Unlocking Schubert’s Style with Dominic Cheli

Alexander Weymann I can't believe it, but you just posed the EXACT same question I had!

Gail Starr well, we’ve always know we have a special connection, haven’t we? 😉 Glad I’m not the only one who struggles with this problem. When Alexander Malofeev played the Drei Klavierstücke in Columbus last year, the middle section of No. 3 was so spellbinding and riveting that I never wanted it to end, and I kept thinking: HOW is he DOING that? 

Gail Starr my question also relates a bit to Schubert’s oft-admired, oft-bemoaned “heavenly lengths”, and about those it is always worth pointing out that if a listener doesn’t bring the attentiveness and the special musical sensitivity required for Schubert, not even the best performance can “save” a piece. I know I have told the story before, but after a concert in which Karl Böhm conducted the Great C major Symphony, a well-meaning audience member afterwards trotted out the old cliché how the piece is “beautiful, just way too long”, to which Böhm grumpily replied in his Austrian accent: “Wenn nur net Sie zu kurz san!” (“I just hope it’s not you who’s too short!”)

Alexander Weymann I wish I could have been there!

Hazel great question; I think we all struggle with that issue in various pieces. I’m sure Dominic will have many brilliant ideas for solving this problem! Personally, I found a suggestion by Magdalena Stern-Baczewska  incredibly helpful when I had the privilege to do a mentorship with her: I played Liszt’s “Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth” in which one section poses the exact same challenge (melody plus accompaniment simultaneously in the right hand), and she told me to think of my hand as a little sandbag in which I could simply imagine having most of the sand fall to one side by slightly turning it (more a sensation than an actual movement), making the lateral side of the hand (where the 4th and 5th finger are) feel heavier and denser and consequently producing and projecting a richer sound. It worked! And I didn’t have to strain or push or stiffen any part of my hand or forearm. 

Alexander Weymann Thanks for the tip. I will give it a go!!