Welcome to the tonebase Piano Community!

Thierry Welcome! It is fascinating that you are related to a famous French pianist. I will have to look for his recordings. Can you recommend any?

My wife is French and I am American. She doesn’t seem to know this pianist but she isn’t a huge fan of classical music.

I agree with you that ToneBase is not a replacement for in-person lessons with a teacher. I am happy that you found an excellent teacher to continue your studies.

I almost gave up the piano because my last teacher often canceled lessons on me. It drove me to despair.

Now, I have found a new teacher. She teaches at two local universities and has taught for fifty years. She started teaching at fifteen, helping her mother, who taught for over sixty years. 

My motivation has returned. She has taken me back to the fundamentals to strengthen them.

She is married to a composer. They have done a lot of work in music publishing. 

The videos on here are excellent, but they transmit information in only one direction, as you mentioned, with no easy way to raise questions, and the techniques demonstrated can take months of work at the keyboard.

I wish you the best. From the pieces you posted, you seem quite advanced. 

Larry K 

Hi

I am related to 2 known pianist. 
Désiré Nkaoua, you can find his albums on Roussel and  Chabrier piano music for example on Qobuz streaming. 
Eric Ferrand-Nkaoua, you can find, his Liszt and Stravinsky/Ravel/Gershwin albums. He was often invited to Miami piano festival. 
 

You could (should?) watch the lesson about Taubman’s approach. It is a game changer. 
The more difficult is to “believe” that large moves training will become micro-moves, getting rid of any tension. But when you succeed, you just scratch your head and are so happy. 
 

Kind regards

Thierry

Thierry Thank you! 

I have found albums by Hervé, Désiré, and Eric on my streaming setup, which integrates Tidal and Qobuz under Roon.

I see that Eric made an album with Martial Solal. I saw Solal play in New York a few decades ago. He had just gotten off the plane from Paris. 

After playing for perhaps two hours, he turned to the audience and said, you will grow tired before I do! He then went on to play a couple of more hours. It was an amazing performance. 

I will look into Taubman but my sense is that it was devised to help injured pianists return to the keyboard. At my intermediate level, I have avoided keyboard injuries.

As a software engineer, I spent forty years typing on a keyboard, often for twelve hours a day, and somehow avoided crippling injuries.

Larry K 

Taubman learnt a lot from injured people. 
Really have a look at this lesson, Understanding that your fingers play by rotations and counter-rotations is in fact pure mechanics physics. Full cooperation between fingers, wrist and arm. 
Look at Chinese children of 6 or 7 years old playing Chopin Etudes on Instagram. You will see. Rotation should be the beginning of piano learning. It has been a fresh restart for me at 64 years old. Less easy to forget what you learnt during decades. 
All the best!

Thierry I will watch the video. 

I am curious if anyone has correlated advanced repertoire with an increased likelihood of injury. 

Since I am unlikely to play advanced repertoire, such as the Chopin etudes you mentioned, perhaps I run a lower risk of injury.

Larry K 

Kids playing Chopin Etudes are not genius. They have professors with an approach strongly linking mechanics and anatomy. I have the tremendous  luck to have found this kind of professor who, moreover, is a wonderful musician who leads me throughout the program I mentioned. 
Talk about all this to your current professor.

Kind Regards. 

Thierry I didn’t say that those kids were geniuses but they have a higher degree of physical and mental plasticity than someone my age, which is 62.

In my opinion, those kids have the potential of playing far more advanced repertoire than I will ever play.

One cannot reach those levels without many years of patient, difficult work.

I am thankful that my teacher has taken me back to the fundamentals and has me playing very simple pieces. 

I cannot gain a pass on those simple pieces without rhythmic accuracy, correct detached and legato playing, good slurs, correct dynamics, and balance.

A lesser teacher would pass me far more easily, as has happened in the past. My free ride is over. The real work begins again. 

Thierry  Welcome to ToneBase!  It was encouraging and nice to read your brief introduction.

RE:  Kids playing Chopin Etudes are not genius. They have professors with an approach strongly linking mechanics and anatomy. I have the tremendous  luck to have found this kind of professor who, moreover, is a wonderful musician who leads me throughout the program I mentioned. 

Regarding a 6 or 7 year old playing Chopin Etudes, this does not please me or interest me in the slightest.  Only the opposite.  It is only one outward sign of many that confirm how lost and broken our music society has become.  I know the Professor might have motivation to do so if he is interested in benefiting from this by making a name for himself (based on the eventual success of these children).   He may also say to himself, why not?  If I say no, the students will go elsewhere.  The parents of these children have the same motivation to use there children to gain status for themselves, vicariously, perhaps.  Then there is the audience for this that support, encourage and chase after these "shiny objects."  Lastly, don't forget the kids themselves?

This outcome is not surprising.  Soon the headlines will be baby in womb plays Chopin Etudes with left hand only while blindfolded and juggling 6 chainsaws with his right hand.  I am being facetious for emphasis but it may not be far from the truth if people have their way.  Since faster and louder is the standard of today what are the chances any musical individual could be allowed to succeed if they didn't drink the same kool-aid?  It is zero.

All who encourage and participate in this are culpable but of those listed above I would perhaps put the parents of these cases at the top of the list who should be the most ashamed for allowing this in the first place.  Of course, for everyone involved it is often hard to see the problems associated with this.  Parents who put lipstick and wigs on their six year old daughters and parade them down fashion show runways can't see it either but everyone outside this bubble can see the problem.

At some point talented individuals will make their way to a high level anyway.  That's OK.  I just don't thing 6 or 7 year old children should be in part of this.  Why such a rush and push for this?  Kids should be allowed to be kids and have a normal childhood.

Thierry, regarding the fact that you found a wonderful professor I am very glad for you.  This makes it a joy to learn music and succeed.  Finding a great teacher though is certainly challenge these days.  Ask me, I know ;-)

Doug 

Hello

Thanks for the welcome!

With all due respect, I fully disagree about kids. 

I just asked myself “are they freaks for a show” or “is there something that I do not know/understand?

Now I personally know several of them and I can say they are not freaks, they have several assets:

- a strong taste for music

- parents with trust and love

- a balance life with sport, dogs or cats and a lot of fun

- professors who have deeply studied mechanics/anatomy and methods to educate youth, teaching them a bit of frustration before giving them a phone or watching cartoons for compensation.

My current professor is one of those who know how to lead a kid from Hanon to Chopin or Beethoven, fast.

About teaching have a look at lawrenceng_official on Instagram. 

Throwing stuffed animals to kids for teaching them staccato is one of the huge number of his methods that I wish I had known when I was a kid. 

Kind regards

Thierry
 

Thierry Doug I can see that this has gotten a bit contentious.

The Curtis Institute recently admitted their youngest student, a seven year old pianist, beating Hilary Hahn, who was admitted at ten years of age

There is no doubt that early music education is key to producing professional musicians. 

But, it’s hard to tell how much the children want to play versus how much they are pushed to play. Perhaps, it is some of both. 

Life is a long road and these children  may decide later not to pursue music as a career.

When I was studying the violin as a 20 year old beginning student, the best student in the studio was a 14-15 year old girl who had probably been playing for almost a decade.

One day, we all got to sit in and listen to a masterclass given by Pinchas Zuckerman. At the end, there was a question and answer period.

That young girl raised her hand and said, what do you do if you are sick of playing the violin? All of us gasped. Zuckerman paused for a long time and looked at her. I think he sensed her childhood experience.

He said, put the violin down for six months. If you are drawn to pick it up and play, you will. If not, you won’t. 

I can only imagine how much courage it took for that young girl to announce in front of everyone gathered there, including her parents, that she was sick of playing the violin.

I don’t know what she did in the future.

Thierry Thanks for your reply.  I am not on Instagram but I will see what I can do to check out your reference.  

Larry K Contentious?  Two people had a nice conversation on a topic where each shared their views (by definition, that is what a conversation is).  

And by definition too, we just had a nice conversation here about our opinions on how we each feel about the overuse and misuse of the word contentious.  Hopefully you don't view my asking as contentious?  ;-)

By the way, your anecdote is sadly very common.

Doug You seemed a bit angry, that’s why I used the word contentious. Tone is difficult to judge in social media posts. 

It is a complicated subject, and I don’t purport to have any answers. There are many sides to the issue.

I don’t have that much interest in child prodigies, I am too busy struggling with simple pieces and trying to do well at my next lesson. lol.

I have long ago grown used to the idea that I was a failure at birth. Such is the lot of most people.

Doug Larry K 

There is nothing contentious!! It is absolutely impossible for me with a Wanderer 😉 I could have chosen The Wanderer as nickname. I have chosen something quite close that is also dear to my heart.

Moreover, I thought exactly as Doug some years ago!!

Thierry NK I could have chosen "Die Forelle."

"Akzent oder Diminuendo" is a reference to Schubert's hand-notations. 

Maria 

Hi

Sorry for not answering your post. 

https://youtu.be/ZdBNLhtsjrA?is=ZQLNm7qxMKNfX3oB

with Ben Laude and the great Seymour Bernstein is a must. 

Of course, one still need to interpret those signs depending on the context, sometimes it is obvious sometimes not at all.

Other tricky marking for Schubert is Dim. that often means Dim+Ral as in impromptu 1 D899.  

Hairpins meaning evolution already starts with Beethoven. 

Kind regards

Thierry
 

Thierry NK Doug  I agree - as a reader there is absolutely nothing contentious here. A fascinating discussion! by 2 very advanced piano practitioners.  As a beginner I read this thread and got a good perspective ! Thank you.

Noel Nguyen I have the sense that you lived the childhood experience of a prodigy.

Noel Nguyen Good, if that’s what you wanted, lol. Zuckermann makes inexpensive harpsichord kits called Z kits.

https://zhi.net

My Russian piano teacher in New York was a harpsichordist. She recorded all of Bach’s toccatas on the harpsichord. She devoted a lot of her life to playing Bach after hearing Glenn Gould. She could do a wicked parody of Gould, lol.

You have certainly spent a lot of time studying the piano throughout your life. 

What is you story with regards to teachers? 

Noel Nguyen I enjoyed hearing about your background.

Was it hard to get into the piano performance program?

André Watts said that a good teacher was worth their weight in gold.