Interview with British Pianist Stephen Hough
musicandliterature.org
musicandliterature.org
I have a psychological approach to nerves as well. We have to consider the so-called importance of our little place in the world. This Beethoven performance is unlikely to be of any significance in three hundred years—and in three thousand years, not at all.
It’s like standing on a different planet and looking down; let go and lose yourself. At the same time, we have to realize that the smallest gesture has enormous implications.
For example-- in a performance, you usually walk to the instrument, bow, sit down, adjust the bench, pause, consider the tempo... all to play the first few notes that establish the tempo of the piece.
So you would drill that entire entrance, as well as drilling from a sitting position and establishing the tempo.
What you'll probably find is that the variance in speed among these drills is well beyond what you desire for your performance. And the more you drill, the more control you have over the established tempo, which is probably the most important moment to not make a mistake. :)
This approach doesn't "solve" nerves. But it can slowly decouple them from the performance. E.g., you start freaking out because you never noticed how "weird" your thumbs look in this passage; nevertheless, muscle memory established a nice, solid tempo for your freakout instead of one thats 1.5x too fast... :)
Can't help but wonder if modern composers use 'chaos and irresolution' as a way to rationalize their terrible compositions.
Hopefully Hough will give us a beautiful pastiche.
Previous Van Cliburn test pieces:
Bernstein's Touches https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFjdVP_tQYA
Christopher Theofanidis BIRICHINO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXuKF20h480
I can somewhat sympathise with artists feeling everything is done. I'm not convinced you could be novel in a baroque or classical form without ending up feeling derivative
A great performance by Hough — a devout Catholic.
Currently one of my favorite pieces to play.
I was inspired to learn it after hearing him play it. Both the titles and the content are deeply relevant during times of coronavirus.
Especially at the height of a solitary lockdown.
As an adult learner, you need to make sure you are enjoying the instrument so it should have the right action and sound. It's unbeliable how you can purchase a Casio CDP S100 these days for less than 400 bucks and get a decent keybed and sound, advances in digital piano technology are staggering! not only sample libraries are huge these days, most digital piano companies have been including physical modelling into their sound engines with success, it's only a matter of time until these offering end up in the lower price points
One can safely predict that in a decade the only difference between an affordable digital piano and a real acoustic piano will be the keyboard action.
I think a big breakthrough will be the mass availability of smaller (e.g. 15/16) size keyboards with professional actions. Right now, a large amount of jazz and advanced classical literature is literally out of reach for people whose hands are not at least the male average – and this includes most women [0]. This can be extremely discouraging for the aspiring pianist [1].
[0]: http://smallpianokeyboards.org/hand-span-data-recent-austral... [1]: http://smallpianokeyboards.org/competition-results/
There is still some chamber repertoire that really does rely on a real acoustic piano for resonance effects: the pianist silently depresses keys, so that the strings are left to vibrate, and then they will sympathetic-resonate with notes played by another instrumentalist.
Also, when it comes to purely solo piano works that require one to leave certain keys silently depressed for resonance effects, György Ligeti's Touches bloquées comes to mind.
However, I don't agree that affordable to even high-end digital pianos will be able to approximate real acoustic pianos within 10 years in two primary areas: dynamics (being able to produce the full range of sounds from pianissimo to fortissimo) and haptic feedback (the subtle vibrations felt by the fingers and body when playing a real piano). Digital piano keybeds are getting better and better in these areas, but are just not close yet to a real piano sound and feel IMHO.
If anyone knows of any models of keyboards that prove me wrong, please share!
My Korg Kronos is just a dedicated mini-PC working as a synthesizer workstation appliance. It takes about 3-4 minutes to boot so hooking a RPi4 next to it would make for a great weekend project.
Regarding keybed, the Kawai MP11 is supposedly the best with wooden keys and long pivot points, but again it's a matter of expectations and obviously a professional player will be able to tell the difference.
I've heard the top-end models are very good. They have the same piano action as the five-figure acoustic Kawais but with electronic sound generation.
(I have a cheaper Kawai which is suits my needs, but I'm planning to get either the top end Kawai or Yamaha when my playing gets good enough to justify it.)
They're more than fine for amateurs, even dedicated amateurs. The equivalent Yamaha model - no soundboard, arguably better action - has become a kind of semi-mobile standard for professionals to practice on when there's nothing better around.
Of course you can't compare a four/low-five electronic design with a hand-made prestige six figure concert hall acoustic. But you can compare it with an equivalently-priced acoustic, and increasingly the electronic designs are winning.