Cortot had some interesting little exercises to do. I liked his thought about studying the difficulty behind a passage in order to understand it by reducing it to the elementary units. This brings about two ways in my mind to solve passage work, making the passage harder, or making it easier, both are effective in different ways. I don't know that an hour of warmups is necessary, but that may just be me. Phillip mentioned a supple arm with the full tone. Suppleness is paramount in French music.
Long was so lucky. I wish I could have learned from Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. So jealous. She had an interesting point about bad fingering choices being "ugly to the eye, ugly to the ear." French music is often very delicate and bad fingering choices will really screw up the sound. She didn't have really anything new but had some good suggestions for practicing to change things up; omit pedal, depth of tone, freedom through shoulder and slow practice.
Debussy!!! Alas, we find out why he did some of the things he did. He didn't write fingering because he didn't want us to become lazy, and because we all have different sized fingers and hands. He didn't write pedal because every piano in every room varies. This really stresses how important it is to listen when performing Debussy. You must be aware of everything that is going on and react to the space. I can't imagine him playing so pianissimo all the time, it must have really been interesting, making listeners strain and hang on every note. Could be very effective. His flat fingers, at times, allowed for unique tone colors, and this is something I always employ when I perform Debussy. As far as Ravel, he didn't say much, probably because he wasn't that good of a pianist. But he sure knew how to challenge us. He went back the finger school and suggested his music to be played like that of Liszt, which makes perfect sense.
Long was a lucky girl, definitely. And I like what she said about using the word "supple," it gives the right idea for relieving tension, but does not encourage sloppiness.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Debussy has his reasons,but in my opinion without any instruction of fingering and pedal make the piece even harder to play and handle.
ReplyDeleteI like your comment about employing Debussy's flat finger technique when playing his pieces! This makes good sence, I think I will try it too.
ReplyDeleteI think that the fingering and pedaling choices are imperative to obtaining the correct sound when playing works by Debussy, Ravel, and other French composers. I appreciate that they left us to figure out these two things ourselves. After playing Ravel, I find that there are only certain fingerings that work best, but they probably vary from person to person.
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