I think some amateurs let the art of subtlety and nuance be superseded by a powerful technique and impressive velocity. There is a lot of value in the French school by their sensitivity to each note, without of course trying to do too much in every moment.
Marguerite Long mentions how important it is to follow composers’ fingerings since they know what will best facilitate their musical ideas. I don’t think a pianist should blindly use the composer’s fingerings to help convey the musical content… Understanding the musical content can come before any choice of fingering has been decided. Every hand is different, so what brings out the musicality for one person may not for another. She cites how enlightened she was by following Ravel’s fingerings, but she should have mentioned Debussy as well… I don’t think Debussy would write fingerings in his music because he knew how different everyone is… this does not inhibit understanding of his music.
Long also mentions on page 320 that “it is not our mind which moves our fingers, but our fingers and their almost conscious movements which set our mind in motion.” This does not make any sense to me… The mind would always be behind the music, which is not at all helpful. Kinesthetic memory should never be the primary means of securing a piece of music in one’s body. Kinesthetic memory will be a natural consequence of enough practice, and of course it is useful, but to rely on this would be dangerous in performance. Fingers do not have a memory; I think all that happens is that with enough repetition an unconscious memory results in the brain, which we call finger memory. If we just learn music consciously it will not only be a deeper understanding but a more secure one too.
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