Hi Everyone,

I took my Grade 6 exam this week - am hoping for a Merit. Think it went well enough.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to some peices that you would recommend playing to expand on my technical abilities before moving on to Grade 7?

I am keen to move on, but want to increase my skills at the same pace.

Thanks guys,

Ant

After my grade 6, I got the Czeny (I think that's how you spell it) 101 exercises (or is it studies?) Anyway, it has loads of little exercise to help you practise arious things. Bit like the dozen a day were if you ever had those, except harder and without the pictures. I mostly use mine to work on strengthening my very small hands and wrists.

Yes, Czerny exs are very useful. You might enjoy Tuneful Graded Studies by Dorothy Bradley also. Look at books three and four.

Definitely Czerny and Hanon Hanon's great if you're in a can't-be-bothered-to-think mood!

Well done for the grade 6, I hope you get the result you want. To answer your question, it depends on what you mean by technique and which areas of your playing you feel need improvement. If you haven't done any Bach 2 or 3 part invientions yet I would recommend learning some of those before moving on; they help you learn to identify and bring out the different voices in a piece of music. Haydn is good for practising speed, precision and staccato (Gypsy Rondo). Satie (Gymnopodies) and Gliere (equisses) have some nice easy-looking pieces which require you to work on pedalling and subtleties of tone. And of course, learning all the scales and arpeggios for grade 7 will give your fingers a good workout!

Hanon is dry and boring, though it has its uses. For example if you are returning to practice after a lengthy break a few days of Hanon can quickly build some speed-endurance. I suppose Czerny, Clementi, Burgmuller and the rest can be made to sound OK, but I'd rather spend the time on learning more substantial music, real music, that people can enjoy listening to. If you are going to learn Clementi, at least learn the Sonatinas which are real music, instead of the studies which are not. The sonatinas are quite easy, but fun, and can be nice flamboyant show pieces.


A lot of people think that to progress you should acquire techniques, through exercise of various kinds, then apply the techniques to learning pieces. I think this is mistaken. I am in good company. Artur Schnabel thought the same!

The way to expand your bag of technical tricks is to find a piece that you love, that demands a technique, or techniques, that you have not yet acquired, and learn it. The main thing is to learn technique in the context of real music.

This even applies to such basic element as scales and arpeggios. You can learn most of what you need to know about scales and arpeggios by learning two or three Mozart sonatas - and it is a lot more fun that way. Ditto, almost any Haydn sonata will sharpen your fast passagework and the first movement of Beethoven's Op 2 No 3 will teach you to play brilliant broken octaves while the Scherzo will do wonders for your right hand arpeggios!

Of course not all studies are pointless. Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy, amongst others, wrote sets of etudes that are also beautiful and enjoyable pieces of music.

Whatever you do, don't spend a minute on any piece that you have no feeling for. Life is too short! Leave them to the pianists that love and understand them.

I, for example, have little feeling for (amongst others) Scarlatti,

[Update: 02/01/2008 - I have had an Epiphany. After browsing his 555 sonatas a couple of weeks before Christmas - the first time I had looked at them for many years. Scarlatti is wonderful]

or Mendelsohn, or Weber, or Brahms,

[and after re-listending to a stack of his stuff, including Rubinstein's recording of his 1st Concerto, I am also a Brahms convert. I have a new ambition (that may never be realized!) ... to play his Paganini variations!]

or Grieg, or Schubert - not to mention the likes of Messiaen or Boulez. And while I enjoy hearing Schumann and Chopin played well I have no desire to play very many of their works. On the other hand I rather like Haydn's and Mozart's sonatas, absolutely love Beethoven, and am also very fond of Debussy. Of course tastes can change. For a long time I did not think much of Prokofiev's sonatas - having heard only Richter's versions (very impressive, but neither enjoyable nor moving) - then I heard No 8 played by Frederic Chiu, and it suddenly made sense. Other composer's whose piano works inspire me are Liszt, Albeniz, Rossini, Ravel, Rachmaninov, and Scriabin. There is enough there to develop a very comprehensive technique.

Rather than ask for suggestions of what to learn next, you should listen to more piano music. Be adventurous. Listen to works by composers and pianists you have never heard of, or who you did not think of as piano composers. Before long you will have a huge list of pieces that you would like to be able to play. A side benefit of doing things this way is that you end up with an unusual and interesting repertoire, so people are more interested in hearing you play. Your teacher should be able to suggest which pieces on your list would be reasonable to attempt at your present level of development. But is is surprising how much progress you can make with a piece that looks to be way beyond your present skill level when you really, really, want to be able to play it.

The piano repertoire is so vast that you could spend your whole life learning only pieces that you absolutely love to bits, and still barely scratch it.

I guess a lot depends on what you actually do as a musician, but I think that for many people the reality is that sometimes they /have/ to play things which they don't personally like. So it's important to be able to knuckle down and put the work in even if you don't care for the work in question. For the same reason, it's good to make sure you can play different styles of music, not just the one(s) you like best.

Of course it's nice to be able to focus on stuff you actually like and I'll cheerfully admit to doing way more practice on pieces that I enjoy than on stuff I don't. But I try to exercise a bit of self-discipline and plough through the other stuff too.

Sometimes I work away at a piece I'm completely indifferent to, but as I get to grips with it I start to like it better and eventually it grows on me and I end up really enjoying it. If I didn't start off by spending several hours on it, I'd never have discovered any feeling for it.

If you just want to play for yourself, you can play whatever you like. But if you want to play in ensembles, act as an accompanist, play for services, etc. you need to be able to play whatever is asked of you.



I half agree with you on this, but I think it depends in part on how much you care about the instrument. I don't enjoy listening to piano music at all. There was a piano recital at music summer school and I bunked off (it wasn't compulsory) to go look at a local cathedral organ and visit an organ builder's workshop. I'm never going to be a pianist, it's not my instrument of choice and I don't really connect with it. But I recognise that being able to play the piano to some extent is a useful skill for any musician, so I'm trying to make a bit of progress with it. I have very little idea about what pieces would be good to look at next, so, like several others on the forum, I'm open to suggestions and advice from people who have far more knowledge of what's out there.
Your way works better for people who care about the piano (or for whatever instrument it is that people do care about). It works for me on other instruments - I go to lots of organ recitals, I listen to the voluntaries at church, I page-turn for organists whenever I get the chance to, etc., so I'm getting regular exposure to organ music and I have an ever-growing list of "stuff I want to play one day" (some of which I've dabbled with a bit even though it's way way beyond my current ability). But even with organ, I ask for recommendations for repertoire to look at. I don't want to miss out on some great stuff just because I didn't know it existed.
Playing stuff that's way above your present level can mean you just end up butchering it and/or developing bad habits, which make it harder to learn to play it properly even when your playing standard has improved enough. One of my FRCO friends said that he finds it hard to take an easy piece that he learned in his early stages and play it well now because the flaws he brought to it at the time are deeply ingrained - it's a lot easier for him to take a much harder piece and learn it from scratch. So even pieces of the 'right' standard can suffer from being learned when you're still inexperienced.
I do tackle some stuff that's way too difficult, but I also listen to my teachers when they tell me that I should wait a while before I try a particular piece. It works the other way round too - sometimes my teachers will suggest things that I'd never have picked for myself. One of them's just set me something in F minor and I'm already missing out flats all over the place. I don't like it at all right now, but I'm sure it will grow on me (it's Bach - I'll probably love it to bits by the time I've pencilled in half the flats!). She also got me to start on a jolly piece by Lang which I took an instant liking to, but hadn't though to try for myself as my usual organ doesn't have a Tuba stop (which it requires). So there's still a place for recommendations, even when you find plenty of new stuff for yourself (which I do - I turned up to my lesson armed with something I'd heard at a recital, got stuck in my head, located in my Bach book and started to tinker with).
Similar things happen with piano music for me - someone points me at something I wouldn't have chosen for myself and I end up enjoying it.

So, I agree that finding stuff for yourself by listening and exploring is good, but it's not the only way to go and it doesn't work if you don't like an instrument enough to listen to its music.


I couldn't! if I only played music that I love to bits, I'd never play any piano music at all. ;-)
I think that piano is an instrument that quite a few people play because it's useful rather than because they love it. It's a very common second study instrument.
So, for some of us, being driven by what repertoire we love isn't going to do much (if anything) to help us develop our piano playing.

T.

Or at least this would certainly be my own approach to improving a technique that I felt was lacking - either in myself or in a pupil. We might as well develop musicality alongside improving clarity - or whatever technique we're trying to improve. There is no point in being able to play a Mozart sonata at a breakneck pace if we just sound like a machine. An impressive machine, but a machine none-the-less. This, I think, is the danger of too much Hanon and the like.

Incidentally, I like the way TG asks for scales at Grade 7+ to be played with crescendo/diminuendo. In my opinion, it is more constructive to learn four scales this way than to memorise 40 when the only object is to get all the notes in the right place.

More on this topic. Here is what VLADIMIR HOROWITZ had to say back in 1932:

"Every composer has a different technique. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, each has his special technique. One must find this technique with the fingers themselves, must feel it out. The studies of Czerny, Clementi, Cramer and the like I have never practiced. They are bad for the ear and bad for the touch, because they are not alive; they are merely mechanical. No mechanical playing assists the technique."

And if you want to know how good Horowitz was, go to YouTube and listen to Lang Lang playing the last movement of Mozart K330.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMi-1Fv7y0...feature=related

Fantastic eh! Now listen to Horowitz's version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv2oM5DE1Mk

Cramer-Bulow studies are great - I think they're definitely more musical than Czerny on the whole...........



I know which I prefer!!

So why so we put so much effort into encouraging students to sit and use their hands 'properly'? (While realising that there is some variation in good posture of course).
Some things you need to listen to without the picture....

That was my initial thought too sbhoa. Just this week I was suggesting a pupil of mine raise their left wrist more! Now I am doubting my reason!!!

Doesn't H's posture really belie the sound he produces!?

Great links, Tom!

I suppose the important thing is the sound we produce, and how we achieve that is less so. Mind you, I'd still encourage young pupils more in the direction of LL's posture than H's - for the simple reason that most people find it easier that way! But the youngsters that are still open to direction in this respect are not playing at this level, and if they have a touch like Horowitz by the time they are, I think I'll just leave them be!

Like I said before, we should practise with our ears, and fiddle around till it sounds good. Wrists up, wrists dropped, fingers taught, relaxed, or whatever. Different things work for different people and in different music. The hand position that we use when it 'sounds good' is the one for us.

Please tell!

[I would like to hear Lang Langs overall conception with Horowitz's clarity of articulation in fast passages, and his dynamic control. - if only my own playing was up to it. I have the perfect sound in my head, but the fingers let me down!

The point was, two completely different ways of arriving at wonderful performances. Sit high/low, close-up/far away, head erect/hunched over the keys, wrists high/wrists low ... etc. ... and of course that, at least in Horowitz's case, this standard of performance was achieved WITHOUT SPENDING YEARS ON DRY TECHNICAL EXERCISES.
]

Well T. If I felt like you do I simply would not play the piano. I' use the time I saved for extra organ practice I simply cannot imagine why you would put yourself through the ###### of playing an instrument that you don't even like the sound of. As an organist you'll always be able to play piano after a fashion - well enough to fool most people - just as my piano skills enable me to stand in satisfactorily on a church organ - though I don't use my feet, and I set all the stops in advance and never touch them again!

Well T. If I felt like you do I simply would not play the piano. I'd use the time I saved for extra organ practice I simply cannot imagine why you would put yourself through the ###### of playing an instrument that you don't even like the sound of. As an organist you'll always be able to play piano after a fashion - well enough to fool most people - just as my piano skills enable me to stand in satisfactorily on a church organ - though I don't use my feet, and I set all the stops in advance and never touch them again!