Let’s Get Physical: Technique – Bodywork for Pianists
May 2013; Vol. 5, No. 3
What is good piano technique? Is it the ability to play fast scales? loud chords? hard pieces, that go on for a long time? Yes. All of these things. But they are part of a bigger whole. It’s healthy, efficient, and pain-free movement at the...
Teaching Two-Octave Scales
November 2013; Vol. 5, No. 6
I’m coming up on my fiftieth anniversary of teaching, and I’ve learned some painful lessons. Here’s one: playing two-octave scales isn’t twice as hard as playing scales in one octave; it’s ten times more difficult. Here’s another: you can never assume students grasp a concept, no...
Is Teaching Really That Different in Asia?
January 2013; Vol. 5, No. 1
“East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” may have held some truth in 1889, when Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem The Ballad of East and West, but the phrase has little relevance in 2012. World-wide communication, increased travel, and global industry have made our planet...
The teaching legacy of Rosina Lhévinne
November 2015; Vol. 7, No. 6
Rosina Lhévinne found herself in an awkward position in the late 1940s. Later famous as the teacher of Van Cliburn and John Browning, among others, and as an outstanding pianist who made her debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1963 at the age of...
Alan Fraser discusses piano technique
July 2015; Vol. 7, No. 4
It must have been something in the air, in the early years of the last century. From Australia to Israel, independent thinkers were looking for solutions to make living physically in the modern world easier. What does it take to live comfortably and pain-free? How can...
Piano As Art: An Interview with Shauna Holiman
January 2014; Vol. 6, No. 1
Fascinating for anyone interested in the piano, music or art…” wrote John Rockwell, former Arts Critic of the New York Times. Brian Levine, Executive Director of the Glenn Gould Foundation, called Piano as Art “a wonderful re-imagining of the piano as sculpture, architecture, and the...
The Teaching Legacy of Rosina Lhévinne – Part II
January 2016; Vol. 8, No. 1
The year 2016 marks the seventieth anniversary of Rosina Lhévinne’s first masterclass. Although Mme. Lhévinne may have started her masterclasses in Los Angeles feeling uncertain and inexperienced, she quickly became one of the top masterclass teachers in the world. She was able to impart the...
Building A Healthy Technique: Ideas from Matthay
May 2009; Vol. 1, No. 3
The piano as we know it reached its full bloom in the late nineteenth century. Inventors have tinkered with the design in years since with varying degrees of success, but the acoustical grand piano we play today is largely the same piano on which the...
What Role Does Mental Preparation Play in Piano Technique?
March 2009; Vol. 1, No. 2
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States Mental attitude, to use Jefferson’s term, is crucial to learning the piano. I tell...
Lang Lang: A life So Far
January 2009; Vol. 1, No. 1
Anyone who believed that Lang’s Lang’s fame would only last fifteen minutes would have had to think twice when they saw the audience at New York’s Town Hall on October 20, 2008 It sometimes seems that everyone in the world knows about Lang Lang. He...
Donald Waxman: An American Classic
January 2010; Vol. 2, No. 1
“Are all piano composers dead?” my student asked. The question seemed a bit ironic since we had just finished working on a folk song that was arranged for the piano by me. Last time I checked, I wasn’t dead. But I understood what she meant. It does...
Adele Marcus: Master teacher
May 2011; Vol. 3, No. 3
“They don’t make them like they used to,” my grandmother often said, shaking her head. She was referring, of course, to some deed—or misdeed—of mine, compared to her own generation, who were much too busy and exhausted from getting up at dawn to plow the fields...
Edna Golandsky on Taubman Technique
September 2012; Vol. 4, No. 5
It wasn’t so long ago that people aged 50 were considered elderly, and those 65 or more downright old. In 1940, you probably wouldn’t have reached the latter milestone anyway, since the average life expectancy for men was 60.8. You lived, you worked, you had...
An Interview With Jean-Yves Thibaudet
January 2012; Vol. 4, No. 1
French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has had a home in the U.S. for many years, first in New York, and, since 1998, in Los Angeles. French in his accent and his Gallic enthusiasm, he is really a citizen—and a musician—of the world.His programs and recordings incorporate...