Piano Mastery Part 11

"The modern pianist is often lacking in two important essentials--phrasing and shading. Inability to grasp the importance of these two points may be the cause of artistic failure. An artist should so thoroughly make his own the composition which he plays, and be so deeply imbued with its spirit, that he will know the phrasing and dynamics which best express the meaning of the piece. When he has risen to such heights, he is a law to himself in the matter of phrasing, no matter what marks may stand upon the printed page. As a rule the editing of piano music is extremely inadequate, though how can it really be otherwise? How is it possible, with a series of dots, lines, dashes and accents, to give a true idea of the interpretation of a work of musical art? It is _not_ possible; there are infinite shadings between _piano_ and _forte_--numberless varieties of touch which have not been tabulated by the schools. Great editors like von Bulow, Busoni and d'Albert have done much to make the cla.s.sics clearer to the student; yet they themselves realize there are a million gradations of touch and tone, which can never be expressed by signs nor put into words.

FOUR REQUISITES FOR PIANISTS

"Four things are necessary for the pianist who would make an artistic success in public. They are: Variety of tone color; Individual and artistic phrasing; True feeling; Personal magnetism. Colors mean so much to me; some are so beautiful, the various shades of red, for instance; then the golden yellows, rich, warm browns, and soft liquid blues. We can make as wonderful combinations with them as ever the painters do.

To me dark red speaks of something tender, heart-searching, mysterious."

Here Mr. Hochman ill.u.s.trated his words at the piano with an expressive fragment full of deep feeling. "On the other hand, the shades of yellow express gaiety and brightness"; here the ill.u.s.trations were all life and fire, in crisp, brilliant staccatos. Other colors were just as effectively represented.

"What I have just indicated at the keyboard," continued the artist, "gives a faint idea of what can be done with tone coloring, and why I feel that pianists who neglect this side of their art, or do not see this side of it, are missing just so much beauty. I could name one pianist, a great name in the world of music--a man with an absolutely flawless technic, yet whose playing to me, is dry and colorless; it gives you no ideas, nothing you can carry away: it is like water--water.

Another, with great variety of tonal beauty, gives me many ideas--many pictures of tone. His name is Gabrilowitsch; he is for me the greatest pianist.

MAKING CLIMAXES PIANISSIMO

"In my own playing, when I color a phrase, I do not work up to a climax and make that the loudest note, as most pianists do, but rather the soft note of the phrase; this applies to lyric playing. I will show you what I mean. Here is a fragment of two measures, containing a soulful melody. I build up the crescendo, as you see, and at the highest point, which you might expect to be the loudest, you find instead that it is soft: the sharpness has been taken out of it, the thing you did not expect has happened; and so there are constant surprises, tonal surprises--tone colors not looked for.

"It is generally thought that a pianist should attend many recitals and study the effects made by other pianists; I, on the contrary, feel I gain more from hearing a great singer. The human voice is the greatest of all instruments, and the player can have no more convincing lesson in tone production and tone coloring, than he can obtain from listening to a great emotional singer. The pianist should hear a great deal of opera, for there he will learn much of color, of effect, light and shade, action and emotion.

WE DO NOT WANT CUT-AND-DRIED PERFORMANCES

"The third requisite for the pianist, as I have said, is true feeling. I have no sympathy with dry, mechanical performance, where every effect is coldly calculated beforehand, and the player always strives to do it the same way. How can he always play the same way when he does not feel the same? If he simply seeks for uniformity where does the inspiration come in?

"The true artist will never give a mechanical performance. At one time he may be in a tender, melting mood; at another in a daring or exalted one. He must be free to play as he feels, and he will be artist enough never to overstep bounds. The pianist who plays with true feeling and 'heart' can never play the same composition twice exactly alike, for he can never feel precisely the same twice. This, of course, applies more especially to public performance and playing for others.

"Another essential is breath control. Respiration must be easy and natural, no matter how much physical strength is exerted. In _fortissimo_ and all difficult pa.s.sages, the lips must be kept closed and respiration taken through the nostrils, as it always ought to be.

DISSECTION OF DETAILS

"Yes, I do a great deal of teaching, but prefer to take only such pupils as are intelligent and advanced. With pupils I am very particular about hand position and touch. The ends of the fingers must be firm, but otherwise the hand, wrist and arm, from the shoulder, are all relaxed.

In teaching a composition, I am immensely careful and particular about each note. Everything is dissected and a.n.a.lyzed. When all is understood and mastered, it is then ready for the stage setting, the actors, the lights, and the colors!"

"I was intended for a pianist from the first. Born in Russia, I afterward came to Berlin, studying seven or eight years with Xaver Scharwenka, then with d'Albert, Stavenhagen and others. But when one has all that can be learned from others, a man's greatest teacher is himself. I have done a great deal of concert work and recital playing in Europe, and have appeared with the leading orchestras in the largest cities of America."

Mr. Hochman has done considerable work in composition. Numerous songs have been published and doubtless larger works may be expected later.

XXI

TERESA CARREnO

EARLY TECHNICAL TRAINING

A music critic remarked, "That ever youthful and fascinating pianist, Teresa Carreno is with us again."

I well remember how fascinated I was, as a young girl, with her playing the first time I heard it--it was so full of fire, enthusiasm, brilliancy and charm. How I longed and labored to imitate it--to be able to play like that! I not only loved her playing but her whole appearance, her gracious manner as she walked across the stage, her air of buoyancy and conscious mastery as she sat at the piano; her round white arms and wrists, and--the red sash she wore!

During a recent talk with Mme. Carreno, I recalled the above incident, which amused her, especially the memory of the sash.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TERESA CARREnO]

"I a.s.sure you that at heart I feel no older now than in the days when I wore it," she said. The conversation then turned to questions of mastering the piano, with particular reference to the remarkable technic of the artist herself.

"The fact that I began my studies at a very early age was a great advantage to me," she said. "I loved the sound of the piano, and began to pick out bits of tunes when I was little more than three. At six and a half I began to study seriously, so that when I was nine I was playing such pieces as Chopin's Ballade in A flat. Another fact which was of the utmost advantage to me was that I had an ideal teacher in my father. He saw that I loved the piano, and decided I must be properly taught. He was pa.s.sionately fond of music, and if he had not been a statesman, laboring for the good of his country, he would undoubtedly have been a great musician. He developed a wonderful system for teaching the piano, and the work he did with me I now do with my pupils. For one thing he invented a series of stretching and gymnastic exercises which are splendid; they did wonders for me, and I use them constantly in my teaching. But, like everything else, they must be done in the right way, or they are not beneficial.

580 TECHNICAL EXERCISES

"My father wrote out for me a great many technical exercises; to be exact, there were 580 of them! Some consisted of difficult pa.s.sages from the great composers--perhaps originally written for one hand--which he would arrange for two hands, so that each hand had the same amount of work to do. Thus both my hands had equal training, and I find no difference between them. These 580 exercises took just three days to go through. Everything must be played in all keys, and with every possible variety of touch--legato, staccato, half-staccato, and so on; also, with all kinds of shading."

(Think of such a drill in pure technic, O ye teachers and students, who give little or no time to such matters outside of etudes and pieces!)

"Part of my training consisted in being shown how to criticize myself. I learned to listen, to be critical, to judge my own work; for if it was not up to the mark I must see what was the matter and correct it myself.

The earlier this can be learned the better. I attribute much of my subsequent success to this ability. I still carry out this plan, for there on the piano you will find all the notes for my coming recitals, which I work over and take with me everywhere. This method of study I always try to instill into my pupils. I tell them any one can make a lot of _noise_ on the piano, but I want them, to make the piano _speak_!

I can do only a certain amount for them; the rest they must do for themselves.

VALUE OF TRANSPOSING

"Another item my zealous teacher insisted upon was transposing. I absorbed this idea almost unconsciously, and hardly know when I learned to transpose, so natural did it seem to me. My father was a tactful teacher; he never commanded, but would merely say, 'You can play this in the key of C, but I doubt if you can play it in the key of D.' This doubt was the spur to fire my ambition and pride: I would show him I could play it in the key of D, or in any other key; and I did!

"With all the technic exercises, I had many etudes also; a great deal of Czerny. Each etude must also be transposed, for it would never do to play an etude twice in the same key for my father. So I may say that whatever I could perform at all, I was able to play in any key.

"For one year I did nothing but technic, and then I had my first piece, which was nothing less than the Capriccio of Mendelssohn, Op. 22. So you see I had been well grounded; indeed I have been grateful all my life for the thorough foundation which was laid for me. In these days we hear of so many 'short cuts,' so many new methods, mechanical and otherwise, of studying the piano; but I fail to see that they arrive at the goal any quicker, or make any more thorough musicians than those who come by the royal road of intelligent, well-directed hard work."

Asked how she obtained great power with the least expenditure of physical strength, Mme. Carreno continued:

"The secret of power lies in relaxation; or I might say, power _is_ relaxation. This word, however, is apt to be misunderstood. You tell pupils to relax, and if they do not understand how and when they get nowhere. Relaxation does not mean to flop all over the piano; it means, rather, to loosen just where it is needed and nowhere else. For the heavy chords in the Tschaikowsky Concerto my arms are absolutely limp from the shoulder; in fact, I am not conscious I have arms. That is why I can play for hours without the slightest fatigue. It is really mental relaxation, for one has to think it; it must be in the mind first before it can be worked out in arms and hands. We have to think it and then act it.

"This quality of my playing must have impressed Breithaupt, for, as you perhaps know, it was after he heard me play that he wrote his famous book on 'Weight Touch,' which is dedicated to me. A second and revised edition of this work, by the way, is an improvement on the first. Many artists and musicians have told me I have a special quality of tone; if this is true I am convinced this quality is the result of controlled relaxation."

I referred to the artist's hand as being of exceptional adaptability for the piano.

"Yes," she answered, "and it resembles closely the hand of Rubinstein.

This brings to mind a little incident. As a small child, I was taken to London, and on one occasion played in the presence of Rubinstein; he was delighted, took me under his wing, and introduced me all about as his musical daughter. Years afterward we came to New York, and located at the old Clarendon Hotel, which has housed so many men of note. The first day at lunch, my aunt and I were seated at a table mostly occupied by elderly ladies, who stared at us curiously. I was a shy slip of a girl, and hardly ventured to raise my eyes after the first look around the room. Beside me sat a gentleman. I glanced at his hand as it rested on the table--then I looked more closely; how much it reminded me of Rubinstein's hand! My eyes traveled slowly up to the gentleman's face--it was Rubinstein! He was looking at me; then he turned and embraced me, before all those observing ladles!"

We spoke of Berlin, the home of the pianist, and of its musical life, mentioning von Bulow and Klindworth. "Both good friends of mine," she commented. "What a wonderful work Klindworth has accomplished in his editions of Beethoven and Chopin! As Goethe said of himself, we can say of Klindworth--he has carved his own monument in this work. We should revere him for the great service he has done the pianistic world.

"I always love to play in America, and each time I come I discover how much you have grown. The musical development here is wonderful. This country is very far from being filled with a mercenary and commercial spirit. If Europeans think so it is because they do not know the American at home. Your progress in music is a marvel! There is a great deal of idealism here, and idealism is the very heart and soul of music.

"I feel the artist has such a beautiful calling--a glorious message--to educate a people to see the beauty and grandeur of his art--of the ideal!"