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AUGUST – SEPTEMBER 2021

HELPING YOU BECOME A BETTER PLAYER

No 121

HOW TO

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COMPOSING

COMPETITION FOR THE BEGINNER

And win a Kawai piano

learn to play evenly

MASTERCLASS on the

handy tool of transposing

PEDALLING to create

shades of colour

14 LEARN

Don’t be afraid to...

IMPROVISE!

PIECES TO

ALL LEVELS AND ALL STYLES performed by Chenyin Li

PLAY

GABRIELA MONTERO Lost in music

SCHUBERT ADAGIO D178

14 LEARN PIECES TO

ALL LEVELS AND ALL STYLES performed by Chenyin Li

PLAY SCHUBERT ADAGIO D178

LEARN

Mel Bonis’s glorious

Phoebé

BONUS TRACK Gabriela Montero performs the slow movement from Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2

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Giga Giga

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CONTENTS

Pianist 121 August-September 2021

The next issue of Pianist goes on sale 17 September 2021

10

78 4

Editor’s Note

4

Reader Competition Three readers receive a copy of Gabriela Montero’s Concertos album

6

8

Readers’ Letters The joys of Schytte and dancing to the Pianist CD Composing Competition 2022 Find out how to enter, plus read our cover star’s top composing tips

10 Gabriela Montero The Venezuelan pianist on improvising, Argerich and the need for change 14 How to Play Masterclass 1 Use the sustain pedal correctly and you’ll benefit from a dizzying complexity of colours, says Mark Tanner 16 How to Play Masterclass 2 Being able to transpose tricky passages can add extra security to your playing, says Graham Fitch

20 How to Play 1 Maintain a steady pulse with lashings of legato in Cuthbert Harris’s evocative Regent’s Park, says Melanie Spanswick 21 How to Play 2 Practise the complex RH rhythmic patterns with both hands first in Grieg’s Berceuse, suggests Nils Franke 22 How to Play 3 Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani shares his knowledge of Bach with the Giga from Partita No 1 24 Beginner Keyboard Class Lesson 48: Evenness 25 The Scores Cuban flavour from Cervantes, Nielsen’s quirky Humoreske, the romantically lyrical Phoebé from Bonis, plus a heart melting Schubert Adagio 67 Piano Teacher Help Desk Allow your pupils to embrace the freedom and joy of playing through improvisation, advises Kathryn Page

72 68 How to Improvise Warwick Thompson speaks to three top improvisers and asks: ‘Can improvisation be taught?’

72 Pianist at Work Beatrice Rana on the darker side of Chopin 74 Stanisław Moniuszko International Competition Peter Quantrill uncovers a piano competition that shines a light on unfamiliar Polish music 78 Piano Round-Up In the first part of a new series, we look at the ins and outs of three new piano models 80 Album Reviews Five stars for five albums including Hewitt and Schiff, plus some sublime Schumann from Alasdair Beatson 82 Sheet Music Reviews A fascinating survey of 100 pieces from Susan Tomes, scales and arpeggios galore from Alfred Music, plus meditative piano music by Adrian Lord

Cover image: © Anders Brogaard. This page, from left to right: © Anders Brogaard; © Simon Fowler 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.

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Away from the page A decade or so ago I was invited to a private performance given by this month’s cover artist, Gabriela Montero. Sitting at the piano without a score in sight, she asked the audience for melodies on which to improvise. As someone who has played with my eyes glued to the page for most of my life, I was in awe. How did she do it? Where did she learn to improvise? Was it a gift, a talent or a carefully honed skill? It had me thinking about organists in the French tradition – running from Marcel Dupré to Jeanne Demessieux to Olivier Latry – who continue to improvise every week: it is part of their craft.

Why then, as Warwick Thompson puts it in his feature on the subject, do most pianists think of improvising as ‘tooth extraction without anaesthetic’? Thompson speaks to talented improvisers, such as Nahre Sol and Steven Osborne, who are full of helpful advice. The verdict? There is no need to feel the fear of going off-piste on the piano. Improvising is a skill like any other. It can be learnt, and the earlier the better, advises Kathryn Page: children don’t suffer the same paralysing fear.

The benefits of a talent for improvisation begin with a back-up for memory loss. What a relief to know that if we do encounter one of those ‘frozen moments’ when playing from memory, we’ll be able to find our way out of the crisis. For Montero, however, improvising is a natural state of being. She can’t put her finger on when she began to play around on the keys or how she developed her skill, she tells Jessica Duchen. What she does know is that it was Martha Argerich who inspired her to share her improvising with the rest of us.

Inside the Scores section I have featured several pieces with an improvisatory feel. My own favourite is the dreamy Phoebé by Mel Bonis. Try listening to the cover album for inspiration: Chenyin Li plays it as though the ink was still wet on the page. This is the art of interpretation: to play something (whether a rarity like Phoebé or the first movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata) as though we were falling in love with it, and to share that spirit of discovery with our listeners as though they had never heard it before.

editor@pianistmagazine.com

P.S. Inside this issue we launch the Pianist 2022 Composing Competition (see details a few pages on). Six months till deadline, so get improvising, experimenting and create that winning piece!

Keep in touch with us for the latest news from the world of the piano.

Sign up to our FREE mailing list to receive exclusive how-to-play tips from our experts, exciting news and special offers. www.pianistm.ag/regnow

WIN GABRIELA MONTERO’S PIANO CONCERTOS ALBUM

© Benjamin Ealovega

Answer the question below correctly, and you could be one of three lucky winners to receive Gabriela Montero’s recent album from Orchid Classics featuring Ravel’s Concerto in G and Montero’s own Latin Concerto.

Deadline for entries: 15 September 2021.

Where was Gabriela Montero born?

A Brazil B Argentina C Venezuela

Pianist

www.pianistmagazine.com PUBLISHER Warners Group Publications plc Director: Stephen Warner Publisher: Collette Lloyd EDITORIAL Warners Group Publications plc West Street, Bourne, Lincs PE10 9PH, UK Editor: Erica Worth editor@pianistmagazine.com Tel: +44 (0)20 7266 0760 Editorial Assistant & Online Editor: Ellie Palmer ellie.palmer@warnersgroup.co.uk Marketing: Lauren Freeman lauren.freeman@warnersgroup.co.uk Senior Designer: Nathan Ward ADVERTISING Mark Dean, Advertising Manager mark.dean@warnersgroup.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1778 395084 Mobile: +44 (0)7503 707023

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AT HOME

ON STAGE

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LETTERS

Your chance to

HAVE YOUR SAY EMAIL: editor@pianistmagazine.com WRITE TO: The Editor, Pianist, Warners Group Publications, The Maltings, West St, Bourne, PE10 9PH. Letters may be edited.

‘Vanilla’ articulation In Graham Fitch’s ‘Legato & Staccato’ video lesson on YouTube, he points out that his so-called ‘vanilla legato’ is the default touch in piano playing. Is this also true when there are no legato markings (or any other) in the score?

Silke Reddemann, Hilfarth, Germany Contributor Graham Fitch responds: In the 18th century non legato was the default touch; legato was indicated by the composer and used for expressive effect.

Notes that had no articulation markings (slurs, staccato dots or dashes, etc.) would have been played with separations between them, the amount of separation depending on the context (more separation in crisp allegros, less in cantabile adagios). Towards the end of the 18th century, composers were heading towards longer lines, and thus greater use of legato as indicated by longer slurs. Legato was gradually adopted as the

basic touch, which better suited the evolving pianos with their longer-lasting tonal properties.

Danish Romantic composer in past issues, namely issue 102, where we presented Nos 12 and 16 from the same opus.

Surprised by Schytte I was going through your Issue 113 and discovered an exercise by Ludvig Schytte [No 8 from 25 Melodious Studies Op 108] and was duly impressed. I have been using Schytte exercises as replacements for some of my scale exercises. I have been using Alfred Music’s Lesson Books by authors Palmer, Manus, and Vick Lethco and often find them crashingly boring. I really think someone should gather a compendium of these types of interesting pieces.

Roderick T. Beaman, Florida, US

Music to dance to I have never enjoyed any other magazine as much as Pianist. I open it as soon as it arrives to see what’s inside. Particularly issue 119, which included Por Una Cabeza. Playing the disc makes me feel like dancing and lifts my mood no end.

While having had to shield from Covid for a year now, I’ve spent more time playing the piano than previously, and it has made it bearable. I’ve been playing it every day since the magazine arrived. I hope my neighbours love it as much as I do! In the words of the soft drink advertisement: ‘I’ve been Tangoed’. If all your readers have had the same experience with Pianist magazine, you have made many people very happy.

Carole Tyler, Birmingham

We are glad that you have enjoyed playing Schytte studies. Yes, they are a delight, and they certainly don’t feel like exercises at all.

We have featured more exercises by the

6• Pianist 121

C. Bechstein Centre Manchester is opening in September with special purchase prices!

Opening soon

7-9 Tib Street, Manchester M4 1LG, info @ bechstein.co.uk

COMPETITION

Creation from nothing As the Pianist 2022 Composing Competition kicks off (see full details opposite), cover artist Gabriela Montero offers her own thoughts on how to compose

improvising and composing are so closely related that they are almost indistinguishable one from the other.

I say this because I want you to consider not only the theoretical processes of notating musical architecture but – long before the first note is written down – where, why, and how the musical idea comes into existence.

To some like myself, a work begins as an experience, conscious or not, that needs to inhabit a musical space in real time. It travels

from my head, my heart, my memories, my fears, my hopes, through my ten fingers, the conduits that bring it to life. It’s an electric impulse. So, what am I really referring to? Metaphor. Life. Experience. The need to express more than an arbitrary musical motif; the need to express in the present a poetic, human and personal experience through sound.

Before you create the shape, ask yourself how you can manifest in music a particular memory, feeling, idea or mood. Allow it to live in

you as a statement that describes you or a situation you are living right now. For me, the process of notating and bringing a musical idea to the page follows that initial contemplative state, in which imagination exists without boundaries. Form permits us to corral that shapeless unknown into a coherent narrative, but it’s the spark of inspiration that precedes that formal moment, and what drives us to find musical life within those parameters, that interests me

above all. Go to your instrument and, putting aside your inner critic, allow that creative seed to take a hold of you. Record it and listen to it. You will either be moved and curious to see how it can develop, or not.

You should experience a visceral reaction, one which will guide you to ask whether within that spontaneous act lies a meaningful statement that is worth pursuing.

Now you’re ready to begin working on your material.

As pianists, we have the good fortune of working with an instrument that allows for infinite colours and harmonic possibilities.

Don’t be afraid to explore unconventional harmonies and a wide variety of styles. Don’t be afraid to work and develop a piece, only to then discard it. The act of creative exploration will lead to personal discoveries and a more intimate understanding of the relationship between imagination and craft.

Finally, here is a story which might inspire:

I have a good friend who is a wonderful, self-taught sculptor. He attended a masterclass one day with an Italian master, working in marble. The class lasted five days. On the first day he was given a large, square block of marble. To the horror of the master, he took up his tools and began chipping away. No drawings, no plans. The master told him he was wasting his time and a valuable piece of stone. But, as the days passed, a beautiful bust began to emerge from the stone, until finally the master had to declare that his student was a genius. He asked my friend, ‘What was your process, if you don’t sketch out what you are trying to sculpt?’

My friend replied simply, ‘I just saw her in there, and all I did was set her free!’ Imagination leading craft, working together in perfect harmony... that, to me, is a good way to look at the art of composition. n

8• Pianist 121

© Anders Brogaard

Although my notated composing portfolio is still quite small (a piano concerto, a piano/ orchestral tone poem, a violin/piano piece and ‘Babel’ for piano and chamber string orchestra), I could argue that I have composed thousands of pieces. You see, in my experience,

2022

Composing Competition

Compose your own piece and WIN a Kawai piano THE PRIZE

THE RULES There are no restrictions of age,

• WIN a Kawai ES520 piano worth over £1,350 – complete with a matching designer stand and pedal unit. Choose between black or white

nationality or profession. However, you are ineligible if you derive any form of income from composing. Entries from earning composers will be automatically disqualified. Your composition must be written for solo piano. It can be in any

• Have your winning score featured in a future issue of Pianist magazine

style that you like, and for any technical level. The length should not exceed 64 bars. Should you win, and if you reside

• Concert pianist Chenyin Li will record your composition for the Pianist magazine album

outside of the UK, you will be required to pay for the shipping fees of your chosen piano. Entries cost £25 and must be submitted online as a PDF by Monday 6

• Be interviewed for an exclusive feature inside the magazine

December 2021.

For full terms and conditions, visit: www.pianistmagazine.com

ENTER ONLINE AT:

www.pianistmagazine.com Entry closes Monday 6 December 2021

INTERVIEW

The Natural GABRIELA MONTERO

‘I

was in the shower just now, listening to what was in my head. I realised that my inner world is not words. It’s always music.

It’s almost as though nothing exists except thoughts through music.’

Gabriela Montero is reflecting on the latest twist in her musical life, which has also not been short of a surprise or two in the past. This time, it’s a change of focus – brought about not least by the pandemic lockdown – which has turned the pianist, long celebrated for her astonishing improvisations, into a composer. She had already recorded her own Latin Concerto, but now she is preparing her debut publication of a book of solo compositions and it sounds as if there will be much more ahead. ‘Everyone

tells me that I’ve been improvising all my life, so essentially I’ve been composing,’ she says, ‘but now it’s become almost an obsession.’

Her compositions start life as improvisations, but can evolve into something completely different as she writes them down: ‘It’s almost as if I’m creating a puzzle. I have to find the right pieces and sometimes I have to adapt what is already there in order for it to fit in. I love that. I never thought I would enjoy it so much. But I’m only able to do this because I’m not performing. If I had the schedule now that I had before, it wouldn’t be possible. There’s a silver lining in all of this.’

Like everyone, Montero has been grounded at home for many long months, in her case Barcelona, where she lives with her husband, Sam McElroy, and her two

10• Pianist 121

All photos © Shelly Mosman

She’s a born improviser, an inventive composer… and she can play a mean Rach 2 – but that doesn’t stop the Venezuelan pianist striving for more, as Jessica Duchen discovers

daughters, Nati and Isa. Her performing life before lockdown, she muses, was in need of change: ‘Had this not happened, I’d probably have cancelled some concerts,’ she says. ‘I’d had enough of all the travelling, not sleeping, being away for so long from everyone I love. It’s a very disconnected existence – and then you have to go onstage and be a kind of guru, a mystical figure, yet your life is sort of empty apart from these moments. Then, of course, the world shut down and I stopped playing for several months. It was good for me to do that.’

Up clos e

If you could play only one piece from now on, what would it be?

The Largo from Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1.

If you could play only the music of one composer from now on, who would it be?

Mozart.

One pianist you’d travel long and far to hear?

Teresa Carreño.

One concert hall you’d like to play in?

The Teresa Carreño Hall in Caracas.

Any technical troubles?

Small hands that are quite ‘closed’ mean that I have trouble with big extensions and large chords.

What advice would you give to an amateur pianist about how to improve?

Listen to historical recordings from the age in which the technique was there to serve the poetry of the music. And learn to listen to yourself.

If you weren’t a pianist, what would you be?

I would be Jeff Bezos and fund quality healthcare and education for everyone on the planet. That would solve most of our problems.

One person you’d love to play for?

I’ve always been asked to play for people, when what I really want to do is talk to them, have a conversation and learn something from them.

A composer you’re not quite ready for?

Boulez.

What other music do you like listening to?

Everything, except for rap and reggaeton.

V

Mover and shaker She has her eye on lasting change, and not only for herself. For the industry, she would like to see more focus on the purity of musical experience and less on the ‘showbusiness’ which places too much emphasis on matters like women’s appearances. Among artists themselves, she longs for more willingness to speak openly and discuss together the vulnerabilities involved in a performing career, which often remain taboo: ‘I like to use the score, which I feel makes me freer on stage,’ she says. We should, she insists, be able to acknowledge and talk straightforwardly about everything from stage fright to the pressures of being a single mother trying to coordinate a career: ‘When my kids were small and I was a single mum, I used to speed up the slow movements when I practised because there wasn’t time to play them at the real tempo!’

As for scheduling, just because you can travel from Europe to the Far East to give one or two concerts, that doesn’t mean you should have to. ‘I want to do more chamber music, I want to be with people more, I want to share. I think the rat-race is too much in today’s world. Too much is expected of us. You can’t give and you can’t refuel. I hope that when the world comes back to some sort of normality, there is a better future, a different expectation for how we do what we do.’

Montero’s journey through music has rarely matched widespread notions of a modern concert pianist’s career.

She is perhaps closer to the composer-pianists of the 19th century, a time in which creating music was as important, or more so, than playing repertoire by others, and in which improvisation was part and parcel of musical life. Ironically, too, some of those musicians were political exiles, as Montero herself has become, giving her some extraordinary common ground with Chopin and Rachmaninov.

She was born in Venezuela in 1970, starting out as a child prodigy who had a natural and inexplicable bent for improvisation. She made her concerto debut aged eight before winning a government scholarship to study in Miami. After ten years there, however, she was almost ready to give up, closing her piano for a couple of years and feeling she had lost her raison d’être. A period of study in London with Hamish Milne at the Royal Academy of Music proved helpful. It was nevertheless only when she was 31 and a single mum of two that she encountered Martha Argerich and found her true direction – because Argerich encouraged her to improvise.

Gabrielao Monter

11• Pianist 121

INTERVIEW Words of encouragement ‘My first piano teacher in Caracas was the mother of Sergio Tiempo, Lyl Tiempo, a close friend of Martha’s,’ says Montero. ‘She had told Martha about her little “improvising genius”, so she’d known about me since I was a child.’

‘I hope that when the world comes back to some sort of normality, there is a better future, a different expectation for how we do what we do’ Argerich heard her performing in the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1995 in which Montero won third prize – ‘She told me later that she had loved my Ballade No 4.’ About six years later, Montero went backstage after a concert to say hello to Argerich. ‘Nati was four years old and I wasn’t playing much. I wanted to study psychology, I wanted to do something useful. And then Martha said, “Play for me”.

Really I just wanted to talk to her over a drink.’ But she played, and she improvised.

‘I’ve always struggled with why I want to do this,’ she says. ‘You’re born with a gift, people assume that’s what you want to devote your life to, and it’s also your

nature: how can you run away from it? You can’t – there isn’t a choice. After the Chopin Competition I nearly stopped playing. I couldn’t find my own reasons for continuing, and then Martha heard me improvise and because she was blown away by that, it gave me the motivation I needed. I’d had a piano teacher for many years [in the US] who said it had no value. Then Martha looked at me and said: “Just do it”. It sounded so simple. I thought: if Martha Argerich says this, maybe she’s right! I began to improvise in concerts and that was when I felt I could start to be myself. So life took this crazy detour and now it’s been 20 years.’

Montero’s improvisations are mind-boggling to witness. Often she presents half a concert of ‘normal’ repertoire and a second half devoted to improvisations, asking the audience to suggest themes (YouTube is replete with juicy examples).

Brain power To nobody is this gift more astonishing than to her husband, who himself started out as a musician, having studied singing at the GSMD in London. ‘Sam has heard me improvise hundreds of times, he knows that nothing’s prepared, he knows I have only basic knowledge of harmony and theory,’ Montero says. ‘He wanted a neuroscientist who is an expert in the field to look into my brain and explain it in scientific terms.’

Sam contacted Dr Charles Limb at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who had conducted research into jazz improvisers and has a special interest in researching the neurology of artistic creators. He viewed Montero’s videos and agreed with alacrity. The startling results of his investigation (see ‘Gabriela Montero on…’) revealed that it was almost as if she had a ‘second brain’, creating a unique neural pathway and involving the visual cortex. It led to a documentary about the experiment called No Horizons.

The documentary, Montero says, is also about how she has used music to tell the story of Venezuela. Her world is inextricably tied up with her native country: often she has been a lone artistic voice speaking up about the realities of its regime, under which the country was descending into chaos years before Covid-19 struck. ‘The whole point of these projects, including my compositions, is to create a sort of trojan horse to deliver the story of Venezuela,’ Montero says.

‘When you approach people with overt political messages, they tend to switch off. But when you frame it in a human, real story, then they listen and are open to it.

‘The situation in Venezuela has been taking place since 1999 [when Chavez came to power], but my life changed 11 years ago when I chose to become an advocate, a voice for Venezuelans, because I felt I had to do something, I had to get involved. Everything I’ve done or written since then has been on behalf of my country, in order to speak of what the people of Venezuela have been enduring, and sadly their situation has spiralled into hell.’

Now she is an exile: she cannot go back. ‘I effectively have no home,’ she says. ‘It’s been a huge price to pay,

12• Pianist 121

GABRIELA MONTERO ON… THE IMPROVISATION BRAIN SCAN The team at Johns Hopkins put me into the MRI scanner tube with a small keyboard. On this I had to respond to random instructions to play a Bach minuet, to improvise or to play a scale, without knowing which would be next. The point was to see how my brain would behave comparatively in the different scenarios. I could not move my head, otherwise the resulting images of my brain would be fuzzy. After the initial 30 minutes, the team was so astonished by what they were seeing that they asked if we could continue for another hour and a half.

After a while, Charles Limb asked me if I see anything while I improvise. I don’t – I’m not visualising someone running through the fields or meeting a lover! He was asking because the scans showed that my visual cortex was becoming much stronger while improvising than the parts of the brain I was employing to play Bach and scales. I’ve always said that I ‘get out of the way’ when I improvise – and it turned out that those parts of the brain that I use to play the written repertory from memory are almost shut down and then there’s this little pathway that my brain creates, which they’d never seen before, which then taps into my visual cortex. So it’s with that part of the brain that I improvise.

Also, I’m ‘out of it’ – when I improvise, I’m not really there, and the explanation is that it’s almost like I have two brains, which is really weird. So, when I say I ‘get out of the way’, I don’t just switch on a process: that’s what is happening neurologically. I don’t have any explanation, but I know that it’s when I feel the most honest, connected and free. It’s my natural habitat.

not to be able to visit my family and see my friends, not to be able to play in my country, not to be where I’m from. And I have a constant search for this identity, for this sense of roots. That is the price you pay for speaking out, but it is costly.’

Issues close to the heart It begs the question, too, of why political activism is rare in the classical music field. While other artforms embrace the burning issues of the day, many in classical music shy away from them. Montero is unimpressed by this. ‘You’d have to eliminate half the canon of classical music if you were to eliminate any political commentary,’ she points out, ‘including Le nozze di Figaro, Shostakovich’s symphonies, and Beethoven, who was so in tune with what was happening in his time.

I’ve always wondered why classical musicians feel we are exempted from joining the conversation and being spokespeople. Why are other forms of the arts allowed to enter this terrain, yet it appears so disruptive to the classical world? I think it’s nonsense. It’s just more comfortable, much easier, not to position yourself than it is to speak out against injustice.’

Montero’s first recorded composition, Ex Patria, won a Latin Grammy. The plight of the Venezuelan people, she says, then inspired the creation of her Latin Concerto, a powerful, astringent and deeply

moving work that she has recorded on the Orchid Classics label.

‘Music is an incredibly powerful tool for disseminating information and for bringing people to empathise with a human crisis. If I were denouncing mundane political events, I can see why people would say that politics and music don’t mix in that way, but when you’ve been a victim of a country that’s turning to criminality, you absolutely have to use your voice to speak out. To me it’s a no-brainer. Music should be the loudspeaker through which people can tell their stories.

It’s a metaphor for what is happening to them in our global society and in my case Venezuela.’

For the time being, Montero is home, writing music and exploring new pathways that will hopefully come to fruition in the years ahead. Until we can hear her on stage again, do explore the films of her improvising. She deserves a place among the great wonders of the musical world. n Gabriela Montero plays the slow movement of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 on this issue’s covermount album. See album cover for details. To find out more about her recordings, publications and other projects, go to www.gabrielamontero.com. Dr Limb’s paper can be read at Science Direct: http://bit.ly/classicalcreativity.

13• Pianist 121

HOW TO PLAY STROKES OF COLOUR

THE SUSTAIN PEDAL Familiarise yourself with the popular right pedal from the very start, says Mark Tanner – so when the time comes, you’ll ½RH MX WIGSRH REXYVI XS EHH XLSWI I\XVE TMKQIRXW SJ GSPSYV to your tonal palette

T

he sustain pedal is the piano’s Swiss Army knife. That inconspicuous piece of brass resting under the right foot is how we access a dizzying complexity of sounds, effects, textures and colours. The other two pedals – the sostenuto (or more often a ‘practice’ pedal on an upright) in the middle, and the una corda, off to the left – are far less habitually used devices, yet each of these opens up its own Aladdin’s Cave of effects. Though we tend to think of the sustain pedal as helping us to achieve two things – a legato or sustained effect and a warmth or ‘bloom’ of tone – in reality this hardly scratches at the surface of its possibilities.

The extent to which an intentional blurring or colouring of sound plays a helpful role in what we do, will be largely predetermined by the style, idiom or era: few of us would seek out an impressionistic wash of sound when playing Rameau or Couperin on the piano, for example. Nor would we imagine we’re doing service to Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie or Clair de lune with our right foot nowhere near the pedal!

And yet, to think of the sustain pedal as being either ‘up’ or ‘down’ is often insufficiently nuanced thinking, arguably even when tackling 18th-century repertoire, let alone music from the 19th century onwards. It’s also worth remembering that the bigger the room, the less pedal we’ll need.

5

TOP TIPS

The magnificently adaptable sustain pedal became progressively so during the first half of the 19th century, especially upon the introduction of iron-framed instruments when greater tension on the strings became achievable virtually overnight. This opened up a glorious bounty of new sounds, timbres and otherworldly effects. Romantic piano music makes abundant use of the sustain pedal’s capacities for accumulating sound and broadening harmonic effects, for example Chopin’s swirling accompanimental textures. Rachmaninov’s C sharp

Endless possibilities

1

Pedalling for colour requires sensitivity, but in particular, good listening skills.

2

Experiment with your instrument to find the optimum range of pedal movement for achieving particular shades of colour.

3

Try half pedalling and flutter pedalling to achieve more complex sound textures and colours, especially in 19th century repertoire onwards.

4

Have fun with ‘hand pedalling’ to add a frisson of colour to your impressionistic playing.

5

Used in combination, the three pedals open up myriad possibilities. First, become confident using each pedal in isolation; next combine the sustain and una corda pedals, then try transferring sounds between sostenuto and sustain, and in time progress to more ingenious exchanges and combinations.

14• Pianist 121

minor Prelude, played without sustain pedal, would make an utter nonsense of this intense music. If we take the sustain pedal for granted however, or apply it unthinkingly as a crutch, it easily incapacitates music built from leaner, more rapidly changing textures. Our Swiss Army knife needs a most careful handling.

Merging sound The sustain pedal lifts the dampers off the strings en masse, the equivalent of which would be an 88-fingered pianist pressing down every key simultaneously! When the pedal is depressed, besides allowing all struck strings to continue vibrating, we’re getting varying amounts of sympathetic vibration – i.e. the vibration of non-struck strings. This extra degree of resonance comes ‘for free’, since all we’ve done is depressed the pedal and played perhaps one note. Over-strung (or ‘cross-strung’) instruments, which emerged from the 1820s, boast larger and sometimes longer bass strings, which visibly cross other strings, thereby adding to its overall resonant quality, especially when the pedal is in play. The full impact of this becomes unmistakable when we are utilising a wider range of notes, whether as chords, flourishes or arpeggio-type figurations – though arguably with overstringing we lose some of the cleanness of tone that Beethoven or Chopin would have known.

Grieg Berceuse Op 38 No 1: This exquisite Lyric Piece has many pedal markings, and these need an

assiduous treatment to prevent

muddled harmonies. That said, a

tendency to clear the pedal a fraction too early may sometimes

cause tiny but unwanted breaks to the musical flow. Practise the all-important transitions, e.g. bars 58-59, to preserve a smooth LH delivery while the RH repositions itself. The final bars show Grieg at his most magical; here I like to be deliberately a fraction ‘late’ with the changes and live right on the edge of harmonic blurring!

TRACK 8

Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)

INTERMEDIATE

Berceuse Op 38 No 1

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15• Pianist 121

Mark Tanner shows you how and when to depress the pedal in three of this issue’s scores

Shades of grey Depending on the instrument, pedalling for colour is often most efficiently accomplished within a particular range of its up/down movement (experiment to discover where on your piano this is best achieved). A deliberate clouding or blurring of sound (whether subtle or more pronounced), as with direct pedalling and legato pedalling, perhaps depends more

Pedal pressure

Depending on how many silently depressed keys you have chosen, and whereabouts on the keyboard you’re experimenting, doing this gives us a diluted version of the effect the sustain pedal provides when fully or partially depressed.

You may encounter oddities of overtones and harmonics, or certain notes that ring on mysteriously, but that’s the fun of it. Alternatively, silently depress a few notes with your LH somewhere nearer the middle of the keyboard. Doing this gives you the option of lifting and silently depressing specific keys quite quickly at will, almost like a ‘hand pedal’, while playing notes in the RH. When improvising, this delivers intriguing and mesmerising effects, and you could conceivably experiment when playing specific moments in impressionistic or more modern repertoire.

on acute listening skills than foot dexterity! Pedalling for colour is a little like adding salt to taste, and this is closely aligned with the skill of dynamic shading and balancing.

By listening really intently to recordings of, say, Debussy, Ravel or Messiaen, we can gradually attune to the effects we’re wanting to emulate as we begin to experiment with the idiosyncrasies we encounter on our own piano.

As with any form of pedalling, always rock from the heel – at all costs avoid a forklift truck style operation from the knee or hip.

When both hands are playing higher up on the keyboard, expect in general to use more pedal, and use appreciably less when both hands are playing around the tenor register or lower.

Half pedalling tends to involve smaller degrees or even ‘kisses’ of pedal, so that a variable amount of sound (the instrument’s deeper and middle sonorities more so) is preserved by the pedal, permitting warm harmonies and clear melodies to occur simultaneously, while flutter pedalling can involve several partial movements in fairly quick succession, each of which progressively clears out the sound from the upper notes downwards.

This can help when, for example, holding a chord higher up in both hands but at the same time wanting to gradually flush out bass notes already sounding. These are admittedly more advanced skills, but once gained can effectively result in a combination of legato pedalling – smoothing the connections between single notes, harmonies or textures – and more colourful pedalling effects of the kinds just described.

Using the sostenuto pedal can be a convenient shortcut to achieving daring sound-layering effects, achieved by depressing it and holding it down just after playing certain notes to ‘trap’ them, before playing different notes elsewhere.

The una corda pedal, which results in a thinner sound colour on a grand piano, is often effectively used in combination with the sustain pedal, thereby gaining the veiled, otherworldly sound

To coin a phrase This fun exercise gives you a flavour of how the pedal adds colour… but without using it!

• Place piles of coins slowly on some random keys right at the bottom of the keyboard – black, white or a mix – so that these keys are silently but fully depressed. Open the lid of your piano to heighten the effect.

• Now play some single notes or chords – experiment with a different amount of notes, speeds and volumes in both hands.

• When playing, start around the middle of the keyboard, but then venture further away, perhaps with the hands further apart.

• If you can reach into your piano, try to strum random strings (still with some keys held down), to give a shimmering, ethereal effect.

Cervantes Cuban Dance No 1: There are plenty of possibilities for colourful pedalling in this

marvellous Cuban dance. These

are often so subtle, personal and dependent upon the degree to

which you’re wanting to tease out

those deep inner lines, that marking them in should be a gradual, thoughtful process. I like to keep the harmony changes nicely clear, especially earlier on, but begin to allow slightly longer, more ambitious pedal effects to appear during the tranquillo and animato sections.

Ignacio CERVANTES (1847-1905)

INTERMEDIATE

Cuban Dance No 1

TRACK 9

Mel Bonis Phoebé: This piece offers copious chances to experiment with both the sustain

and una corda pedals in order to

subdue the warm, burbling

semiquavers and keep intact the RH’s shapely cantabile line. Half

pedalling skills are needed regularly, especially where the melody needs to come through the texture in octaves, e.g. at bars 22-26. Between bars 38-46 you can be quite daring – though listen intently for moments where a fleeting change is needed.

INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED

Mel BONIS (1858-1937) Phoebé Op 30 No 1

TRACK 13

4-%2-781%+%>-2) '31 ;%8', ',)2=-2 0- 40%= 8,-7 %8 ;;;

we enjoy hearing in, for example, Debussy’s Voiles (Préludes, Book 1).

Pedalling for colour is something a complete beginner can enjoy doing. To unleash a rainbow of intoxicating effects on your instrument, simply depress the pedal and play a slow wholetone scale: C D E F# G# A# C. Be adventurous and discover the sound-miracles you and your piano can produce! n

HOW TO PLAY FEEL COMFORTABLE IN ALL KEYS

TRANSPOSITION For extra security with tricky passages and memorisation, try adding this handy technique to your practice toolbox, suggests Graham Fitch

I

n a passionate desire to become masters of our instrument, we pianists spend lots of time learning repertoire and building up a strong technique. But what use is technique without solid general musicianship, and a reliable ear? I advise my students to include transposition as a regular part of their practice; they tell me the improvement to the way they listen to their playing is noticeable after just a few minutes. In this article I’m going to look at how we can use transposition to refine our listening skills and improve our tactile awareness as we move around the keyboard. For building real security into a piece we need to memorise, there is nothing better than being able to play it in a couple of different keys – albeit slowly. We can also use transposition as a useful supplementary practice tool to help us overcome technically difficult passages – those corners where, despite our best efforts, the fingers don’t seem to want to cooperate.

When we transpose, we play a piece in a different key from the original. This can be done in two ways: at sight (a rare skill mostly useful to accompanists), or by ear (from memory). To play by ear or to improvise, we need to be comfortable playing in any key, allowing the ear to guide the fingers to the notes we hear in our head. The ability to play the melody, chord sequence and indeed improvise on any standard song in any key is an accepted requirement for any professional jazz pianist, yet classically trained pianists rarely seem to develop these musicianly skills.

Changing keys to aid memory A colleague recounted to me a lesson with a famous teacher who asked, ‘How well do you know this Waldstein Sonata?’. ‘I know it by heart!’, he responded. ‘Really? What key is it in?’. When he scoffed ‘C major!’, the teacher said, ‘Great! Play it in E major’.

He got through a few bars before starting to fumble, at which point the teacher exclaimed, ‘You don’t know this piece from a ham sandwich!’

@ GET IN TOUCH Graham Fitch would like to hear from readers who have piano-playing questions, whether about a cer tain technique or a passage in a piece of music. Please write to the editor at editor@pianistmagazine.com.

Due to the large number of requests, Graham may not be able to answer every question that is submitted.

Do not feel intimidated by the idea of transposing such a complex piece from memory: like any skill worth acquiring we might struggle at first, but persist and you will notice gradual improvement. If you are a teacher of youngsters, how about including transposition as a lesson and practice activity from the beginning? You will find many enjoy the challenge, and can get good at it early on in their piano journey. It should not be too difficult for an elementary player to play the first section of the Musette in D from the Anna Magdalena Notebook in a few other keys once they have learned it in the original. Try it in C, then E to begin with. There is no need to go beyond the double bar.

16• Pianist 121

V

Intermediate players can develop a sense of keyboard geography by adding short cadences at the end of scales, such as this basic I-IV-V-I progression using the primary chords.

RUSSELL HIRSHFIELD Pianist

Alexander Scriabin, Early Works

Available from Navona Records www.russellhirshfield.com

WATCH GRAHAM’S ONLINE LESSONS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM/LESSONS

Learn it by heart in C major, and transpose to every key (major and minor).

Progress to some very simple, short pieces, such as those from Daniel Gottlob Türk’s 120 Handstücke für angehende Klavierspieler. The first few are only eight bars long and very simple; learn one or two of these from memory then test your ear by transposing into all 12 keys. Of course, any elementary level repertoire is useful for this purpose; pick pieces that you can learn quickly and manage easily. When you know a piece well enough to transpose it, either move chromatically up or down from one key to the next, or go backwards or forwards through the Circle of Fifths (diagram below).

As an acid test of C memory for advanced F G players, playing whole Am Em Dm pieces (or just those D Bb elusive sections of Bm Gm pieces) from memory F#m A Eb Cm in two or three different keys by ear means you C#m Fm really know the score.

E Ab Bbm G#m This doesn’t have to D#m be done at speed, and B Db F# it doesn’t have to be perfect in expressive detail. It will take some practice, so be patient with yourself.

Take a piece you consider you know well from memory and transpose into a neighbouring key without looking at the music (remember, slowly is fine). How far did you get? If you found that challenging, you may discover you only know your piece by muscle memory (we absolutely need muscle memory, but it tends to be unreliable under the pressure of performance). Some time spent transposing the music will certainly help you drill the notes securely into your ear.

8S VI½RI GSSVHMREXMSR In addition to helping us memorise, we can use transposition as a supplementary practice tool for refining motor control and coordination in difficult passages. I have chosen a tiny snippet from the fugue of Bach’s Toccata in E minor (bar 84), a spot where students are prone to stumble.

Can you play this passage in two neighbouring keys, D and F minor? The secret is to keep the same fingering as the original no matter which key you practise it in (I’ve added my own, but feel free to choose alternatives). Why is preserving the fingering important? As we play, we constantly make micro up-down and in-out adjustments of the hand and arm to accommodate the ever-changing black-white terrain of the keyboard. When we transpose into another key, we learn a version of the same passage that is essentially the same, and yet different – not only because the sounds are higher or lower, but also because our fingers need to adapt to the different patterns of black and white notes. When we return to the original key, we find the passage is vastly improved and fits like a glove.

8IGLRMGEP )\IVGMWIW We make similar gains when we transpose technical exercises, which are often printed only in the key of C. Whether indicated or not, these need to be transposed into other keys for maximum value. British concert pianist, Peter Donohoe, a devotee of Hanon, practises the exercises in C, Db and E. If you are someone who practises Hanon – and there are many – try transposing them! [Try the one inside this issue’s Keyboard Class.]

I highly recommend practising double note exercises for developing the outer side of the hand, and for coordination within the hand. Such exercises help keep us in great shape pianistically as the weaker fourth and fifth fingers learn to be as strong and agile as the thumb, second and third fingers. Many books of technical exercises print the first part of a given exercise in C major, with an indication to carry on throughout all keys.

Here is another situation where our transposition skills come in handy, since we must know how to do this. I would like to show you a modulating pattern that ascends chromatically through all keys – you can be free of the printed page and concentrate on the technique involved (keeping the wrist free and aligning the arm behind the playing fingers as you synchronise each pair of notes). From a C major five-finger position, move to the minor by flattening the third degree. Keeping the minor third, flatten the fifth degree (diminished) before flattening the second degree. The final position acts as dominant to the key a semitone higher. Once internalised, you will be able to modulate freely (see my video demonstration on YouTube for how this works in practice).

Transposition is like a muscle – the more you use it the stronger it gets. Spend a few minutes every day and you’ll improve, I guarantee, and begin to really feel the multiple benefits it has to offer. n For more on developing transposition skills for technical exercises, follow this link to the Online Academy (bit.ly/transpositionskills).

For more about the art of practising, discover Graham’s Practice Tools Lecture Series (bit.ly/grahampracticetools).

18• Pianist 121

THE SCORES Pianist 121 • Read the lessons • Play the scores

MELANIE SPANSWICK is a pianist, writer, teacher and composer. As an author, she is published by leading publishing houses, and has written a three-book piano course for those returning to piano playing; Play It Again: PIANO (Schott Music).

Melanie teaches the piano at Junior Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Eton College. As a composer, her music is published in the renowned Edition Schott Composer Series.

Read Melanie Spanswick’s lesson

NILS FRANKE is Dean of Higher Education at the University Centre Colchester, UK, having previously held posts at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and the University of Reading. He has recorded for Warner and Brilliant Classics. Nils specialises in historical performance pedagogy, with a particular focus on 19th-century pianist-composers. His editions are published by Wiener Urtext and Schott Music International.

Read Nils Franke’s lesson

MAHAN ESFAHANI is known mainly for his career as a harpsichordist in two major realms: the great works of the 17th and 18th centuries and for championing modern and living composers. More recently he has a growing reputation as a commentator with radio documentaries on musical and social topics for the BBC and articles for the Guardian, The New Yorker and Opera. He records exclusively for Hyperion Records.

Read Mahan Esfahani’s lesson

CHENYIN LI is a celebrated concert pianist known for her fiery and intelligent performances of a wide variety of repertoire. Having won multiple international competitions, she has established herself as a versatile player who shines in both solo repertoire as well as concerto. Chenyin has performed in many prestigious venues across the UK, Europe and Asia and her extensive discography includes more than 50 albums for Pianist.

Listen to Chenyin Li perform on this issue’s CD

SCORES 24

KEYBOARD CLASS Exercise for finger evenness

25

TELEMANN Prelude in D

26

VERDI La donna è mobile (arrangement)

28

HARRIS Regent’s Park

30

CHADWICK Now I Lay Me Down

32

CHAMINADE Aubade Op 126 No 2

34

KIEL Notturno Op 28 No 4

37

TCHAIKOVSKY Morning Prayer, No 1 from Album for the Young Op 39

38

GRIEG Berceuse Op 38 No 1

42

CERVANTES Cuban Dance No 1

44

NIELSEN Humoreske Op 3 No 2

48

MASON Serenata Op 39

53

SCHUBERT Adagio in G D178

58

BONIS Phoebé Op 30 No 1

63

BACH Giga (Gigue) from Partita No 1 BWV 825

Typesetting by Spartan Press Music Publishers Ltd

© Erica Worth (Spanswick); © Kaja Smith (Esfahani); Hao LV/Lumira Studio (Li)

LESSONS FROM THE EXPERTS

HOW TO PLAY ABILITY RATING LATE BEGINNER

CUTHBERT HARRIS

REGENT’S PARK (ON THE LAKE) NO 6 FROM LONDON SCENES -J ]SY ½ RI XYRI ]SYV PIKEXS ERH KVEHI ]SYV H]REQMGW [MXL GEVI XLMW YREWWYQMRK PMXXPI FSEX [MPP KPMHI EPSRK XLI [EXIV NYWX TIVJIGXP] WE]W Melanie Spanswick Key G major Tempo Andante Style Late Romantic Will improve your Legato playing Pedalling Left-hand leaps

This endearing miniature was written by the little-known British Romantic composer Cuthbert Harris. It moves along calmly at a dotted crotchet equals 56 beats per minute. Comprising four-bar phrases, a successful performance rests on a supportive and gentle LH accompaniment combined with an expressive, cantabile RH melodic line.

as an alternative, try 3-1-2. (I have written this alternative fingering onto the score.) This second option requires plenty of lateral arm movement and a flexible wrist so that the hand and arm are able to swing from the left to right – the hand guiding the fingers into place so as not to cause strain. The third finger basically acts as a pivot. This fingering should also help achieve a smooth LH.

By using the pedal with the LH on its own, you will be able to hear the sound and the resonance more clearly Let’s start with the LH. The barcarolle-like rhythmic pattern remains constant throughout, with harmonies changing every bar. Bar 1, for example, comprises the G major tonic chord – G, B and D. I suggest reading through the piece and determining the harmonic progressions by playing every bar as a chord: play the firstbeat bass crotchet separately, but then play the quaver and crotchet chord (sometimes dotted crotchet) together. This will help you become familiar with the note patterns and hand-position changes.

TRACK 3

0)7732

© Erica Worth

Subtitled ‘On the Lake’, periodicals and penned various compositions. pieces entitled London Scenes.

Regent’s Park is the sixth in a set of 13 Old Bond Street, At Madame (Other pieces include The Nelson Column, of the editor remembers Tussaud’s and Buckingham Palace.) A colleague by its charm that he suggested learning it when young, and was so taken lesson on this piece. its inclusion. Read Melanie Spanswick’s

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

Regent’s Park (On the Lake)

1RZ IRU WKH /+ À QJHULQJ In bar 1, you can use the standard fingering of 5-2-1 for the quaver and two-note crotchet chord. Or,

Cuthbert HARRIS (1870-1932)

London, in 1870. Chiefly an Cuthbert Harris was born in Holloway, various churches throughout organist, he held organist positions at Church, Streatham, where he London including St. Leonard’s Parish also taught harmony and voice played a III/31 stop Walker organ. Harris music by correspondence, at the London Academy of Music, taught wrote articles for music prepared students for music examinations,

:KDWHYHU À QJHULQJV \RX GHFLGH WKH /+ À IWK À QJHU ZLOO VWLOO QHHG to be agile. Using bar 3 as an example, place the tip of the fifth finger firmly on the first bass note of the bar with a fairly full tone, keeping it depressed for its full value. Then quickly leap to the D an octave higher (also to be played with the fifth finger); try to play this second note with a softer tonal colour, before going on to play the second crotchet beat (the two-note chord) with a little more sonority to that of the preceding quaver.

Matching the sound in this way will give the illusion of legato.

Once the LH is secure and up WR VSHHG LQWURGXFH WKH VXVWDLQ (right) pedal. Follow the suggested markings. By using the pedal with the LH on its own, you will be able to hear the sound and the resonance more clearly.

SEE SCORES SECTION

The RH melody will need some beautiful phrasing. Always aim for a smooth, melodic line. Try to ‘place’ the first melody note 20• Pianist 121

(top G, bar 1) with a fairly deep touch; a good arm weight will help achieve the required cantabile.

As a rule, the upper note of each two-note chord must be highlighted, as it’s vital to the melodic line. To do this effectively, move the wrist and hand a little to the right, ensuring your arm weight is supporting the fifth finger, and aim to keep the lower note of each two-note chord soft.

LEARNING TIP To ensure an elegant and flowing performance, try to keep a steady pulse throughout – with just a brief rallentando during the final two bars.

Some of the wide intervals within the melody line create intensity and drama. The D to the B in the second beat of bar 2, for example, provides a yearning effect before arriving at the A at the beginning of bar 3. In order to highlight this effect, play the D with a cantabile touch, before moving to the B, ‘placing’ it carefully with a slightly deeper sound. The following A can be played with a firmer tenuto touch: lean into it, ensuring that the sound carries for the value of the note. Similar intervals at bars 3/4, 6/7, 9/10, 13/14, 18/19, 21/22 and 22/23 will all benefit from this approach. n More information about Melanie Spanswick can be found at www.melaniespanswick.com

HOW TO PLAY ABILITY RATING INTERMEDIATE

GRIEG

BERCEUSE LYRIC PIECE OP 38 NO 1 Endorsed by Rachmaninov, Grieg’s writing is wonderfully pianistic, says Nils Franke. Even the two-against-three rhythm won’t cause too much concern if you always VIQIQFIV XS XLMRO QIPSH] ½ VWX Key G major Tempo Allegretto tranquillo Style Romantic Will improve your Two-against-three Understanding of structure Phrasing

What is it about the success of Grieg’s piano music? I think Rachmaninov had worked it out: ‘Grieg … had the gift of writing beautifully for the piano and in pure klaviermässig style.’

Rachmaninov’s perception of the German word klaviermässig was that it stood for ‘lies well under the fingers’ and ‘is comfortable to play’. From a pianist’s perspective, that sense of idiomatic writing must surely be part of the essence of Grieg.

33 to the end, which recaps near enough two thirds of the piece.

Whether you choose to adopt this repeat or not is entirely up to you: both versions are equally valid.

The main technical challenge for the entire piece appears as early as bar 3. For some, the timing of the lower line in the RH of that bar presents a bit of a challenge.

Playing two-against-three notes in the same hand needs precise coordination skills. If you haven’t done this before, it’s worth learning the placing of notes with different rhythmic patterns. Take bar 53 first of all: here there is no additional alto line in the RH, so it’s a good texture for learning to position the second and fourth quaver of the LH literally just after the second triplet quaver in the patterns of the RH. It’s a stepping stone to subsequently taking on bar 3 (and bar 11). If problems persist, here is a back-up plan: play the upper line in bar 3 with the RH, and the lower (alto) line with the LH until both the triplets and the alto quaver line sound fluid and even. Then copy the sound, using only the RH.

Berceuse is the opening piece of Grieg’s second volume (Op 38) of Lyric Pieces. Though published in 1883, sketches for some of the Lyric Pieces go back to the mid1860s, when Grieg became more interested in the combination of musical material from Norwegian folk idioms with forms and scoring of what some perceive as art music.

TRACK 8

Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)

INTERMEDIATE

Berceuse Op 38 No 1

0)7732

a waltz. Both pieces, and more, Lyric Piece, Remembrances, this time as the Lyric Pieces are technically have appeared in past issues. Some of this endearing Berceuse – are perfect challenging, whereas others – such as

collection of 66 Lyric Pieces Published in five separate volumes, the best known pieces, such as includes several of the Norwegian composer’s March of the Trolls and Butterfly.

Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, To Spring, Arietta, was known to be one of The theme of the first piece in the set, to complete the cycle in his last Grieg’s favourite melodies. He used it

for the intermediate-level pianist. guidance.

Turn to Nils Franke’s lesson for further

$W À UVW VLJKW WKHUH DUH WKUHH distinct sections: the opening bars in G major (bars 1-16) which are repeated (17-32), a contrasting middle section around G minor (33) and B flat minor (41), leading to a modulating reworking of the opening 16 bars and a four-bar link passage (bars 67-70), followed by the return of the opening.

Or so it seems. Grieg must have recognised that the quality of the musical material meant that they could be enjoyed for a bit longer.

In the single edition of the work, dating from 1890, the composer agreed to include the repeat of bars

SEE SCORES SECTION

The LH stretches in bars 39 and 47 aren’t possible to play as chords. If you want to play them as such, you’ll need to take the upper note in the RH (see score) which requires a quick adjusting of the position of the RH across the bar line into bars 39 and 47. Although it feels like a bit of 21• Pianist 121

a sudden movement, hold the preceding quavers in the RH on the pedal, which should give you enough time to reposition the RH.

LEARNING TIP If needed, practise the complex RH patterns with both hands before copying the sound with your RH only.

Bars 49 to 50 should have an improvisatory sense to them. This is implied by the notes in small print. There are different ways to achieve this, but a good starting point might be retaining a feeling for the crotchet beats, just spacing things out a little more. For guidance, listen to Chenyin Li’s sensitive performance.

The section in bars 67-70 is a link passage. These four bars take the player (and listener) back to the musical material of the opening.

The minims in the LH are slurred, and the first crotchets in the RH of each bar are emphasised. For the purpose of practising, it’s worth leaving out the chords in the LH and only playing the crotchets in the RH against the minims in the LH. You’ll get a clear sense of the descending chromatic line that underpins this link passage. When adding the offbeat chords in the LH thereafter, retain that sense of harmonic clarity. n More information about Nils Franke can be found at www.nils-franke.com.

HOW TO PLAY ABILITY RATING ADVANCED

JS BACH

GIGA FROM PARTITA NO 1 IN B FLAT BWV 825 This Italian dance will excite both listener and player if you spend ample time studying the choreography of each hand, says harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani Key B flat Tempo Giga Style Baroque Will improve your Hand-crossing technique Use of dynamics Slurs

Let us start out with a bit of informed housekeeping. If you have the volume of all Six Partitas (BWV 825-830), casually glance through it to familiarise yourself with the variety of movement names. In this particular Partita, Bach is very particular when he chooses to use the Italian name for the jig – the giga. This is Bach showing us that he can write in different styles and with various aims in mind; as Bach points out on his title page, these works are for a ‘refreshment of the spirit’.

‘RH’ or ‘LH’ on the score. [See ‘alternative’ way in box opposite.]

Some scholars believe the name giga (or gigue) is from the old French ‘giguer’, ‘to jump’; perhaps Bach is making some reference to this in the way the hands interact, which shows us that this is music for the eyes as much as it is for the ears. /HW·V À UVW ZRUN RQ WKLV SDWWHUQ of a crotchet followed by two remaining triplet notes within the one whole beat. Now, remember that each first note of the beat is played by the RH. To learn music like this, I take it apart and for the first five bars or so, I play the RH alone and count each crotchet out loud like so: ‘one, two, three, four.’

The giga is a lively dance in compound time. This means that the bar comprises two or four beats, with each beat divided into three. This particular giga has four beats in the bar.

The division of the beat into three is crucial in helping us À JXUH WKLV SLHFH RXW Notice how each crotchet beat has the stem pointing upwards. This is definitely what Bach intended. Subsequent 18th-century copies of the Partitas by his students and friends are full of variants and the occasional error, but they always make a point of following this original beaming.

If you look at beats two and three of the first two bars, you’ll see that the stem points upward even when the range goes below the two triplet notes that follow.

TRACK 14

© Kaja Smith

Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) 825

Giga (Gigue) from Partita No 1 in B

ADVANCED

flat BWV

; 4-%2-781%+%>-2) '31 ;%8', ',)2=-2 0- 40%= 8,-7 %8 ;; that the composer intended the triplets with the RH. Esfahani argues with the RH and the inner reverse: that is, the crotchet melody notes can’t ask Bach!) We present both triplets with the LH. (It’s a shame we ‘RH takes the crotchets’; fingerings versions: fingering in bold/black is for Experiment with both and see in grey/italic for ‘LH takes the crotchets’. fascinating exercise. which you prefer? We have found it a further guidance.

Turn to Mahan Esfahani’s lesson for

Italian way of spelling, Giga. on YouTube and speak A note about the fingering: Look at performances and you will find that most to pianists who have performed this piece, with the LH and the inner choose to play the crotchet melody notes

Play each crotchet with the RH, which at times jumps over the LH. We don’t even need to mark

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of Bach’s Partita No 1 as the Pianists often refer to the last movement Esfahani points out in his lesson Gigue. But, as harpsichordist Mahan that it should carry the jig’s inside this issue, Bach himself was clear

SEE SCORES SECTION

At this point, you should plan \RXU À QJHULQJ IRU WKH 5+ Mine is on the score. Always bear in mind to use fingering to help you get your musical ideas across.

Believe me when I say that I still assiduously write and study all of my fingerings for all music, and especially for music that I have played for most of my life.

Firstly, it’s important to learn the choreography of a piece of music.

This is particularly important in a place like bars 25 to 27, where writing in the fingering can help you see patterns that preserve your energy throughout a strenuous or difficult piece. So, in bar 25, we see that by holding the LH in one position, we can simply use different fingers for the triplets in the first three beats before slightly 22• Pianist 121

shifting the hand for the fourth beat and subsequent two bars.

That way, we can maintain our concentration on the RH, making sure it fits the crossing of range that it sometimes has to achieve.

LEARNING TIP Learn the RH crotchet notes alone, all the way through, increasing the tempo gradually until you’ve reached the intended speed.

Fingering can also help emphasise articulations. I haven’t marked any slurs in the score because I think that ultimately phrasing – and its subsidiary elements, such as slurs and articulation – is an artistic choice which, though affected by the fingering that we choose (e.g. slurs being easier to effectuate with adjacent fingers and staccato being easier between disjunct fingers over larger intervals), is something that can exist in the abstract and which can change with one’s mood over the course of a performance.

Carry on practising like this IRU WKH HQWLUH À UVW KDOI EDUV 1-16). Practise with the tempo of crotchet equals 80 at first until you can count out loud without any errors or hesitation. Then take it up to 95, repeat the process, then to 110 and finally to 140.

I personally play it at crotchet equals 160-165 depending on my mood and whether my hands are warm enough (and, of course, the acoustic in the hall), but you

should always remember that tempo is less important than the expression you draw out from relations between the notes.

The LH is quite straightforward once you realise how to use your ÀQJHUV HIÀFLHQWO\ DV PHQWLRQHG earlier). Return to the first five bars again with both hands. The fingerings for the RH are above the notes and the ones for the LH are below the notes. You will be surprised how it all fits into place.

7KH RUQDPHQWDWLRQ WKDW ZRXOG be necessary for such a piece is all but sketched out by Bach already. This includes passing trills in conjunct (step-wise) motion, e.g. bars 5 and 7. But that doesn’t mean we can’t apply it elsewhere.

Firstly, this sort of trill might be what Bach would have known as the tremblement appuyé or ‘tied trill’ where the initial note is the first note of the trill above the following note to which it is tied. In the 19th century this was mistakenly known as an ‘inverted mordent’ – simply, you might think of it as a quick trill from the main note (above which the trill is notated) which occurs slightly after the downbeat so as to show the tension implied by the slur. If you choose to play it as a normal trill, though, don’t forget that the trill is from the note above! And, of course, if you wish to show the continuity of the line a bit better, there’s nothing wrong with playing the ornaments slightly before the beat. We can apply this trill in other places, e.g. bars 26 between beats two and three. But the problem with applying ornamentation in a lot of Bach is that our originality comes into conflict with the composer’s.

I promise you, over time you’ll absorb enough of Bach’s musical language to know when he might have decorated something and how he would have done so. '\QDPLFV DUH OHIW WR WKH GLVFUHWLRQ RI WKH SHUIRUPHU Bach would have played this piece on either the harpsichord or the clavichord – both instruments are

perfectly capable of dynamics in their own way. The harpsichord teaches us the importance of clarity in this music, but it’s also possible on this instrument to create the impression of a singing tone by overholding certain notes past their written values and then being very definite about your articulation in other parts of a piece. For example, in the long phrase from bars 32 to 41, I like to play the RH intervals quite separate in bar 32, a little less separate in 33, and then gradually less and less separate until the articulation of the RH and LH are pretty much the same in bar 40 before we take a turn of phrase in bar 41. On the clavichord Bach would have had the gradation of dynamics possible through variations of touch as we know on the modern piano, albeit on a very small scale. So, in this same section (32-41), we might also apply less pressure on the keys and effectuate a long diminuendo over these bars.

Conversely, we might think there’s a big crescendo into the final home stretch and emphasise how close the RH becomes to the LH by bars 39 and 40.

Don’t forget to enjoy yourself!

One of the countless marvels of Bach’s music is that we can slightly take ourselves out of the fray of the proceedings – once we’ve mastered the technical aspects – and be privileged witnesses to a great phenomenon taking place before our very eyes (and ears). After all, the Partitas come from a collection that Bach called Clavier-Übung (literally, ‘keyboard practice’); he means for us to practise our fingers and minds but also our hearts and ears, and rather than trying to get it to be perfect we’re focusing on the beauty of the process. Bach’s music suffocates if we apply too many formulae, e.g. repeats in echo and other schema which, to me at least, seem contrived. Remember, in the Baroque era, more is more. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different ideas and take risks. n Mahan Esfahani’s recording of Bach’s Six Partitas is out now on Hyperion (CDA68311/2). Further info at www.mahanesfahani.com.

Lucy Parham returns to this column in the next issue.

Mahan Esfahani on RH versus LH So, as we can see in Bach’s original – that is to say, in the printing supervised by him, which is pretty rare for Bach sources and something that we’re very lucky to have – the ‘melody’ in crotchets has the stems pointing upwards whilst the quaver figurations have the stems pointing downwards. This is irrefutable evidence that Bach intended for the RH to play the melody.

Now, you might be noticing a lot of videos on YouTube and elsewhere of great pianists (most notably Sokolov, whose playing of Bach’s music I absolutely treasure above all others) playing the melody with the LH. There are a few reasons for this. Early 19th-century editions of Bach did this to make it easier to play the Giga faster.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s perfectly alright, even if it’s not what Bach intended. I’m sure he would have appreciated a good and artistically compelling performance of his music on any instrument and with any means.

As it happens, I play it the way Bach notated it – again, with the melody in the RH – and over time I was able to build it up to a pretty quick tempo. The key thing to remember here is to have a concept of what you want from the score, and then find the technical means of bringing it out on the piano (or any other instruments you might have at your disposal). With Bach, it’s unproductive to think of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Though I always like to remember the words of the great harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, when she (half ) joked: ‘You play Bach your way, and I’ll play him his way.’

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HAN S-G ÜNT E R H EUMANN

BEGINNERS KEYBOARD CLASS LESSON 48: EXERCISE FOR EVENNESS

On these pages, Pianist covers the most basic stages of learning the piano through a series of lessons by Hans-Günter Heumann.

This lesson features a Hanon study which is great for warming up the fingers.

Exercise for agility and evenness

This exercise appears as No 4 of Hanon’s famous volume of exercises, The Virtuoso Pianist – a compilation of 60 exercises meant to train the pianist in speed, precision, agility, and strength of all of the fingers and flexibility in the wrists. Practise slowly at first, remembering to give the same weight and touch to each note. As you build up the tempo, you will notice how easily the fingers run over the keys. Now enjoy playing around with the dynamics and phrasing.

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Georg Philipp TELEMANN (1681-1767)

TRACK 1

Telemann is one of the most prolific composers in history, at least in terms of surviving works. He was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the time. He was also compared

favourably both to his friend JS Bach, who made Telemann the godfather and namesake of his son CPE, and to Handel, whom Telemann also knew personally. Look closely at the technical tips within the score.

Follow all the slur markings in the RH. Feel the down/up motion between the first and the last note within one slur.This means that the first note is the heaviest and the last note the lightest.

When you repeat the first section (bars 1-4), try reducing the dynamics significantly.

Bring out the staccatos.

At bar 9, the opening material reappears.

Again, observe the staccatos.

Go back and repeat the second part (from bar 5).

The dynamics are the same as at the start, as well.

Play quietly from bar 11 onwards, bringing the piece to a calm ending.

The section from bar 5 is louder and more animated. Both hands play the same pattern; try to play the notes at exactly the same time.

Go back to the start, and repeat.

At bar 7, suddenly reduce the dynamics in order to create an echo effect.

Make sure that the LH remains close to the keys.

The fingers should be poised ready over the notes.

The LH notes should be slightly detached – neither staccato nor legato, but somewhere inbetween. Feel like you are ‘treading’ over the notes.

BEGINNER

Prelude in D

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Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)

TRACK 2

‘La donna è mobile’ is the Duke of Mantua’s canzone from the beginning of Act 3 of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. The canzone is famous as a

showcase for tenors. The Italian words mean ‘the woman is flighty’.

Look at the technical tips within the score.

Remember that this is an arrangement of a song, so have a go and try to sing the melody beforehand! That will help you understand the phrasing and where the music needs to breathe.

Bars 4 and 5 act as a musical ‘answer’ to bars 2 and 3.

Feel the oom-pah-pah swing of the waltz in the LH.The first beat should be heaviest, followed by the two lighter two-note chords.Tip: Make sure that the fingers are poised and ready over the chords – even as you play that first bass note.

BEGINNER

‘La donna è mobile’, from Rigoletto (arrangement)

Tail off beautifully towards the end of this line.

Create a slight decrescendo, as marked.

Bar 10 to the end of this page is a straight repeat.

You can make a slight ritardando at the end of this phrase.

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For the next six bars, you need to make one long, gradual crescendo.

So remember to factor this in and start out quietly.

Make a slight accent on the minim A.

Make a slight accent on the minim B.

Pay attention to the RH rhythm at the end of bar 25. It needs to sound clipped and energetic – triumphant in style.

The minim E in the RH in bar 23 is the climax of the piece. Hold on to it and allow yourself a bit more time before moving onwards to the decrescendo in bar 24.

Keep the LH chords subdued.They should not interfere with the RH melody line.

Again, keep the rhythm tight in the RH for all the quaver/semiquaver patterns.

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End with a flourish, with an accent on the final chord.Then lift the hands from the keys at the same time.

Bar 32 is the most technically challenging part of the piece.We suggest that you practise this bar on its own first, hands separately, and extremely slowly.

TRACK 3

DON’T MISS MELANIE SPANSWICK’S

Cuthbert HARRIS (1870-1932)

ON THIS PIECE

Regent’s Park (On the Lake)

LESSON

periodicals and penned various compositions. Subtitled ‘On the Lake’, Regent’s Park is the sixth in a set of 13 pieces entitled London Scenes.

(Other pieces include The Nelson Column, Old Bond Street, At Madame Tussaud’s and Buckingham Palace.) A colleague of the editor remembers learning it when young, and was so taken by its charm that he suggested its inclusion. Read Melanie Spanswick’s lesson on this piece.

Cuthbert Harris was born in Holloway, London, in 1870. Chiefly an organist, he held organist positions at various churches throughout London including St. Leonard’s Parish Church, Streatham, where he played a III/31 stop Walker organ. Harris also taught harmony and voice at the London Academy of Music, taught music by correspondence, prepared students for music examinations, wrote articles for music

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BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

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George W CHADWICK (1854-1931)

TRACK 4

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

Now I Lay Me Down

Along with John Knowles Paine, Horatio Parker, Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell, American composer George Whitefield Chadwick was a representative composer of what is called the Second New England School of American composers of the late 19th century.

Now I Lay Me Down is No 2 from Chadwick’s volume entitled Ten Little Tunes for Ten Little Friends. No 6, The Cricket and the Bumblebee, appeared inside issue 116 with a lesson by Melanie Spanswick.

Playing tips: The RH carries the melody. In order to shape it well, follow the phrase markings and dynamics. Even if the LH takes the role of underlying accompaniment, it has its own melodic line, so make sure to phrase it as well, ensuring all the notes are audible. Bars 17-24 see a brief development, before the opening material returns at bar 25. The piece comes to an end calmly with chorale-like pianissimo chords.

Pedal tips: See markings on the score.

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Cécile CHAMINADE (1857-1944)

TRACK 5

BEGINNER/ INTERMEDIATE

Aubade Op 126 No 2

Playing tips: How nice that the LH carries the melody for a change! Use your sweetest cantabile and keep the RH accompaniment quiet. The RH takes over with a new melody at bar 17, though not for long, as the opening material appears again at bar 25. From bar 29 to the end, try to portray a ‘question and answer’ feel to the music – with the ritardando being the question followed by the a tempo as the answer.

Pedal tips: See suggestions on the score.

Paris-born Cécile Chaminade was a prolific composer. Not only that, but her music was hugely popular in its day, especially in France, England and the United States. Readers of Pianist may remember a different, more challenging version of this piece – Aubade Op 140 – appearing inside issue 118. We have since received requests for the simpler version to be featured: so here it is – the Aubade from Chaminade’s Album for the Young Op 126.

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Friedrich KIEL (1821-1885)

TRACK 6

INTERMEDIATE

Notturno Op 28 No 4

Playing tips: A steady pace should prevail, but allow for occasional rubato.

Start off by practising hands separately: The LH needs to be solid, and there are leaps to be mastered (try not to look down at the keys). The RH will benefit from slow practice, too, especially from bar 17 where the sextuplet figurations begin. Bars 31-33 should be taken out of context (learn these bars first!); start out slowly, building up the tempo gradually.

Pedal tips: Follow the markings on the score.

Friedrich Kiel was a German Romantic composer and music teacher.

Writing of the chamber music of Kiel, the scholar and critic Wilhelm Altmann notes that it was the composer’s extreme modesty which kept him and his exceptional works from receiving the consideration they deserved. Kiel wrote an array of works for solo piano including Romances, Variations, Impromptus and Fantasies. Published in 1864, Notturno is the final piece from his Suite Op 28.

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Piotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

TRACK 7

INTERMEDIATE

Morning Prayer, No 1 from Album for the Young Op 39

ability to highlight the differences in the voices, especially the RH upper voice which is usually played by the ‘weaker’ fingers. Lean the hand slightly to the right, so that there is more arm-weight over those fingers, and keep the alto line quiet. Marked Lento, the piece might have the tendency to drag, so follow the musical line and be aware of the pulse.

Pedal tips: See markings on the score.

Tchaikovsky composed his Album for the Young in 1878, exactly 30 years after Schumann composed his volume of works which bears the same title. The German composer wrote a prolific 43 small works in his album, whereas Tchaikovsky decided on a more modest 24.

Playing tips: The short and solemn Morning Prayer, which opens the set, is basically a chorale for four ‘voices’. The technical difficulty here is the

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TRACK 8

DON’T MISS NILS FRANKE’S

Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)

ON THIS PIECE

Berceuse Op 38 No 1

LESSON

INTERMEDIATE

Lyric Piece, Remembrances, this time as a waltz. Both pieces, and more, have appeared in past issues. Some of the Lyric Pieces are technically challenging, whereas others – such as this endearing Berceuse – are perfect for the intermediate-level pianist.

Turn to Nils Franke’s lesson for further guidance.

Published in five separate volumes, the collection of 66 Lyric Pieces includes several of the Norwegian composer’s best known pieces, such as Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, To Spring, March of the Trolls and Butterfly.

The theme of the first piece in the set, Arietta, was known to be one of Grieg’s favourite melodies. He used it to complete the cycle in his last

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Ignacio CERVANTES (1847-1905)

TRACK 9

INTERMEDIATE

Cuban Dance No 1

Cuban composer and pianist Ignacio Cervantes studied with Gottschalk and Alkan, but it’s the music of his native Cuba that we hear in this piece from his six Danzas Cubanas (Cuban Dances). Cervantes’s Cuban-style music has certainly been popular with readers; Cuban Dance No 2 appeared inside issue 63 and No 6 inside issue 79.

Playing tips: The metronome marking should be viewed as ‘approximate’ – that’s because this sultry dance should be played with lots of freedom

and a real feel for the syncopation. You will notice that there are scatterings of accidentals throughout, which could be a stumbling block, so we suggest learning very slowly in order that the odd wrong note doesn’t find its way into your practice. From bar 17 onwards, a faster tempo is required (approx crotchet equals 76). The ending is somewhat abrupt, so make sure you are prepared and that you finish with a flourish.

Pedal tips: See markings on the score.

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Carl NIELSEN (1865-1931)

TRACK 10

INTERMEDIATE

Humoreske Op 3 No 2

Criticism of Nielsen’s piano music has centred on its perceived ‘unpianistic’ qualities, and it’s true that, like Sibelius, the piano was far removed from the centre of Nielsen’s composing activity. However, also like Sibelius – and Grieg – he had a master composer’s gift for creating and sustaining a particular mood from very early in his career. The Folk Tune which opens this set of five pieces was printed in Pianist 99 and the Dance of the Elves, the final piece, was printed in Pianist 106.

Playing tips: Start out by practising slowly and hands separately: the RH

melody should dance and flow, whilst the LH accompaniment needs to master jumps and octaves. Some of Nielsen’s harmonies might sound odd (e.g. the RH line in bar 6), but that only adds to the quirkiness of the Humoreske. A calmer, more pastorale-style central section appears at bar 41. Feel the lilt and keep the LH quiet. The melody returns at bar 56, which leads to a sweet coda (bar 72) that rounds things off.

Pedal tips: Use the markings as a guide. On the whole, shorter pedalling is required, however the central section will need longer, legato pedalling.

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William MASON (1829-1908)

TRACK 11

INTERMEDIATE

Serenata Op 39

so shape it well, think in long phrases and don’t rush. Notice the variety of articulations and all the quick dynamic changes; there’s lots to absorb so practise slowly. Follow the many shifts of tempo, too. At bar 17, and again at bar 37, the LH takes over the melody, which has a calmer feel.

There is a fair bit of repetition in this piece, so use your imagination!

Pedal tips: Keep the pedalling light (see markings).

Son of American choral composer Lowell Mason and brother of a co-founder of the Mason & Hamlin piano company, William Mason studied piano with Moscheles, Dreyschock and Liszt in Europe. Back in the US, he enjoyed a long career as a performer and composer, writing many pieces for piano.

Playing tips: ‘Impassioned and restless’, yes. But the melody is everything,

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!

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Franz SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

TRACK 12

INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED

Adagio in G D178

seems, right? The notes certainly aren’t hard to master, but it’s what we do with them! Phrasing, rhythm, voicing, articulation... all need to be fine-tuned to perfection – and that includes the rests! At bar 32, repeated quavers appear in the bass line which add a new level of meaning. Then, at bar 54, triplets are introduced, heightening the mood even more. At bar 58, the melody returns, with decoration in both hands.

Pedal tips: Change the pedal with the harmonies, and remember to lift the foot off from the pedal in order to ‘hear’ the rests.

Schubert wrote his Adagio D178 in 1815 – the year which was known as the composer’s ‘annus mirabilis’ (miraculous year): He composed over 20,000 bars of music, more than half of which were for orchestra, including nine church works, a symphony, and about 140 Lieder.

Playing tips: This gorgeous G major Adagio shows Schubert at his most sublime. There is a certain simplicity which confirms that less can often be more. However, heaps of musicality will be needed in order to bring the piece to life. Just look at those first eight bars: how simple the music

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Mel BONIS (1858-1937)

TRACK 13

INTERMEDIATE/ ADVANCED

Phoebé Op 30 No 1 WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM

The hardest technical challenge is in the LH: the constant run of semiquavers should be played evenly and quietly. Not an easy thing to do! When you practise slowly, make sure that you lovingly ‘press’ each and every semiquaver note into the key bed. When you speed up, you will find that the fingers fly over the keys. The ‘bien chanté’ wording in bar 4 means ‘well sung’; this applies to the RH melody line which will therefore need some serious cantabile.

Pedal tips: Ample use of the pedal is required.

French Romantic composer Mélanie Hélène Bonis (known as Mel Bonis) wrote some 300 works – including pieces for piano solo and piano four hands. First published in 1909, the romantically lyrical Phoebé is the opening piece of Bonis’s Trois Pièces pour Piano.

Playing tips: Firstly, even if this piece has an improvisatory feel to it, try to keep a steady pulse. The tempo is Andante and the whole work, from beginning to end, should feel like one big dream. Yes, there are fluctuations in tempo (see bar 15, as one example), but still keep moving.

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TRACK 14

READ MAHAN ESFAHANI’S

Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)

ON THIS PIECE

Giga (Gigue) from Partita No 1 in B flat BWV 825

LESSON

ADVANCED

WATCH CHENYIN LI PLAY THIS AT WWW.PIANISTMAGAZINE.COM triplets with the RH. Esfahani argues that the composer intended the reverse: that is, the crotchet melody notes with the RH and the inner triplets with the LH. (It’s a shame we can’t ask Bach!) We present both versions: fingering in bold/black is for ‘RH takes the crotchets’; fingerings in grey/italic for ‘LH takes the crotchets’. Experiment with both and see which you prefer? We have found it a fascinating exercise.

Turn to Mahan Esfahani’s lesson for further guidance.

Pianists often refer to the last movement of Bach’s Partita No 1 as the Gigue. But, as harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani points out in his lesson inside this issue, Bach himself was clear that it should carry the jig’s Italian way of spelling, Giga.

A note about the fingering: Look at performances on YouTube and speak to pianists who have performed this piece, and you will find that most choose to play the crotchet melody notes with the LH and the inner

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65• Pianist 121

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66• Pianist 121

F O R T H E T E AC H E R

PIANO TEACHER HELP DESK

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hen a toddler first finds a piano, inspiration inevitably flourishes as fistfuls of keys are taken in both hands with uninhibited relish. What fun to be had! Inspiration is immediate, impulsive, and intuitive. But sadly, for many pianists it is an unknown, mysterious field.

The first thing to say is that it is impossible in improvisation to make a mistake. Any single action at the piano immediately triggers another action. And of course, silence is an extremely potent force in extemporisation (as indeed it is when interpreting rests on a printed score). So, it is important to relax about the whole thing, and realise that improvisation comes in many different forms and guises.

You can begin improv work from the very first lessons by encouraging beginners to play single notes with different dynamic levels, different rhythmic patterns, and different speeds of release from the keyboard. This can be fascinating work when the sustaining pedal is held down continuously. Make a melody from a single note – you can try and have a slow section, a faster interlude, and a return of the opening rhythmic patterns.

Or you could go for a mini set of variations based on a basic rhythmic pattern that can then be elaborated by faster rhythms, and then expanded into slower ones.

It is always heartening to see the wonder on young children’s faces when they are allowed free reign to play randomly over black notes of the piano with single hands

Kathryn Page has appeared in concert and on television as a soloist and in chamber music. She is a teacher, adjudicator and administrator for Chetham’s International Summer School and Festival for Pianists, as well as the Manchester International Concerto Competition for young pianists. She lives in Cheshire and has five children.

and the pedal held down. For the smallest pupils it is often good for you the teacher to hold the pedal down so that they are not restricted in terms of movement.

If you pedal it will allow them physical freedom to walk up and down by the side of the piano, exploring the lowest as well as the highest black notes. It is also great fun to let kids stand on the stool and pluck and hammer the strings of a grand piano whilst you hold the pedal down. Indeed, all students can improvise with colour by putting plastic and paper sheets over the strings then playing notes affected by such ‘preparations’ and noting the novel colours that result.

Calm and calamity

Improvisation by way of a story line is great fun for all levels too and will do much to inspire confidence via the sense of selfownership and creativity that will result from the whole process.

Even a simple scenario such as ‘Peace and calm-Danger-Running away-Peace returns’ can be shown at the piano by the youngest student playing with their palms on the keys. Start them off on the black notes as softly as possible, then move to the white notes, using fists rather than palms for the danger and running away 67• Pianist 121

sections. They could return to the opening idea on the black keys with palms at the end.

It is fun to play ground bass patterns over and over again and to try playing different notes, triads, and rhythmic patterns above then. Theory can be made more approachable and immediate simply by teaching it as a practical improvised exercise. Take intervals, for example: If you are introducing major or minor thirds, get your pupil to play a ternary structured piece in which section A consists of nothing but major thirds played in alternation between the hands and different registers, with the pedal held down constantly. The B section could consist of the thirds being played in both hands, unison, fast with no pedal and very loud. The return of the A section could then show the major thirds, either in a similar way to the opening section, or else with the same rhythms and speed but possibly with different dynamics.

No one should doubt that improvisation is anything other than a highly skilful art form that takes years of study – but that is not to say that we do not have a duty of care with all of our students to do at least a little of it in every lesson. Allow all your pupils to embrace the freedom and joy of self-ownership! n

PERFORMANCE

When mere mortals watch magical improvisers like Gabriela Montero at work, it can seem like witnessing one of the great mysteries of the universe. And yet we all spontaneously improvise when we talk – so why not when we play? Can it be taught? Can it be learned?

Warwick Thompson WDONV WR WKUHH JUHDW LPSURYLVHUV WR À QG RXW PRUH DERXW WKH highs and lows of off-the-cuff playing One answer could be that the best improvisers are simply differently wired to the rest of us. As Jessica Duchen suggests in her cover article, Gabriela Montero’s brain might have peculiar neural pathways which aren’t found in most other craniums. She was born an improviser. That’s how she can take former Prime Minister David Cameron’s sad little hum as he announced he was leaving office, and instantly turn it into a fabulously perky invention in the style of Bach. (Search for ‘Cameron hums!’ on YouTube: it’s amazing.) In those biological terms, I suppose the only option for the rest of us is a hopeful stab at reincarnation.

But even without metempsychosis, is

it possible we might still be able at least to lose our terrors, and get a bit better… and even, yes, have fun? To get some ideas about how this might be managed, I spoke to three superb improvisers – Steven Osborne, Dominic Ferris and Nahre Sol – about their approaches to the subject, and to winkle out some tips for improvement.

Bending the rules One of the first questions I wanted to put to my interviewees was: how did they begin? Were they improvising from childhood, like Gabriela Montero? Or did they come to it late?

Steven Osborne tells me that when he was young, he would listen to his

‘I’d say, if you find a pleasure in a chord, or a sound, or a song online, or a melody in the shower – try doing something with it’ Sttev ven Osbo orne 68• Pianist 121

Main image: © DisobeyArt/Adobestock; © Benjamin Ealovega (Osborne)

or Charles Darwin, improvisation was an essential foundation of evolutionary success. ‘[It is] those who have learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively who have prevailed,’ he wrote in On the Origin of Species. For many musicians however, the word ‘improvisation’ can sound uncannily like the phrase ‘tooth extraction without anaesthetic.’ If improvisation is vital for our success as a species, why is it that so few of us feel able to conquer our fears of improvising at the piano, even in private?

‘Improvisation can’t really be taught, but you can teach what boundaries are, and give techniques to unlock potential’ Dom minic c Fe errris members shout out random notes, which he will then form into motifs for improvisation.

He suggests that one of the great benefits of improvisation is freedom from rules. ‘When you’ve learned music theory – Bach chorales, say, or the rules of jazz – people find it difficult to avoid them. But when I improvise, rules don’t enter my mind. I think music theory and improvisation are two opposed things.’

The pros of improv Two of my three interviewees clearly had early encouragement to improvise at home. Nahre Sol, a Juilliard alumnus with an international career and a fascinating YouTube channel about (amongst many other things) improvisation, was different, and did not come to it until later in her career.

It was not until she began composing, after having studied performance at conservatory, that she began to experiment. ‘I had friends from the jazz community who actively encouraged me to lean more into this, but I also met plenty of musicians along the way that told me it was “too late” for me to learn how to improvise – but I just tried anyway. I kept in mind the fact that improvisation used to be a bigger part of classical music performance, and it fuelled me to develop my own skills.’

Both Nahre Sol and Dominic Ferris use improvisation as an entry into composition – the latter with his duo partner Elwin Hedrijanto (with whom he performs as The Piano Brothers).

‘We never sit down and write our compositions out,’ he says. ‘It is all trial and error, and we work it all out in the room. In our piece Rhapsody, for example, we start with a mechanical, repetitive figure, and all the other pieces fit in like a jigsaw. That’s Elwin’s style of composing. Mine is different – I prefer the idea of Mahlerian string 69• Pianist 121

lines, lush symphonic sounds. It’s a wonderful creative tension.’

For Steven Osborne, the benefits were not in the direction of composition, but in greater freedom in his classical work. ‘I looked at scores differently, and saw where it seemed as if the composer was improvising. I got a different sense of how time flows, the significance of the blank page, the silence between notes – a greater emotional logic. It’s not uncommon to hear classical performances where it all feels predictable. How do you find an honest, emotional vitality?

Improvisation led me more in that direction. I’m still a relatively controlled player, but not as much as I used to be.’

Which composers does he think most often draw on improvisation in their compositions? Beethoven, I guess, would be a prime candidate? ‘The question is more, which of them don’t.

Liszt, obviously – in fact, I wish he’d been a bit less improvisatory, to be honest! Chopin, of course; in Bach, it’s ubiquitous. It’s everywhere.’

Learning to let go To come back to a vital question for those of us still in awe of improvisational talent – can it be learned? And can it be taught? Nahre Sol says that it can, ‘but like learning a language, some have more of a natural knack for it than others. And the benefits of starting early really make a difference. In my experience, the main thing is to overcome the psychological barrier of fearing failure, of playing the “wrong thing.” But there really isn’t a “proper way” unless you’re trying strictly to copy an idiom. I’d suggest starting small, and building from V

father playing simple modal improvisations at home. He also developed a love of jazz from a young age. So when he went to the Royal Northern College of Music, he continued experimenting with jazz idiom. Later, on a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, he gained the courage to launch into a much more avant garde musical universe of improvisation. ‘It was an incredible thrill,’ he says. ‘That was where I found a way of doing something much more personal.’ From then on, he began to incorporate improvisations into his concert work.

‘In improvisation, you get the whole performer, warts and all; you get the truly authentic experience, rather than the sanitized version that I suspect most of us feel the need to present. But it requires a great deal of courage.’

Performer, arranger, Steinway artist, and West End superstar Dominic Ferris has been a passionate improviser since childhood. Partly this is because his family comes from a long tradition of theatre, variety, and music hall, and thus learning to play songs by ear at home was an entirely natural occurrence. ‘It was how I trained my ear,’ he explains. ‘It was subconscious, a feeling thing, not a logical thing.

Somehow, I got out of the way of the logic of it all, and just let it happen.’

His skills were further honed as an Anglican organist, when he would be called upon to improvise during the offertory, and he continued experimenting during his studies at the Royal College of Music. Now he brings improvisatory skills to session work.

‘There are a lot of session players who want just to put down what’s on the score, but I’m not like that… I’m generally asked because a producer wants me to put some of myself into the music,’ he says. During his solo gigs, he also enjoys letting audience

PERFORMANCE

‘I kept in mind the fact that improvisation used to be a bigger part of classical music performance, and it fuelled me to develop my own skills’ 2ELVI I 7S SP

that: one note over a rhythmic passage, then add more notes – and so on.’

Steven Osborne gives a resounding ‘Yes’ as an answer. ‘It is a crime against music to hold up Brahms and Beethoven as “real” music and our own stuff as “second class”. I even know some teachers who have forbidden their students from improvising, because they think it will interfere with their classical playing. But improvising is really the most natural thing in the world. Think of kids at the piano, the sheer joy of making noise. And when you talk, everything is improvised: the idea that you can only say other people’s words is absurd. So I’d say, if you find a pleasure in a chord, or a sound, or a song online, or a melody in the shower – try doing something with it. Play along. Make different harmonies. Just play.’ He’s aware, however, of the dangers of falling back on ‘tricks’ which can help out when the Muse fails to appear. ‘Speaking as an amateur, I’d guess that those people who improvise all the time must develop a repertoire of things they call upon when they’re not inspired. I never had that. If I was relaxed, the results were spontaneous and creative. If I wasn’t, it was terrible.’

When Dominic Ferris teaches, he sees his job more as a psychological one than a technical one. ‘Improvisation can’t really be taught,’ he says, ‘but you can teach what boundaries are, and give techniques to unlock potential. It’s one of the most rewarding things, to feel like you’ve unlocked something in a student. I encourage students to work with melody-driven music, and take it to different places, create new harmonies, vary the colours.’

So it can’t be taught, but it can, I suggest cheekily? ‘You’ll have to forgive me. A lot of these questions you’re asking me, I’ve never really thought about, and haven’t really analysed.’ So he’s improvising his answers, in fact?

‘Exactly!’ The lack of analysis is actually part of the process, Ferris admits. ‘I have a very good short-term memory, but I’m surprised by how much I don’t remember about my improvisations afterwards. It’s like I’ve gone to another place. (Coincidentally – or perhaps not – this is also how Gabriela Montero describes her playing.) It’s like a dream which, however ludicrous the scenario, feels real and obvious when you’re in it.’ % ½RI FEPERGI I noticed that Steven Osborne does not improvise very much any more in his concerts. He once spoke in an interview of improvisation being like ‘divine inspiration’, and more recently of subsequently moving away from his religious faith. Are they connected?

‘No, I think that’s really a side issue. I improvised for years after not being religious. I stopped because my classical playing was getting better, and my improvising wasn’t, and it was coming to feel like a parlour trick. I still do occasional jazz encores and transcriptions, but I haven’t for a while.’

One thing which seems an irreconcilable tension at the heart of improvisation, is the question of structure. How can you plan the unplannable? ‘Structure is the one thing you can never rely on,’ says Ferris. ‘You can’t have a grand plan. In my “random note” improvisations, I use the motif as a kind of anchor, and that helps. And jazz has structures like the 12-bar blues. But, overall, if it’s structured, then it’s not improvisation, is it?’

But surely the risk of unstructured 70• Pianist 121

performances is that they simply become amorphous bits of musical porridge – like stories with a beginning, and a bit of a middle, but no end. Steven Osborne admits to having sat through more than one interminable evening of dreadful avant garde improvisations in his time. Nahre Sol offers a nuanced take on the matter.

‘You really need both structure and spontaneity,’ she says. ‘In fact, you wouldn’t really be able to experience the true characteristics of either if they existed in isolated form. A “fluid” moment that is presented within the pillars of organised form feels more special than if heard amongst other sections that have been equally free.

And equally something with clear form may be too rigid and predictable if not accompanied by moments that are more human and expressive. I try to keep it all in mind, and it dictates what type of momentum the music needs from section to section… all the way to how it almost “wants” to end.’

Improvisation, then, seems to get to the heart of what art is, and even what it is for. In music – as in novels, or cinema, or dance – we all want some kind of structure, but we all want something that reflects the unpredictability of life too. Listening to a good improvisation, you might get more of one than the other – but you’ll definitely get the tension between them. And you’ll know it will never be repeated. Even the best recording can never capture what really happened in that room, with that pianist, at that moment, with that audience.

Ultimately, improvisation is the magic of the new. And where would art be without it? n Watch Nahre Sol improvise in the style of different classical composers on YouTube: bit.ly/nahreimprovising.

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P I A N I S T AT W O R K

UNDER THE SKIN OF

CHOPIN Beatrice Rana talks to Erica Worth about her understanding of the composer EH\RQG DOO WKH IULOOV DQG ÀRULWXUD

book, with the last three Etudes as a dramatic final trilogy of their own.’

Seeking not to produce ‘just another’ album of complete Etudes, Rana decided on a complementary set of pieces which paints a broader canvas of Chopin, the man and the artist. ‘The four Scherzos are like three pictures of his life,’ she explains. ‘Nos 2 and 3 belong to the same period of Op 25, while 1 and 4 come at the beginning and, in a way, the end of his composing life. In No 1 he is still the young virtuoso who wants to conquer Europe with his pianism. No 4 belongs to his mature life: I don’t find there the great drama of the first three, but there is a sense of serenity, of arrival and even victory. It’s like the final chapter: notice how it’s the only Scherzo in a major key.

He finally gets there, after all his struggles with love, his home country and his health.’

A different Chopin On a technical level – and for most of us this is a very relative observation – Rana finds the First Scherzo ‘easiest’ to play: ‘It is very repetitive… once you have learnt the passages then it’s always the same.’ However, all four

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© Simon Fowler

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arely out of her teens, Beatrice Rana took silver at the 2013 Van Cliburn Competition in Texas. Agents and record labels saw and heard something special – and she made her debut in these pages as the cover artist of Pianist 87 in 2015. More than five years on, she has turned to repertoire of intensely personal significance for her fourth Warner Classics album: an all-Chopin affair, pairing the Etudes Op 25 with the Four Scherzos.

The coupling is unusual, if not unique on disc. ‘Of course,’ she acknowledges, ‘the most obvious thing is to programme all the Etudes in one album, or a couple of the Scherzos with something else. But from the first moment I played Op 25, I felt that it’s one big piece divided into twelve chapters. These Etudes were composed while Chopin was in love with George Sand and was already in poor health. Then he went to Mallorca, where we know that the locals made life hard for them, and he had nightmares and visions at night. And it was around this time that he became aware he’d never be able to return to Poland. You can hear all these dramatic elements in the music. As soon as you understand this, Op 25 is like a

Scherzos – to say nothing of the Etudes – require a flawless technique. What Rana finds most challenging is not the finger pyrotechnics but the unique rubato which makes great Chopin playing ebb and flow without losing the line.

‘Whenever I get the opportunity to play Chopin, I realise how beautiful his music is. The melodies and certain harmonies are so beautiful that it’s very easy to be too self-indulgent. For me, it’s all about not playing the music for myself – but for others.’

The charge of self-indulgence or sentimentality is still levelled at Chopin’s style from time to time. Rana makes clear the limitations of such a view: ‘Chopin is reserved, visionary and mysterious.’ How so? ‘I always have this feeling that his image is the “sugar” composer. I’m not saying that’s not true, because he can really speak to the heart. But we always relate Chopin to his Nocturnes and Waltzes, which belong to the lighter part of his life when he was in Paris visiting rich ladies in their fancy apartments. But we can see that he can be a dark composer – and intellectual in the use of counterpoint, for example. I got to know him from the darker side. When I was young, my teacher didn’t allow me to play the Nocturnes, the Waltzes and so on. I had to wait until I was 15, and I started with the Préludes. I got to know a completely different Chopin.’

8MQI XS VI¾ IGX Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the album sessions were suspended for a year between recording the Etudes and Scherzos. ‘I live in Italy and I always record in Berlin,’ says Rana, ‘but the producer is Norwegian. We kept postponing and postponing.’ Quarantine restrictions have also made it hard for her to turn to teachers Benedetto Lupo and Arie Vardi for advice. Instead, with typical resourcefulness, she has made the best of becoming her own teacher. ‘I have arrived at this moment in life where I know from the first moment what they’d say,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to take a little bit of distance – to stay at home and enjoy the silence. I wanted to listen to myself and see what I could do – to think about the music. I have a wonderful relationship with them both, but I needed more space.’

The time for such space is now over. Our conversation took place towards the end of June, when she was about to zip off to Milan to play Brahms’s First Concerto at La Scala, conducted by Manfred Honeck. After that, she was looking forward to the Classiche Forme Festival in July, which she founded in her Puglian hometown of Lecce on the very heel of Italy. The easing of lockdown hasn’t come a moment too soon for this energetic young pianist: ‘It was quite intense when I finally was able to play in front of an audience. My first solo recital was just three weeks ago. As I was playing, I realised that I hadn’t played in front of an audience since October 2020! Music is made to be played for an audience.’

Beatrice Rana is happy to be back. As are we all. n

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COMPETITIONS

Finalists and jurors on stage, 2019

COMPETITION

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ecoming a rounded musician of any description is about so much more than getting your hands around the notes. We all know that, which is why one of the most popular parts of Pianist is the Scores section in the middle. We’ve all made our own discoveries thanks to the ever-questing appetite of the Editor for unfamiliar repertoire to delight our minds and our ears as well as our fingers, whatever our technical standard. I’m thinking here of the Scandinavian treasures unearthed in recent years, the likes of Peterson-Berger and Backer Grøndahl, as well as left-hand pieces by Nicolai von Wilm and Géza Zichy and the new music commissioned by the magazine’s annual composing competition.

What if there was a performing competition which rewarded such curiosity, which judged the entrants not only on how they played, but the pieces they chose, and helped them to think outside the one-size-fits-all shoebox of standard repertoire? In fact, since 2019, there has been: the Stanisław Moniuszko

International Competition of Polish Music, held biennially in the city of Rzeszów in the far south-eastern corner of Poland, between Kraków and Ukrainian Lviv.

In the competition’s second edition, ten pianists and 20 chamber ensembles will compete in September for first prizes each of €20,000 plus a number of special prizes. An international jury (headed in the piano and chamber divisions

by Jarosław Drzewiecki and Andrzej Tatarski respectively) will judge the musicians – and one more singular aspect of this unusual competition is the lack of an age limit in either direction – on their performances not of Beethoven sonatas or Rachmaninov preludes but music by the likes of Grażyna Bacewicz, Henryk Pachulski and Juliusz Zarębski.

In one sense, the competition’s aim is clear: the support of Polish art music both within and beyond its borders. The turbulent history of the nation – invaded and occupied from all sides over the centuries, presently seeking a distinctive place in a globalised Europe, as culturally outward-facing as it is politically

74• Pianist 121

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Go to Rzeszów in mid-September– or log on to YouTube – for a week that promises an education in Polish music for entrants, jurors and audience alike, says Peter Quantrill

conservative – has always nurtured a fiercely held sense of national pride and identity. Perhaps no country in the world takes the international promotion of its cultural heritage as seriously as Poland, through channels such as the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the PWM label, which last year produced a remarkable 36CD survey of Polish classical music over the last century (see Further Listening). What else would one expect of a nation which in 1919 elected a professional pianist – Ignacy Paderewski – as its third prime minister?

Pavel Dombrovsky, winner of the 2019 competition

melodic touch of Karol Lipiński (1790-1861), for example; the generous post-Romantic sweep of Ludomir Różycki (18841953) and the bluesy, French-accented language of Roman Palester (1907-1989).

Several prizes of €500 and €1000 reward adventurous musicians who show special sympathy with the solo pieces of particular composers such as Moniuszko, Pachulski and Żeleński. Anyone with ambitions for a place at the finale on 18 September, however, will have to master a concerto from a list which ventures way beyond Chopin’s pair of evergreens to investigate the history of the genre in Poland. The list includes an engaging post-Mozartian example by Franciszek Lessel (17801838) and a punchy, incisive solo writing of the Symphonic Etudes composed in 1947 by Artur Malawski (1904-1957).

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www.handelpianos.co.uk Jarosław Drzewiecki (centre) 75• Pianist 121

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Why Moniuszko?

The competition is named after a figure who exemplifies a century-long gap in the wider appreciation of Polish music, which tends to begin with Chopin, stop and then start again with Szymanowski. Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) at least has a place of honour in his homeland as the founder of a native operatic tradition with works such as The Haunted Manor and Halka. Away from the stage, however, Moniuszko also produced a string of piano mazurkas, waltzes and ‘trifles’ which tickled the ears and trained the fingers of countless musicians and their audiences in the bourgeois salons of Warsaw and Rzeszów.

Jarosław Drzewiecki acknowledges the steep drop of that musical cliff-edge created by Chopin’s sheer genius and his early death (composers in Austria and Germany experienced much the same loss of confidence after Beethoven). ‘It was extremely hard for Polish musicians to compose after Chopin. Trying to emulate him was a risky enterprise resulting in little more than pale imitations. In the end, we had to wait for Szymanowski to come along, and create an inimitable new piano idiom that was different from Chopin yet still steeped in Polish tradition.

However, we will only be able to accurately trace the path between Chopin and Szymanowski when we are fully aware of what went on in Polish music during the second half of the 19th century. This was one of our aims in founding the competition.’

There is, however, a great deal more to the Moniuszko Competition than giving a leg-up to names who might otherwise fill Volume 93 of yet another obscure Romantic piano series on CD. Prospective entrants begin with etudes by Chopin, Szymanowski and Lutosławski. Then they range a little farther afield, with a choice of works by pianist-composers still enjoying a measure of international fame, Ignaz Friedman and Moritz Moszkowski. Round 1, however, already requires prospective entrants to investigate a library of first-rate but unfamiliar composers who lived and composed beyond the Moniuszko-Paderewski axis of late Romanticism: the golden

COMPETITIONS Proud to be Polish ‘We are like detectives,’ says Drzewiecki. ‘We are trying to discover the mysteries of Polish music for our own sake but also for the world at large, in the hope that these gems will subsequently find success and recognition in concert halls outside Poland.’ While both entrants and jury inevitably show a native bias, the presence of competitors from North America and Japan suggests that his hope is well-founded. The jury includes the Japanese pedagogue Koji Shimoda as well as the first-prize winner from the 2019 competition, the Russian pianist Pavel Dombrovsky. As Drzewiecki remarks: ‘We are counting on our participants to go on promoting the works they have selected for the competition in their concert performances around the world. What we’re hoping to achieve is a kind of organic promotion of Polish music.’

Having enjoyed my own travels through Poland – the country and its music – for some years, I ask Drzewiecki which discoveries he has been making through the competition’s activity. ‘There’s the excellent legacy of Henryk Pachulski: his wonderful sonatas and variations,’ he immediately replies.

‘Then there are the sonatas, mazurkas and meditations of Portrait of Stanisław Moniuszko by graphic artist Marcin Władyka

BEYOND CHOPIN: POLISH PIANO MUSIC Moniuszko ‘Opera Songs for Piano’ Cyprien Katsaris Frederick Chopin Institute NIFCCD113 Typically quirky, beautifully sprung accounts of effortlessly memorable salon miniatures Szymanowska Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Preludes etc.

Anna Ciborowska Dux DUX0450 Maria, not Karol: gently ruminative nocturnes and mazurkas

by Chopin’s notable female predecessor, the mother-in-law of Adam Mickiewicz Różycki Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 Jonathan Plowright, BBC Scottish SO/Borowicz Hyperion CDA68066 Fire-breathing solo writing, grandly sweeping melodies and a melancholy turn of mind: a Polish (but French-accented) Rachmaninov?

Zarębski, Bacewicz Piano Quintets Warsaw Quintet Dux DUX0530 High-Romantic and postwar Polish musical voices and big personalities, both in command of scintillating piano writing within a chamber context and for the really adventurous…

‘100 for 100 – Musical Decades of Freedom’ Anaklasis ANABOX (36CDs plus 10 booklets and a book) The start and not the end of a journey through the rich history of Polish music over the last century: ballets, symphonies, concertos and so much more

Antoni Kątski and the spectacular piano concertos by Józef Krogulski and Ludomir Różycki. People are coming to appreciate that there is much more to Zarębski than just the popular Piano Quintet. I’m also looking forward to new interpretations of music by Raoul Koczalski and Theodor Leschetizky. When we go back and look at how these composers lived and worked, we find out how closely linked the countries of Europe were during the 19th century, how they formed a single organism. Composers could travel quite freely across the continent.’

As, indeed, they have continued to do so, at least until recently. In 2021, what is it that still makes English music English and Polish music Polish? Rather than a DNA map of definite characteristics, it’s a more subtle and often instinctively understood tangle of influences and preconceptions. Take the example of Chopin, above all, who went to the well of folk melodies from the native regions of Mazowsze and Kujawy for inspiration, and yet wove them into a musical fabric of French silk. Later composers followed his lead, looking to the folk music of Podhale (Paderewski and Szymanowski, then Malawski), Orawa and Huculszczyzna (Palester, Kondracki) and the mountainous Kurpie region (Szymanowski, Maciejewski).

However, Polishness in music need not be limited to a peasant tune or a polonaise rhythm. Panufnik, Lutosławski and Górecki all ‘sound’ distinctively Polish without relying on such found materials. ‘This Polish spirit is not easy to grasp,’ admits Drzewiecki, ‘but thanks to our competition, we are looking beyond just a few turns of phrase to tap into its essence, as well as bringing to life both artists and music that have suffered undeserved oblivion. Surely this will benefit listeners and performers alike.’

The Stanisław Moniuszko International Competition of Polish Music takes place in Rzeszów from 11 to 18 September, with a repeat of the finale performances in Warsaw on 21 September. All rounds of the competition will be streamed live on the competition’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/user/IMITpolska. See polishmusiccompetition.pl for more details. n

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MAKERS

PIANO ǧ

Despite recent shaky times, manufacturers are continuing to develop instruments for pianists SJ EPP PIZIPW SJ EFMPMX] ERH EPP X]TIW SJ FYHKIX -R XLI ½VWX TEVX SJ E RI[ WIVMIW [LMGL WLMRIW E WTSXPMKLX SR RI[ TVSHYGXW Matt Ash focuses on three very different pianos

Kawai KDP120

Kawai’s KDP range has been a stalwart of the entry-level home digital piano market for years, catering for beginners and those requiring a digital instrument alongside an acoustic. In May this year the company announced a replacement for the KDP110, aptly named KDP120 and priced at £849.00. A cursory glance doesn’t suggest much difference from the outgoing model, in terms of retaining the simple and well-constructed design that has become synonymous with this end of the range, but the Kawai development team has been busy making some useful changes below the surface.

This new model is compatible with Kawai’s PianoRemote and PiaBookPlayer apps for iOS and Android devices, offering a more interactive experience than the simple control panel, positioned as on previous models at the bass end of the keyboard. Whilst the KDP120 retains the Shigeru Kawai SK-EX concert grand piano sound from its predecessor, the Responsive Hammer Compact II keyboard action has been further refined, with improved cushioning to reduce noise when the keys are released to their resting position.

Learning the piano in close quarters to neighbours can sometimes prove a challenge, and there is a tendency for the sound of digital pianos to suffer at low volumes. Kawai has addressed this in the KDP120 with Low Volume Balance, which optimises sound when you can’t play loud and don’t want to use headphones. This alters the frequency response curve across the bass, midrange and treble to avoid the deterioration in tonal quality that usually comes with playing at low volumes.

polyester finishes aplenty in showrooms. It can look lovely in some situations and does infer a relationship to the glamour of a concert grand, but it isn’t suitable for every setting.

The team at Braunschweig-based piano maker Schimmel has developed a new ‘Super Matte’ black finish in order to provide a practical and interesting alternative. This ecofriendly solvent-free lacquer finish has been developed for durability and is impervious to fingerprints, making it a good choice for busy households or rehearsal and teaching rooms.

It offers a more contemporary finish than painted black oak, and I’ve been informed that, unlike older flat black finishes achieved by sanding down glossy polyester, Super Matte black will not develop shiny patches, so you can simply dust it with a soft microfibre cloth (and definitely no cleaning agents) to keep it looking its best. The finish is nicely set-off by polished chrome fittings, which have become a popular alternative to the more traditional brass.

The finish is of course only the outer surface, but has thankfully been launched on the C121 Elegance Manhattan upright – the most recent development of a key model in the German-made Schimmel Classic range. The C121 is a mid-range model suitable for players of the full ability range – inspiring for less experienced players, but rewarding for the more advanced. It offers a responsive action and depth of tone to make playing and practising a pleasure, and is currently priced at £14,900 in the Super Matte and chrome finish. This model can also be specified with the latest iteration of Schimmel’s TwinTone silent system, so there’s flexibility for a full range of situations. I’ve owned a C120 for 20 years and with regular maintenance, including a recent service in the workshop at Forsyth Music Shop, it remains a very enjoyable workhorse.

Simon Loat at Forsyth’s tells me they are expecting a special grand piano in the finish towards the end of 2021 – more details to follow as they become available.

Schimmel C121 Elegance Manhattan

Henry Ford’s Model T motorcar of the early 20th century was famously available in any colour so long as it was black.

The piano market often feels similar, with glossy black 78• Pianist 121

Bösendorfer 230VC

At the grand end of the scale, Bösendorfer has announced a new addition to its Vienna Concert range. Managing Director Sabine Grubmüller says in the press release that ‘The new Concert Grand 230VC achieves our every ambition, from its radiant, room-filling sound to its near limitless tonal range, capable of articulating even the most subtle of nuances.’

Traditional piano design exclusively uses vibrations in the soundboard to enrich and project the sound, but Bösendorfer’s VC technology takes inspiration from string instruments in using the whole body of the piano to support sound production. This design was first seen in the larger 280VC Concert Grand (280cm long), and the 230VC (230cm long) adds to a growing portfolio of models benefitting from the added depth and flexibility of tone this brings.

I know from playing other VC-equipped models that the technology builds on the refined and responsive sound that has always been a characteristic of Bösendorfer pianos, and I would expect this new size in the range to offer a rewarding choice for rooms and venues that don’t quite need the scale of the 280VC. The musical possibilities of the 230VC are matched by the wide range of veneers in which Bösendorfer artisans can hand-finish the piano – the polar opposite of the Model T motorcar I mentioned earlier – with options including Macassar, Burl Walnut and Bird’s Eye Maple. The approach to building a piano at Bösendorfer’s Vienna workshop also means that a finish can be custom-produced to match a favourite colour or even to incorporate a particular design.

As always, the best way to experience these instruments is to contact a specialist retailer who can demonstrate and give you the chance to compare instruments to find the one that best suits your needs. Many, but not all, are working on appointment systems following the pandemic, so it’s worth contacting them ahead of travelling. This is a luxury instrument aimed at serious players and collectors, and so a dedicated appointment to try the piano at length should be a standard part of your selection process. n www.kawai.co.uk/products/digitalpianos/kdpseries/ www.schimmel-pianos.de www.boesendorfer.com/en/pianos/pianos/concert-grand-230vc 79• Pianist 121

REVIEW

ALBUM reviews

Reviews by John Evans, Peter Quantrill and Warwick Thompson

MARTHA ARGERICH

ALASDAIR BEATSON

Aus Wien: Solo piano works by Schumann, Schubert, Schoenberg, Ravel, Korngold Pentatone PTC5186871 ++++ Conceived in response to what Alasdair Beatson calls the ‘twin shadows’ of Brexit and the pandemic, his recital explores a foreign but familiar landlocked shore. No Blue Danube, though the waltz as a quintessentially Viennese genre features in Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, which like the little Schoenberg pieces Op 19 are played with a weight and seriousness to counterbalance the substantial outer panels.

There is a depth of touch and fierceness, too, about Schumann’s Faschingsschwank (Carnival Procession) which belongs more to the character of the album than the piece. The climax, though, is an outright winner: Korngold’s Third Sonata of 1931, dating from his Hollywood years but sharing Viennese hallmarks of ambiguous harmony and nervous energy with Ravel and Schoenberg. Beatson takes the fiendish writing of the Expressionist outer movements in his stride, and he gives the Lisztian Andante religioso space to breathe without sentimentalising it. PQ

Tchaikovsky Plus One – Vol 3: Dumka, Danse caractéristique 6SQERGIW IXG 4VSOS½IZ Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet Op 75 Chandos CHAN 20160 +++++ The collection of Tchaikovsky works for solo piano are the chief attraction here. They’re not a mainstay of the repertoire but in their freshness, and emotional and technical range they deserve to be, while in Barry Douglas, winner of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 1986, they have a real champion. It would be easy to dismiss them as folksy salon works until, out of nowhere, the composer lobs a technical or emotional curveball that leaves the listener gasping. The collection begins with Dumka. It begins simply enough but becomes more complex and dramatic as the piece unfolds. Later on, Valse sentimentale traces the same journey. There are more predictable and introspective pieces, too, including the two Romances. Scène dansante is both operatic and virtuosic as well as orchestral in its scope. It’s a perfect way to end the selection and makes a fabulous contrast with Prokofiev’s witty and acerbic Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet. JE

ANGELA HEWITT

VADYM KHOLODENKO

ANDRÁS SCHIFF

Debussy: Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, Violin Sonata, Cello Sonata, La Mer Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel Barenboim Deutsche Grammophon 483 7537 +++++ The cover of this album gives few clues to its contents, so let me help. The Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, with which it opens, is the piano concerto Debussy never wrote – or at least called as such. This is Martha Argerich’s first recording of it, not that you’d know from her easy familiarity with the music. Happily, it’s a joint effort thanks to a score that gives equal prominence and interest to the orchestra as to the piano. Argerich and the Staatskapelle, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, shine one moment and support or partner the next.

The Violin Sonata was the last piece Debussy completed. Composed in 1917, it’s a more disturbed and introspective work than the mellifluous Fantaisie – qualities Argerich and Michael Barenboim give ample expression to. Likewise, the Cello Sonata, to which the cellist Kian Soltani brings a brooding intensity ably supported by Argerich.

La Mer brings down the curtain on a thoroughly sublime album. JE

Love songs: solo works by Schumann, Liszt, Strauss (R), Mahler arr. Hewitt, Fauré, etc Hyperion CDA 68341 +++++ When, like all musicians, Angela Hewitt saw her work dry up in March 2020, she used her time to realize a 20-year ambition to record an album of love song transcriptions.

Whether it was the extra time allowed for research, or the emotional upheaval of the pandemic, or just happenstance, the results have an irresistible passion and emotional openness. If, like me, you’ve appreciated Hewitt as a performer of control and precision, then prepare to throw your hat in the air listening to the wild rubato of Widmung (Schumann/Liszt), or thrill to her joyously uninhibited Cäcilie (Strauss/Reger). But even these are topped by two arrangements of her own, of Bist du bei mir (Stölzel, attr. Bach) and the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No 5.

The simplicity, variety of colour, emotional intensity, and unabashed pathos… I could almost thank the pandemic for giving her the chance to reflect such love as this, with all its pain, tears and joy. WT

Tchaikovsky: Sonatas Opp 37 & 80, ‘Troika’ from The Seasons, Romance from Six Pieces Op 51 Harmonia Mundi HMM 902656 +++++ In 2016 Vadym Kholodenko suffered a devastating personal tragedy, the details of which are not hard to find online. Who can possibly say what affect it might have had on his life, his art, and his career? At the risk of being reductive, and on the results of this heartfelt album, my guess is that he has found a powerful solace in his playing.

I’d previously thought him a tad mechanistic as a performer, but here, in Tchaikovsky’s Grand Sonata (Op 37) and the early Sonata in C sharp minor (Op 80) he offers warmth, delicacy and emotional directness. He even finds a meaningful path, via exquisitely controlled use of tempi and varieties of colour, through the rather clunky transition sequences of the earlier work. His other notable quality – roof-rattling, Russian-style finger-power – comes to the fore in the more mature sonata, and he revels in all the opportunities for fireworks which it provides. WT 80• Pianist 121

BARRY DOUGLAS

Brahms: Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment ECM New Series 485 5770 +++++ Sumptuous Abbey Road engineering sets the seal on this first ‘period’ recording of the Brahms concertos, which only the most diehard sceptic can afford to pass over.

The fragile, floated horn solo to launch No 2 perfectly complements both the sweet, puretoned and portamento-shaped strings and the bell-like richness of timbre which Schiff draws from an 1859 Blüthner, while eliciting the most dynamic and detailed support from the OAE. There is little of the preciousness which I sometimes find in his playing; the deep currents of feeling in the Adagio and Finale of the D minor No 1 especially are borne along by the intensity usually associated with a live performance, but both concertos pulse and surge in an authentically Brahmsian spirit of mingled rage and affection. I love the Blüthner’s cloudy lower register in the Scherzo of the Second, and then Schiff’s sure handling of its limpid top octave in the Andante. Unmissable. PQ

REVIEW

SHEET MUSIC REVIEWS Reviews by Michael MacMillan

THE PIANO: A HISTORY IN 100 PIECES

Susan Tomes Yale University Press ISBN: 978-0-30025-392-4 This is Susan Tomes’s personal tour through the rich history of the piano’s repertoire – and what an interesting, entertaining, and enthusiastic guide she is over the course of its 350-odd pages. The selection of 100 pieces she chooses to stop and talk about aren’t limited to solo works but also include chamber and concerto works, reflecting her own considerable experience as a soloist and chamber musician. The author draws upon her intimate knowledge of the music to detail her observations about the piece and its performance as well as relating its historical background. She does so with wonderfully eloquent and descriptive writing that reminds me of the wordsmithery of the most engaging musician-authors such as Stephen Hough. Favoured recordings and performers of her chosen repertoire are not discussed, which I suppose is fair enough given that this is a history of the piano as viewed through the lens of its repertoire. A book that should appear on every pianophile’s wishlist.

NOTES ON THE PIANO

Christopher Russell Michael Terence Publishing ISBN: 978-1-80094-041-3 Try to look beyond the front cover of this book, because the design that looks like it was created on a budget does its contents a disservice.

Subtitled ‘A Series of Essays on the Playing and Teaching of the Piano’, this is a 150page book containing the distilled thoughts of a piano teacher amassed over the past 27 years. Covering a wide range of topics, from methods of practising to sight-reading, and from fingering to memorising, the author articulates plenty of sound advice in clear and concise language that is easy to read and digest. In contrast to similar books that print excerpts from the repertoire to illustrate points under discussion, no notation is included here, but this does help to maintain the overall flow of the book’s conversational tone. Its target audience is both the student pianist and teacher, but it is ultimately perhaps the sort of book that piano teachers would like their students to read, but are more likely to read themselves.

THE KEY TO SCALES & ARPEGGIOS

Jane Mann Alfred Music ISBN10: 1470612194 (Grades 1&2); -12208 (3&4); -12214 (5) Examining boards such as ABRSM and Trinity have published scale books to accompany their graded exams, and these are often bought as a matter of course by students taking an exam. There are alternative options to consider, however, and anyone who finds it helpful to see scale fingerings written on top of a picture of a keyboard will benefit from these books by Alfred. Content has been revised to align with ABRSM’s new syllabus, and also contains the technical requirements of the Trinity syllabus (with the exception of a B minor scale and arpeggio at Grade 2, oddly enough). There is strong emphasis on fingering patterns, and rules such as ‘Thumbs on C and F’ or ‘3rd fingers play together’ are useful reminders when playing hands together. Natural and melodic minor scales are not covered, but if this is of no concern, I’d warmly recommend consideration of these books alongside the similarly presented Scale Shapes series published by Chester Music.

PIANO MEDITATIONS

Adrian Lord Adrian Lord Publishing ISMN: 979-0-9002990-1-7 Piano Meditations is Adrian Lord’s third piano album; it is selfpublished but there are no quibbles about its presentation. A few years ago, he published a collection of 12 calming and atmospheric pieces in a book titled Sky Blue Piano, and the five pieces in this new album bear the same qualities. The music features unhurried tempi with a good deal of repetition and pianistic writing that helps the learner to assimilate the material rapidly. On first playing the pieces you may come across occasional puzzling harmonic changes, but listening to the music float by in the hands of the composer (his recordings are available on CD, Spotify, and Apple Music) erases any doubts about his craft. The shortest and easiest piece – Space – is just 31 bars long and is accessible to pianists around Grade 4, whilst the longest piece, Ascend, is four pages and can comfortably be tackled by Grade 6 pianists.

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EIGHT PIECES

Andrew Kear Harrod Master Music Publications ISBN: 978-1-8389-162-1 Andrew Harrod is a British composer and educator currently in his 60s; this is his first published collection of piano solos, and it is available in both digital and printed form. Two of the eight pieces in this book were composed in 2010, but the others were written over the course of 12 months in 201819. Introductory notes to all the pieces identifying the source of inspiration for the work provide helpful pointers for the performer. Knowing that Rainbow Waters, for example, was inspired by the appearance of a rainbow over the Niagara Falls, guides the performer’s imagination to recreate the movement and colour of the water.

Pitched at around Grade 5-6, the composer uses a contemporary, accessible harmonic language that is arguably best developed into a musical and pedagogically satisfying result in the one-page piece called Solace.

The overall collection is easy to digest, but that isn’t really enough to make it stand out from the crowd.

CLASSICAL VIENNA

Nancy Litten Alfred Music ISBN10: 1470613530 This is a collection of seven piano trios, all but one of which were originally written as piano solos by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (the other piece was a song).

The arrangements are by Nancy Litten, whose compositions readers may have come across in books such as Piano Mix, Piano Star, and ABRSM exam syllabuses.

The piano, violin, and cello parts are all written at the same level of difficulty (Grade 6-7), making these particularly suitable for GCSE/A-level ensembles, and Litten’s selection includes familiar works such as Mozart’s ‘Rondo alla turca’, and the first and second movements respectively from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Pathétique’ sonatas. The music is distributed judiciously across the three instruments, and provides ensembles ample opportunities to refine their coordination and enjoy integrating their parts into a cohesive whole. An excellent addition to the chamber music repertoire at this level.

RITMÜLLER. MY PIANO. Trust your feelings. And your ears. Ritmüller pianos and grand pianos offer playing pleasure right from the first time you touch one of the keys. They have a wonderfully balanced and full sound, great tuning stability and are available in a wide variety of models for any playing situation. Discover the fascination of pianos.

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Pictured: Model RS 150 • pearlriverpiano.co.uk • Ritmüller is a brand of the Pearl River Piano Group

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