Modern Piano Playing Techniques

Author: Carl Rehmer / Walter Gieseking / Jiang Dan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: This book has been reprinted 28 times in Germany and translated into multiple languages. In instrumental performance, if a player encounters a difficult technique in the score and emphasizes its scientific treatment, it can easily lead to a separation between technique practice and the overall process of piano performance. Emphasizing certain technical elements upon first encountering a piece is clearly based on insufficient understanding and is highly dangerous. Such situations often lead to absurd misunderstandings about the difficulty level of a piece. From this perspective, Mozart's sonatas seem much easier to perform musically than Chopin's narrative songs. However, it is very likely that in doing so, people overlook the higher demands of Mozart's sonatas in terms of comprehension, tone quality, touch, and creativity. Today, people strive to emphasize the essence of a work—its musical content—in musical performance, just as they do in music theory classes. As a result, the distinction between "technique" and "musical expression" appears more pronounced. The refinement of "technique" no longer means simply cleaning and sharpening the tools for creating a work. Technique training is becoming increasingly distant from the spiritual essence of the musical work but has not completely disappeared. Nowadays, most people practice for five or six hours, during which some time is spent with fingers mechanically moving on the keys, with no warmth generated from experiencing the music; other time is spent in a frenzy of pursuing certain sensations, causing all technical aspects that should be paid attention to to be completely neglected. The problem with this practice method is primarily that, even though students have specifically studied the technical issues of a piece beforehand, only those with exceptional talent occasionally have the opportunity to transform their musical ideas into concrete music. The stronger students' sense of music, the more painful the distinction between reality and their imagination becomes. Although music expression is perceived as a complete whole, in reality, it can be divided into countless details, making it difficult for people to incorporate all of them into musical expression at once. Additionally, most performers tend to listen to a musical work in a general manner, paying little attention to its details, making it almost impossible for them to hear and control the details of musical expression in their own performance. Only when performers give up the attempt to include every note-by-note detail in musical expression can they achieve their own intended treatment of the musical work. People would rather let the way musical expression originates from the raw form of sound and develop on that basis. Any final judgment on the musical expression of a musical work must be made cautiously and should not be rushed. Only in this way can performers continuously discover new insights and always have a pursuit in their practice. Only in this way can the works they practice leave no room for regrets. In the process of exploring the musical expression of a musical work, one can make use of the numerous cues in the score. These cues should be as much as possible from the composer himself. Composers generally clearly express their intentions in the score and expressive terms. Based on this, performers can idealistically handle most musical expressions. However, performers should understand that when reading these expressive terms, what should be reflected in their minds is not individual words but rather their precise meaning within the context of musical development. Those who are unwilling to conduct in-depth research in these interlines will never be able to recreate the vitality bestowed by the composer on the work in performance. If the composer's expression in the score is not clear enough, performers can rely on natural, regular musical expression—that is, musical expression that aligns with the essence of the work and shared human perception. Performers can continuously pursue new relative perfection in musical expression based on their individual abilities and understanding. In the pursuit of perfect musical expression, there is no need to separate performance technique for dedicated practice. Performance technique serves directly as musical expression and never appears independently but is closely linked to musical expression, forming a complete "practice process" together. Completely eliminating pure technique practice and focusing solely on the development, form, and organic structure of musical expression with high attention is, in my opinion, a novel teaching method provided by Carl Rehmer for our time. Its basic characteristics have already been discussed earlier in this book. This teaching method is no longer just a novelty following many other methods but represents a different fundamental perspective on the overall issues of piano performance. This noble and natural fundamental perspective has had a significant impact. With constant attention to muscle movement, touch will take on some simple basic forms, and all other performance techniques will arise according to musical requirements. Students no longer engage in meaningless practice but are always performing music. Rehmer's students do not play etudes or perform specific technical exercises, such as scales or finger exercises. Three hours of highly focused daily practice are sufficient to complete their studies. Special attention should be paid to natural musical expression during practice, and one's performance should be carefully examined with the ear, while the music should be felt in the imagination, with note-reading memorization being one step in this practice method. This learning approach to piano performance has brought profound changes to piano teaching. Students who have experienced this change have made significant progress in both performance and musical expression. Readers should not expect any magic from this book but should eagerly hope to gain the best learning ability from it. Readers should not expect to obtain a completely new, unprecedented teaching method but should recognize that for many years, most people have been following the old path of piano teaching, while their thinking has been constantly updated. Here, readers can see a new approach to solving piano performance problems, and the part read earlier can serve as the initial steps toward this new approach.