pianist, teacher – lessons, recitals, performance

This post is a continuation from my earlier post “My Favorite Music Quotes” – that page is getting too long, so I am starting a new page for the new year.

Jan 22 2010

“I learned to read notes before I learned to read letters. There were notes in a row on a piece of paper. I played the piano, so I learned to read notes. The process was natural, normal, unconscious.” - Alicia de Larrocha – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: I have always been a firm believer that the solfege system of naming notes with syllabic pitches (Do-Re-Mi) is more superior than letters. I myself never learned letters until I was 14. This quote is proof that a child does not need to know their letters before they can begin piano lessons, contrary to what many method books and even teachers tell you. If the child can see, hear, and speak, they are ready for musical training! And even then, there are pianists that are blind or mute. Knowing the English letters is the least important prerequisite that I can think of!

Jan 21 2010

“And he (Gieseking) said that it is not how long you practice your exercises and pieces but how much you concentrate when you practice. He believed in and achieved phenomenal evenness through concentration…In practicing with great concentration you must hear that every finger sounds the same; you must not have three fingers that sound more and two that sound less. And you can acquire this evenness if you practice very slowly and softly, listening to every note, knowing exactly – and slowly, slowly – that your five fingers are equal in tone.” – Gina Bachauer – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: indeed, slow practice is the cure for so many things. If there are any students reading this, please do not misunderstand and think that as long as you concentrate, you do not need to practice a lot! Concentration is the key, but in order to get to this state of concentration, first one needs to practice a lot!

Jan 20 2010

“One of the basic things Rachmaninoff did was to practice Hanon…Everyday before his real practicing, he practiced Hanon and in different ways…And I have practiced Hanon all my life and still do now when I practice technique.” – Gina Bachauer – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: while Hanon is not for everyone, and there are many other exercises available, I still love this quote. Again, the key word here is not Hanon, but regularity – EVERYDAY!

Jan 19 2010

“Coming as close as possible to what we know to be the intentions of the composer; and from that basis, taking your own flight of imagination. Interpretation is on the one hand serving the intentions of the composer and on the other hand putting the interpreter’s own blood and personality into the realization of the text. These two things must be balanced.” - Claudio Arrau – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: always nice to read what you already know but may not be able to put so eloquently into words. The key word in this statement is the last word- ‘balanced’ – notice he did not say 50-50. “Balanced” means based on the text, composer, and performance practice of the time, so that for certain pieces one may have more liberty as to how wide and far the imagination can go, while in other pieces one needs to pay the utmost respect to the demands of the composer.

Jan 18 2010

“I always use weight. Only the speed with which I make the contact on the keys varies, and this safeguards the beauty and roundness of the tone  because I never hit the key. Such increase or decreases in tone are produced always with the maintenance of weight, firmness of finger, but with varying speeds of contact.” - Lili Kraus – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: this is one of my favorite questions to ask new transfer students: “What do you think contributes to the difference between playing loud and soft?” The answer is often, wrongly, how much energy one asserts. I always reply, it is the speed of contact that is the biggest and most important factor. The amount of effort and energy is the same, if not more, to produce a soft and beautiful tone. Now I can back up my explanation with this quote by Lily Kraus, my new favorite pianist!

Jan 17 2010

“It was Goethe, I think, who said “the hallmark of genius is love.” If you don’t have that love in you, how can yo express it? If you have it but are afraid to express it, how can the listener receive this message? So I think that when an audience is thrilled for technical reasons, this thrill is on the surface. When listeners are moved because they have received the performer’s emotional message, this is both elating and lasting.” - Lili Kraus – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: I am reading a 1969 interview with Lily Kraus by Dean Elder. Everything she had to say is pearls of wisdom!

Jan 16 2010

“The other-worldliness is perfectly true and is a very good description of Schubert – so other-worldly because genius in its most childlike form is other-worldly. Schubert’s genius is not tinged by experience, artfulness, or acquired knowledge; it is a first-time emanation, not yet schooled.” - Lili Kraus - pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: this is what makes Schubert very hard to play. His music often sounds much simpler than it really is, and is both unpianistic and pianistic at the same time. Unpianistic because the figurations do not comfortably fit under the fingers and are often awkward, yet when mastered, his music sounds perfectly natural and “meant-for-the-piano”. When teaching his Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3, I like to tell my students a scene from the movie “Gattaca”, where a pianist needs 6 fingers in order to play the piece! If you have not seen this movie before, check it out!

Jan 15 2010

“Mozart must have all the greatness of Beethoven, but with diminished means. The whole difficulty in Mozart is that you have to pretend a  loud forte, and this pretence must come from an intensity, a relative strength, vitality, and dramatic power rather than actual body volume.” - Lili Kraus - pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: could not be better explained.

Jan 14 2010

“Memorize – there again I don’t know that word. By the time I can produce what I want to hear, by the time I am satisfied with the interpretation and it is technically correct, I have known it a long time by heart.” – Lili Kraus – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: exactly. Memory is a by-product of solid work. What is solid work? I once read an interview about a pianist who said that solid work must consist of two qualities – regularity and mental control. In other words, if you practice regularly, and always with conscious alertness of what you are doing with every note, memory just happens.

Jan 13 2010

“To this day I consider it both my privilege and my God-willed function to share all I was given and all I am able to impart – and that includes teaching as well. I would consider it a grave failing if I withheld the knowledge gathered in my life instead of having it carried forward by those I teach.” - Lili Kraus – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: another sincere, heart-felt statement about teaching by a great artist. Truly inspirational.

Jan 12 2010

“Interpretation is a combination of intellectualism and intuition. If it is only intellect, No; if it is only instinct and intuition, No. It must be both.” - Jose Iturbi – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: how concisely put. I like his vocabulary; the words ‘Interpretation’, ‘Intellectualism’, and ‘Intuition’ – all start with ‘int’. As teachers, we teach the ‘intellect’ part, about technique, theory, construction, forms of music etc, and we hope to inspire the ‘intuition’ – talent, out of the student!

Jan 11 2010

“I believe that in the greatest pianissimo in the world, the hand must have all the weight that it needs, so that the pianissimo doesn’t become something that is on the surface but something that will sound for a very long time and will sing in the same way that a melody will sing if you play it in mezzo forte or even forte.” - Gina Bachauer – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: I often tell students that it is actually more difficult to play soft passages as it requires so much control for tone and evenness. I really like how she describes a good pianissimo as being something that will sing and sound for a very long time. Of course, having a good instrument and acoustics will help tremendously, too!

Jan 10 2010

“Someone asked Neuhaus, ‘Where does the quality of sound come from?’ Neuhaus thought and then he said, ‘From here, from the heart, well and from the brain, and from the hand too.’ Also the leg comes into it a little bit, also intuition. Nobody knows just how. There are so many kinds of touch, qualities of sound, because each pianist has his own heart.” - Aleksander Slobodyanik - pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: I remember once reading (do not remember from which book) that playing a piano recital burns as much calories as running a marathon! While that may or may not be, depending on the length of the recital and repertoire, piano playing is indeed an intense activity, as so much of ourselves is involved when we play – eyes to see the music and keys, ears to listen, fingers to play, hands/wrists/arms to support fingers, body for dynamics and expression, feet for pedals, and of course brains to coordinate all of the above, make interpretation decisions, and engrave the music into our subconscious.

Jan 8 2010

“I never miss a day of practicing. Sometimes I need calisthenics and nothing else.” - Vladimir Horowitz - pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: my New Years resolution!

Jan 7 2010

“I’m lucky because I’ve never felt that the music is not fresh. For me it’s always like a first time. The piano I have now is very beautiful, one of the most beautiful I have ever played. We are still discovering each other.” - Rudolf Serkin – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: so sweet how he describes music and his piano as a lifetime partner and his ‘significant other’, especially that last sentence “We are still discovering each other”. Indeed, for any relationship to last, it has to remain fresh, and that is not going to happen without effort. I always tell my students that there is so much beautiful music ever written that is waiting for us to play and discover, it is a lifetime quest!

Jan 6 2010

“Playing the piano is so much the art of illusion. It’s not even so much producing a color as the illusion of a color. The more beautiful your instrument, the more possibilities you have.” – Murray Perahia – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: so true. A good pianist can make the piano sound like other instruments, or a combination of instruments, they can evoke images and sounds of nature, they can conjure pictures in our minds and take us to distant worlds and travel in time. A good pianist makes us believe.

Jan 5 2010

“I believe that the piano is the most difficult instrument of all because your fingers are the members of the orchestra, and you have to control them and make what they do sound balanced.” - Ken Noda – pianist

Yiyi’s thoguhts: Exactly! I also think that the piano is the best instrument of all, because you have total control and do not have to rely on anyone else (unlike instrumentalist or singers who often need accompaniments). Of course, it is always nice to play with other musicians, too!

Jan 4 2010

“The best music always results from ecstasies of logic.” - Alban Berg (1885–1935) – Austrian composer

Yiyi’s thoguhts: I find the term “ecstasies of logic” fascinating. I like this statement because it is so true, and it so describes Berg’s style of compositions. He was a member of the Second Viennese School, along with Schoenberg and Webern, but his approach to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique was much more flexible, making his music more personal and expressive. In another post I mentioned how a lot of Romantic music is too full of emotion, while a lot of contemporary music is too full of intellect, and neither will stand the test of time. This quote sums it up. All good music must have logic, it can not be just a random selection of whatever (unless there is logic to the choice of using such randomness). When we learn music theory, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration etc, we are learning this logic. But unless we can find our own “ecstasies of logic” – breakthroughs from all the logic we have learned which result in original ideas and approaches, our compositions can only be considered as student assignments. The same goes for performing a piece of music. Even if we follow the score and do everything the printed page tells us, it is not good enough – a computer can do that. We need to play what is not in the score – we need to find our own “ecstasies of logic”!

Jan 3 2010

“With music we are trapped in time. Each note is gone as soon as it has sounded and it never can be recontemplated or heard again at the particular instant of rightness. It is always too late for a second look.” - Leonard Bernstein

Yiyi’s thoguhts: very beautifully put. I like the idea that “with music we are trapped in time”. I feel also that with music, we travel in time. We travel to the composer’s period, we travel to famous performers’ times, we travel to important events in history, we travel to our own childhood and past, and sometimes, we travel to the future in anticipation of what might happen to us later in our lives.

Jan 2 2010

“I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I’ve felt it.” - Igor Stravinsky

Yiyi’s thoguhts: this quote really resonates with me. When I was teaching in schools, once I overheard a teacher teaching a beginner student. It was the student’s first piano lesson, and the teacher was explaining to the student “this is called the staff, this is called the treble clef, this is the time signature, this is a note, there are many kinds of notes, whole note, half note, quarter note, whole note is 4 beats, half note is 2 beats…” The teacher was very diligently “teaching”, and later when I walked past the room, I saw that the student was very young and the piano lid was closed the whole time the teacher was talking and “teaching”. There was no music in that lesson; the student may have understood what symbols mean what, but they have not felt any music. For me, music theory is only important if it can be translated into sounds. At the beginning, young students do not need to know all these technical names, certainly not in the first few lessons. I teach my beginners how to play piano and make music in the first lesson. So long as the student knows what to do when they see a note, it matters not whether they know it is called the whole note or half note. Of course, all this music theory and names will be introduced to the student later, at appropriate times when I feel the student has embodied music, is old enough, or will benefit from being able to communicate what they know to others through verbal and written means (for example when they sit a theory test). My first and foremost goal is always to teach students how to play and make music. By teaching them how to play even just one note in their first lesson, they have felt music; they may not yet understand what all the symbols on the page mean, but they have felt and experienced what music means to them! Of course, as the student becomes more and more advanced, it is necessary for them to study music theory, so they will be able to understand longer and more sophisticated compositions. Every student is unique, and a good teacher knows when to introduce what to which student.

Jan 1 2010

“Music has the power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the educaiton of the young.” - Aristotle

Yiyi’s thoguhts: I have shared my thoughts on the benefits of music study many times on this website. From an earlier quote by Confucius (see earlier post), I came to the summary that music perfects oneself. This quote once again fosters my belief that music study is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Although not all music students will become professional musicians when they grow up, there is no doubt that they all benefit from the discipline of lessons and regular practice. Regardless of an individual’s talent, level of skills, or rate of progress, music study fosters the ability to create emotional beauty. Through the study of music, students learn to think inventively and creatively. Learning to read music and scores help students to comprehend abstractions and detect patterns, think more globally and synthesize individual elements into a big picture. Learning to interpret a particular piece of music and finding expressiveness in one’s playing enhances a student’s ability to empathize and be sensitive to human interaction. Through learning to play a piece of music from beginning to end, all students can find joy in themselves, and through performing in recitals, learn to communicate that joy to others. If later music becomes a career choice, it is simply a bonus! It never ceases to move me whenever I see a smile on a student’s face after their performance in a recital. They are so proud of themselves, and I am so proud of them, and I know that they know that I am proud of them, and that makes them happy, which makes me happy.