trio, say, or a piano concerto, recorded as a MIDI file. Upload it to handicap to learning. Without finger indications, Smart Pianist, go into the CSP’s settings and, even a simple five-finger exercise may quickly because the file is recorded in 16 channel, dial out become a five-finger scramble, so a score that the piano recording. en enjoy yourself playing shows fingering is obviously preferable. e stream lights cue your fingers by coming on the piano part, with some of the world’s finest musicians accompanying you, following your a fraction before you are due to play the note. every tempo deviation as though they were present Here’s another handicap: following them is a little in your living room. Now that really is smart. ■ like following a car’s sat nav. You have no idea  where you are, you simply follow the route guide. e ideal approach would be to combine the lights  with reading the score, so that a knowledge of  which key corresponds to which note will follow. However, for the time-poor learner with no knowledge of or interest in conventional learning, they are at least a way to get playing quickly. Next, I was interested to see how the app might help me to grasp a more complex piece. I selected Bach’s Air on the G String. Again, the s core was displayed on my iPad and the stream lights flashed. I chose to play both hands but the array of lights was impossible to follow. No problem: I reverted to the right hand while t he Clavinova played the left, following my stumbling Specifications performance perfectly. At a difficult spot I selected the repeat function which isolated the troublesome CSP-150 Black or white £2,231 bars and allowed me to go back over them. CSP-150 Polished ebony £2,628 It’s worth noting that a music teacher could CSP-170 Black or white £2,768 record a piece as a MIDI file (as long as they did CSP-170 Polished ebony £3,174 so strictly to their Clavinova’s in-built metronome as a reference point for the Smart Pianist software) Further information at: and upload it to Dropbox, for example, for their CSP-150: pianistm.ag/csp150 student to download and use in the same way. CSP-170: pianistm.ag/csp170 How it works

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REVIEW

Sheet music  Time to sit down at the bench with a friend – or three – and read through a new jazz suite, a Debussy classic or some handy teaching material, all reviewed by Michael Macmillan a respectable performance of the entire 15-minute

AVAILABLE FROM THE PIANIST DIGITAL  work, and less-accomplished players could attempt several of the easier movements. e piece STORE pianistm.ag/digitalshop TEACHER-STUDENT PIANO DUET BOOKS 1-3 Alfred Music ISBN-13: 978-1-4706-3890-0 (1); -3891-7 (2); -3892-4 (3)

E.L. Lancaster and his wife Gayle Kowalchyk have edited the eight-volume series of Alfred’s excellent Essential Keyboard Duets. e technical focus of their new series is that the s tudent’s music – in all but two in the primo part – is written in five-finger positions.  You might anticipate this restriction to limit the musical interest, but composers such as Gurlitt, Sartoria, Foote, Cui and Godowsky would prove you wrong. Each volume contains around 20 pieces, with difficulty ranging from pre-Grade 1 in Book 1 and approaching Grade 2 in Book 3. Strongly recommended to all beginners, the series also makes good sight-reading material.

 JUKE BOX

is pleasant enough, if not as distinctive as the composer’s Evolving Blues  reviewed in Pianist  76. It’s good sight-reading material for duettists, but at £16 rather expensive for 30 pages of music.

4 PRIMA VISTAS  Jairo Geronymo

Breitkopf & Hartel ISMN: 979-0-004-18443-1

Sight-reading material for keyboard beginners, we’re told, ‘with 16 piano and orchestral classics in new arrangements for two instruments and four players, each of them using one hand only.’ It’s a nice idea; focusing on one part within an ensemble setting adds plenty of fun to sight-reading. In practice, however, the combined requirements of two pianos, three other people and some rather tricky rhythms and oc tave passages may restrict the book’s appeal to beginner pianists. If instruments and friends are to hand, however, there’s plenty of enjoyment to be had. Each package includes two copies, which explains a price point northwards of £20.

Olly Wedgwood

OllysPianoSheets

PRÉLUDE À L’APRÈSMIDI D’UN FAUNE

ISBN: 978-1-9997384-0-2

Debussy arr. Ravel

Having studied engineering at Cambridge and worked in the industry for a few years, Olly  Wedgwood is now a jazz musician and singer, a piano teacher and composer. is self-published book contains eight piano solos and two duets that are Grade 1-2 in diffi culty. Most of them are one page long, and are all sympathetically written for students at this level with no chords larger than a 7th. Boogie In e Barnyard  and Plan B  stand out for their rhythmic invention. An online link is provided to access performance and backing tracks, and samples can be found at ollyspianosheets.com.

SUITE ON A JAZZ THEME

Henle

ISMN: 979-0-2018-1259-5

e Henle catalogue already includes Debussy’s own two-piano arrangement of his orchestral Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune . Ravel hailed it as a ‘unique miracle in all music’, and paid tribute by making this four-hands arrangement independently of the composer’s version. Debussy’s painstaking Impressionism requires sensitive musicianship above Grade 8 for a successful performance. e parts are printed on opposite pages in this edition, which includes fingering suggestions and hand divisions as well as a handy translation of tempo and expression markings.

Adrian Connell

ALFRED’S PREMIER COURSE DUETS BOOKS 5 & 6

ISMN: M-2020-9824-0

Edited by Gayle Kowalchyk and E.L. Lancaster

Edition Dohr  Adrian Connell (b1964) wrote this seven-movement suite for harp and string orchestra in 1989, but his recent four-hand arrangement lies well under the fingers. e theme may be jazzy, but the style is modern classical, including a Romance, a Waltz, a Siciliano and Chorale. Pianists around Grade 6 could g ive

Alfred Music

ISBN-13: 978-1-4706-2647-1 (5); -2648-8 (6)

Here’s a more advanced series (pitched at Grades 3-5 pianists) from the team that brought you the Teacher-Student duet books above, complementing the Lesson Books from the same publisher. ere 88• Pianist 99

are eight pieces in each book, written by popular educational composers such as Wynn-Anne Rossi, Robert Vandall, Melody Bober and Martha Mier.  All are original works except arrangements of a sonatina movement by Clementi and Pachelbel’s Canon. One notable feature shared by all the pieces is that the melody is distributed across both parts, which makes playing more fun and encourages awareness of ensemble. A John Field-esque Romance by Dennis Alexander and Martha Mier’s Wildflower Rag  (both in Book 6) are particularly enjoyable highlights.

PLAY IT AGAIN: PIANO BOOKS 1 & 2 Melanie Spanswick 

Schott

ISBN: 978-1-84761-459-9 (1); -465-0 (2)

Melanie Spanswick has written these books for those adults  who regret giving up the piano in their youth, and now find themselves with the time and motivation to improve their playing. Book 1 begins with basic technical principles and practice tips before you start with material around Grade 1. Practice suggestions are provided for 28 pieces in a variety of styles, and difficulty reaches around Grade 5. e second book goes through Grade 5-8, ending  with Rachmaninov’s C minor Prelude. No book is a substitute for a good teacher, but these are  well-presented and contain plenty of sound and helpful advice for restarters. Recommended.

THE TOP TEN FILM THEMES TO PLAY ON PIANO THE TOP TEN JAZZ SONGS TO PLAY ON PIANO Wise Publications ISBN: 978-1-78558-401-5 (Film); -405-3 (Jazz)

ese are the latest volumes in a series of ‘Top Ten’ modern classical pieces, pop and Christmas songs. Only a couple of the Film emes (by Chopin and Nyman) are original piano solos; the remainder are Grade 6-8 arrangements of music from cinema hits such as Jurassic Park , Gladiator  and Schindler’s List . Ten standards in the Jazz book are pitched at a similar level, though get ready to sing in Fly Me To e Moon, Misty  and e Very ought Of You, where the melody isn’t incorporated  within the piano part. A digital edition includes a link to stream each song for reference, so that you can hear them before you play them. Pictures and introductory notes add a welcoming touch.

DUET SPECIAL - REVIEW

CD reviews  Gamelan-inspired exotica and duo arrangements of Debussy, Stravinsky and Strauss tickle our critics’ palates. Reviews by Dave Jones, Warwick Thompson and Erica Worth Pianist star ratings: ★★★★★ Essential – go get it!

★★★★

Really great

PETER HILL & BENJAMIN FRITH Rachmaninov: 6 morceaux Op 11; Tchaikovsky: 50 Russian Folk Songs; Stravinsky: Petrushka Delphian DCD34191

GRAUSCHUMACHER PIANO DUO Poulenc: Concerto for two pianos; McPhee: Tabuh-Tabuhan; Adams: Grand Pianola Music  Neos Music NEOS 21703 ★★★★★

ree very different composers are linked here by the exotic sound of the gamelan. Poulenc  was enthralled by Balinese orchestras at the 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition; Canadian composer Colin McPhee enjoyed playing four-hand piano transcriptions of gamelan while visiting Indonesia in the 1930s;  John Adams created a world of new simplicity  with the gamelan orchestra in mind.  A percussive, chant-like, perpetual-movement quality runs through all the works on the disc. In the tranquil Nocturne of Tabuh-Tabuhan, Grau and Schumacher weave a tapestry of shimmering sounds from their Bechsteins, with a repetitive motion that never becomes boring. e long build-up in Part 1 of Grand Pianola Music  leaves us on the edge of our seats, as both soloists and the DSO Berlin build sound upon sound with a myriad of subtle gradations, like Ravel’s Boléro all over again. Along  with the Poulenc, prepare to be hypnotized. EW 

Disappointing

★

Poor

EDITOR’S CHOICE DUO TAL & GROETHUYSEN Colors: two-piano arrangements of works by Debussy and Richard Strauss Sony Classical 88085446952

★★★★★

ere’s always an electrifying frisson when you hear the synergy of duet players who perform as one person. Peter Hill and Benjamin Frith, duettists since 1986, have that synergy in spades. eir performance of Stravinsky’s 1947 arrangement of his ballet Petrushka  is a joy, and they respond to the dazzling colours and textures of the score with an adamantine clarity (aided by the excellent acoustic of the University Concert Hall, Cardiff.) ey have a showman’s flair for narrative and drama too, and they keep the energy taut through the many changes of mood and tone. e rest of the disc gives an ear-opening context to Stravinsky’s score, with 22 of Tchaikovsky’s Fifty Russian Folk Songs, and Rachmaninov’s early masterpiece Six morceaux Op 11. It’s fascinating to hear how both the modal ambiguities of the folk tunes, and the sweeping Romanticism of Rachmaninov’s work, feed into Petrushka ’s glittering sound-world. WT

★★★ A fine release ★★

★★★★★

e musical paths of Debussy and Richard Strauss crossed throughout the early 1900s. Debussy was one of several French composers who admired Strauss’s opera Salome . And even if Strauss could make neither head nor tail of some of Debussy’s scores, he gave the first Austrian performance of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune  with the Vienna Philharmonic. It seems fair to imagine that they admired each other’s use of bold instrumentation in order to evoke the  widest spectrum of colours from an orchestra: the album is aptly titled. Orchestral music rarely benefits from being reduced to piano arrangements, even when t wo instruments are involved. One significant exception is Liszt’s arrangements of the Beethoven symphonies for solo piano (especially in the version by Cyprien Katsaris). However, from the opening flute melody of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (arranged by the composer himself), Duo Tal & Groethuysen takes the listener on an exquisite journey through Debussy’s orchestral sound world. Everything merging into one in the feather-light tremolos and rich bass register. In La mer  (arr. André Caplet), the pianists dance their way over the waves to the outburst of the finale; they are so in sync it’s impossible to hear them as two separate pianists. Strauss’s Salome  is already complicated enough, and here in the dramatic ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ (arr. Johannes Doebber), behind what seems like exotic ease, the pianists play with utmost precision, a rhythmic understanding and determined forward drive. Till Eulenspiegel (arr. Otto Singer) is the highlight, played with technical brilliance and as convincing as the original. is is another superb Tal & Groethuysen recording. EW  VEIN Vein Plays Ravel : Le tombeau de Couperin, Boléro,  Mouvement De Menuet and more Challenge Records DMCHR 71179 ★★★★

ANNA & INES WALACHOWSKI Brahms: Piano Quartet No 1; Clara Schumann: March in E flat; Schumann: Bilder aus Osten Oehms Classics OC 449 ★★

is album builds on the success of Vein’s e Chamber  Music Effect  (2016), and is a similarly Western Classicalinfluenced set, but this time based on the compositions of Ravel rather than the band’s original compositions, although the jazz re-workings here of this early 20th century music are certainly imaginative. is time, the jazz piano trio is augmented by saxophonist Andy Sheppard for Boléro and Mouvement De Menuet , and a four-part horn section in Boléro. With their improvisational ways, the musicians of Vein strike a nice balance between retaining the essence of Ravel’s music, and still sounding like a modern  jazz piano trio. Boléro builds with slow detail from the delicate initial quoting of the famous theme on sax, before the horns adopt the trio’s interactive approach, finally moving into a very fast s wing version of the original theme. Cerebral jazz,  which rewards attentive listening. DJ 89• Pianist 99

Sisters Anna and Ines  Walachowski (born in Poland in the late 1960s, now resident in Germany) have been playing as a duet couple since 1996. On the showing of their tenth disc they are performers of creditable energy, but there are too many fluffed notes and moments where an ideal duet synchronicity is missing, and the spl ashy and shrill recording acoustic resembles that of a municipal toilet whenever the melodies go above the stave. e meat of the programme is Brahms’s own four-hand arrangement of his G minor Piano Quartet, dense and muddy in texture as played here; you have to wait for the propulsive rhythms of the gypsy-inflected finale to hear how the piece can take fire. Schumann’s Pictures from the East  – a charming series of short vignettes – are more successful, despite some l apses in accuracy, and a brief march by Clara Schumann rounds out the programme. WT

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