Piano Class
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@Bernard I feel you re theory…. I enrolled in a music theory class during the summer and ended up dropping it because it was completely divorced from musical context (if you can believe that!). The instructor just jumped in with what felt to me like an approach that was just “memorize this just because” without contextualizing how those concepts would apply. It was very frustrating.
But since you’re doing this inthe context of a piece, I am sure it’s much more tightly relevant. I can imagine the tug to focus on something less technical/analytical, but at the same, you could probably do that quite nicely without the teacher’s guidance. This teacher is giving you something you can’t get on your own, and that alone is valuable, I would guess.
@AndyD that’s a lovely performance! Thank you for sharing it! I recognize the pianist’s name but I’m not especially familiar with his playing. But I love how unrushed it feels. Some performances of this piece feel more intense, whereas this one has a lot of breath and space to luxuriate inside.
@ShiroKuro Oh, that's too bad about the class. It goes that way some times.
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@AndyD That is, indeed, the one. So beautiful, but Chopin was adamant that it never be published! I've wondered about that a lot. I wonder why? I believe it was his sister and publisher who decided to publish it after his death. There are two more opus posthumous Nocturnes which I'm also learning. All three are very beautiful, imo.
@Bernard said in Piano Class:
Chopin was adamant that it never be published!
Oh wow, I didn't know that!!! It's sort of breathtaking to think that we might never have had this music!
@Bernard said in Piano Class:
that's too bad about the class. It goes that way some times.
Yes, it was definitely disappointing. I talked with a piano teacher about it, and she said there's a tendency for people who do music theory to just sort of assume the value of music theory as a thing in and of itself, and fail to do the all-important work of connecting it to the actual music...
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One of the sins of my old age?? Ok, many sins - but one I enjoy is putting on headphones connected to my iPhone and I play a piece that I'm working on with an artist I admire. For example, I learned the first contrapunctus from Bach's Art of Fugue - and played it with Glenn Gould and Charles Rosen. With the music in front of me, and listening/seeing what they're doing as I'm playing the keys, I find interpretive ideas that I missed when just listening to the music - or even things that are on the page that I may have missed or in some cases, the artist himself ignores - to a very positive result. Another piece I play - the Brahms Op 117 #2 was recorded by Brahms's favorite student - Carl Friedberg. Playing the piece with him - is playing it probably as close to what Brahms intended as is feasible - very helpful.
I didn't do this when I was studying with a teacher - but recordings did inform my playing. I remember working on Scarlatti sonata. As I played one of the ornaments a certain way, my teacher asked me why I did it that way. He said he had Juilliard student also playing the same work and she did the inverse of what I was playing. He noted that she'd researched performance practices at the library and found this to be the preferred way. I said, " I listened to Kenneth Gilbert's performance - as he had edited all of the Scarlatti sonatas - as well to Gustav Leonhardt and Vladamir Horowitz who all played it this way..." He smiled and said - "good enough for me."
