Basic Rules of Piano Playing

Author: [Russian] Lev / Miao Tianrui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: This is a small book that embodies an excellent school of piano performance and teaching, which has not lost its relevance to this day. In this book, the renowned Josef Lhevinne, addressing both piano learners and piano teachers, presents fundamental principles of piano playing in the form of lectures, written in prose. The author proposes that when playing the piano, the padded part of the fingertips should be used to touch the keys, with only the movement of the metacarpophalangeal joints (the joints connecting the palm and fingers) employed to produce "beautiful sound"; relaxing the wrist serves as a supplementary role in generating beautiful sound; and replacing the commonly referred to "relaxation" with the sensation of the arm "floating in the air" during delicate playing, among other things. These fundamental principles remain widely adopted methods in today's piano performance and teaching. While emphasizing the requirements for beautiful sound, the author also stresses the importance of building a solid foundation, the integration of hand (performance) and ear (listening), and attention to expressive content, etc. These principles are not only applicable to piano learning but also extend to the study of other instruments and the broader field of music learning.