Liszt obtained great success in his early years in Paris. He eventually defeated his competitor Thalberg, won the public's favor. But I was very impressed by Thalberg's ideas on technique and tone: "learn, study and TEST the beautiful art of singing". After reading his ideas, I could imagine how much beautiful singing tone this pianist could make.
Like other famous composers such as Chopin, Mozart, Liszt was not really interested in the piano teaching at least in his early years. He didn't win the reputation as a good teacher until his Weimar years. I doubt his teaching methods when he was in 20s. He asked a new beginner to practice scales and chord two hours everyday. It definitely would make the beginner feel very bored. Before him, Chopin even didn't allow his students to practice more than three hours.
Fortunately, he began his teaching career in his late year. He not only have written twelve volumes of Technical Exercises but also invented the class system of teaching which allows thirty or forty students learn one piece together at the same time. I also doubt the possibility of this teaching method. Unlike the group piano we have right now, only one student could touch the piano in Liszt's class. The students may get some ideas, but the problems they have couldn't be solved directly by themselves.
From many description of his students, it looks that his personality, teaching methods were widely accepted by his students in his late year. Compared to his early teaching, it was a big change. But I think it makes sense. The way how he thought and taught is totally different as the time passed by. Anyway, the contribution Liszt made to the development of piano technique is immense.
使用Messenger保护盾2.0，支持多账号登录！ 现在就下载！
I also strongly agree with Thalberg's idea. Actually I have seen a lot of pianists sang the melody with playing the piano and the performance was so beatiful and it was like a song. In my experience, almost all instruments teachers demand that students sing the melody of their piece before playing the instruments. It is an absolutely good way to play the piece more lyrically and beatifully.
ReplyDeleteI interpreted Liszts teaching in a group to be more of our modern masterclass, and it was intended for students to gain general information about the piece that was performed, which they could apply to pieces they were working on by the same composer. Perhaps, I was reading too much into it.
ReplyDelete