Adagio sostenuto
This week I have had five minutes for the piano before I left the house to go to work. It’s autumn and the morning light is changing. And I am working on Consolation No 2 by Liszt.
Normally I’m not sure about only giving this five minutes in the morning but it truly makes the morning beautiful when those notes fall into place. I love it.
Factory visits are not generally easy but Steinway and Sons have a nice flagship store near the factory and if you are interested in their pianos, it is worth a trek out. One of their technicians was voicing a Steinway D while I was there so I did not get to play much while I was there (although I did touch a Boston for pretty much the first time that I think).
How did I get out there? Number 3 Bus and number 180 buses. The 180 was not 100% reliable that day but this is hardly Steinway’s fault.
I did get to see a Noa in blue. It was a B, and it was gorgeous to look at. Someone had already reserved it. I envied these unknowns.
The most beautiful piano to look at was one of the Crown Jewels in Olive – I’m sorry I did not have an opportunity to play that but it was truly beautiful to look at.
In the recital room, there were three Concert Ds, and at least one was fitted with Spirio. I have always had some rather mixed feelings about the idea of player pianos but in a discussion with the technician and the store manager, I’m increasingly sold on it. The technician, whose name has escaped me now, pointed out that they can now stream live concerts from a concert hall to a Spirio R equipped piano and had done it for Vikingur Olafsson’s trip to the Elbphilharmonie. I could fantasize about a winter evening sitting in my living room having a concert by one of the best concert pianists in the world streamed to my piano with the sound benefits that go there. Although I’d love to see how they replicate Daniil Trifonov’s touch.
Steinway also had a pop up shop in Alsthaus, the main department store in central Hamburg. I believe it ends end of September 2024. Claudia recommended that I go and have a look at the Sunburst upright there because it had a particularly nice sound. So I did.
They were also running weekend concerts there, and the morning after that concert, I went and had a look at the Steinway B that was in the pop up shop and I did play both it and the Sunburst. There are radical differences between the grand and upright Steinways – the uprights are slightly heavier to play – but it’s interesting to do it. I might aspire to a Steinway B at some point in my life but my journey has, afterall, started with a digital Kawai CA59.
One thing I do have to reiterate is that I spoke to several Steinway staff between both the Flagship and the Pop-Up. Steinway’s staff are unfailingly polite, very open and welcoming. In particular (despite not remembering his name), I would like to underline the very interesting and broad conversation I had with Steinway’s technician (who was voicing the D when I arrived) which covered the need to be not so conservative, views on several top concert pianists, the recognition of how some pianists make you want to play more (Olafsson in particular here).
I’m always honest to say I am not buying today but I’ve found that many Steinway sales staff put the time. Unfailingly they know what they are talking about and I have never met any who do not play themselves. They understand.
One of the things I do when I finish one exam – okay, it looks like I have done tonnes of them but really I have not – is allow myself to look forward to Exam N+1. In practical terms, this means that when I finished Grade 5, I could select pieces for Grade 8 and now that Grade 6 is done, the next up is ARSM.
I don’t have a teacher at the moment so there is an element of suggesting that maybe I should wait. But I have one very clear criteria about pieces that I prepare for exams and it is this: I have to like them. Thus, I’m going to choose them, and while I’ll take general advice like “cover several time periods”, I’ll not be told what to learn to play. I’m 52 years old I don’t have all that much time to be lived. You can see the current state of affairs in my exam planning here under Goals and Objectives.
The ARSM recital length is 30 minutes. Assuming I go for the highest choices on my list so far, eg, some Brahms, Fauré, Gershwin and Ravel, I have accounted for 21 minutes. So I will look at adding possibly one of Granados’ Goyescas too. I will still need to find something vaguely Baroque and I probably can’t escape Bach this time. Or possibly Scarlatti.
One of the approaches I take there is to just listen to the options. There may some nice things in WTC that appeal, there may be some Haydn. The issue is the time balance. I can’t give 12 minutes to a Bach piece I don’t actively dislike but don’t really want to learn when Pavane Pour Un Enfant Defunt is there and has been on my learning list forever.
In any case, for both Grade 8 and ARSM, learning playlists are being put together and this will hopefully allow me to identify a 5 minute piece that demonstrates depth.
I’m inclined to think that I should spend less time on social media. There’s an ABRSM focused group on FaceBook and during the week, a teacher noted that she had several 8 year olds passing ABRSM Grade 8 and she wanted to know if this happened much internationally.
Leaving aside the fact that the whole grade thing is a British-colony centric thing, the general view was that no, it wasn’t all that common, and additionally, was not positively considered.
There’s no way I would have been ready for Grade 8 at the age of 8 and I was generally precocious. I’m not sure how kids would be able to complete the required Grade 5 theory by that age to be honest. Nevertheless, I assume there are occasional cases.
I don’t have children and I am not a music teacher but I realised a while ago, that as an adult, I didn’t find the streams of tiny children playing Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin to be all that impressive. I mean, it’s impressive for the kids that they can make their fingers do it, but it’s not impressive for the society that causes it to happen. I’m inclined to the Let Children Be Children mode – they should be out playing with friends, getting their hands dirty and all and yet somehow…And childhood geniuses don’t magically appear or spring out of nowhere. An awful lot of work goes into creating one. The question is whether it is a benefit to the child or not…on that I’m not sure the answer is a clear yes.
Not least that for every 100 prodigies which get flagged by the media at an early age, not many of them make it to adulthood as successful musicians. I’m inclined to look more at those who are still playing gifted at the age of 17 or 18.
It’s the last Saturday in July and to be honest, I’m not really sure where this year went, and especially, where the last six weeks or so. I have piano time booked in a couple of hours time and I haven’t been practising so nothing much is going to come out of that.
The opening ceremony of the Olympics was last night and we were gifted the sight of Alexandre Kantorow playing Ravels in what has to be the worst rain storm I’ve seen in Paris. My heart went out to the organisers, and yet…it was a superb ceremony which touched on loads of facets of French life, and not merely the ones thought “worthy”. The right wing are blowing fuses this morning.
I’m not sure what audience I write for here – I don’t push the site much – it’s kind of a place for me to do social media without the social bit, I guess. Lately, Reddit has been depressing in ways that it’s hard to respond to without being heavily sarcastic. So many people want to be able to play the piano; so few of them willing to actually work at it. Yesterday I came across a thread from someone who can’t play, doesn’t want to learn, will not engage a teacher. Bet someone some money they could learn the opening movement of the Moonlight Sonata without lessons, without a teacher.
The main issue I have with people like this is not so much that they have stupid ideas – I still want to learn to snowboard after all – it’s that they think anyone who can play the piano has an obligation to be polite about what is essentially a very impolite question. There are a lot of people who want to play the piano, are willing to put in work but still won’t pay teachers and expect the online community to teach them for free. I don’t see the likes of Sam Altman and Elon Musk living on vapor but any number of rich people in the tech sector expect other sectors to implode and provide work for free. I’m reading Chip War at the moment which isn’t helping my mood.
Anyway.
My Grade 6 Certificate arrived this morning. It still has HMS Queen as patron on the certificate which feels a bit funny given I grew up in a republic and don’t really like this whole inherited power thing at all. Plus she is dead. But the certificate made me happy when it arrived yesterday. Oh, yes I ordered it, and yes I knew it was coming. But…
I needed it to show up. I get mixed results, especially from people not close to me, when it comes up that I’m back doing piano exams. Why would I bother, people ask.
It’s the tone of voice that really doesn’t help. It can be dismissive. People are impressed that I might play every day (oops to that lately) but the idea that I might align it with a goal….it’s problematic. Rationally, I know I can ignore this but often, it doesn’t do my somewhat fragile self esteem much good.
I’m always delighted when people tell me they are starting any project. It can be further education, or it can be tactile, like building a Lego piece, or training for a triathlon. There’s a point at which it’s important to have goals for yourself. If you’re minded to ask why someone would bother doing something you don’t value, remember they might value it differently.
What is fascinating about this is that it’s not totally about Rubinstein but there is a wealth of teaching material in this about efficient playing. Strongly recommend watching.
I stand at a crossroads. This must have happened before but I don’t remember it. I spent most of my teenage years pending exams or on summer holidays from the piano. The only time I insisted on doing something I wanted to do, I was learning some of Rach II at 17.
I learned Rach II at 17
Treasa Lynch on a Saturday night in June
A piece not meant for Irish teens.
Anyway, after a week of work, I recorded and submitted Grade 6. I dread something going terribly wrong here and me having to unpublish a whole pile of posts around this in utter shame. The question, is what do I do now? I see two options:
Yes, that’s 3 options now that I look more closely.
The four pieces on Grade 8 are pieces I actively want to learn. There are also some pieces for “later” that I could play with too. Brahms 118/2. Chopin’s Ballade No 1. Some of Fauré’s stuff. The world is wide open.
Every once in a while there is a wave of questions on Reddit of the kind “I can play Fantaisie Impromptu [or other early advanced/advanced piece] what should I play next.”
I often wonder where these questions come from. I mean, if you are playing a Liszt Consolation or anything by Chopin, and you don’t know what else to play, this isn’t actually your core problem. Much like we tell would be writers that they need to read more by other writers, I think pianists need to listen to a lot of other pianists. Chop and Liszt on their own have a metric tonne of music – if you can play one of them, why not listen to more of their music and explore it? You’ll surely find stuff you want to play that way.
The world is full of amazing stuff. Fauré’s piano output. Brahms. Beethoven. Mozart. Genuinely, if you have to ask a piano forum, the issue is probably that you are not listening to enough music.
I recorded and submitted Grade 6 today. Yesterday, for reasons, I had a look at TCL’s diploma lists and something interesting caught my eye.
I’ve already more or less decided what I would play for the FTCL/FRSM level provided it is compliant with the time requirements. But I still take a look at the list and what caught my eye on the FTCL list yesterday was that one of the repertoire pieces was the Volodos arrangement of Malaguena by Ernesto Lecuono. It’s a great piece of music, have loved it both as an orchestral piece and as a solo piano piece for a long time. This is the kind of thing that would pique my interest under any normal circumstances. The thing is, I don’t think it’s been published.
I can’t find it on stretta which is my go to source for any published music, it’s not on nkoda which absolutely is not. The only place it is turning up is Musescore. I don’t like their subscription model and anyway, a lot of what is there is transcriptions done by X, retranscribed by way. TCL call for “any reliable edition”.
What is a reliable edition of a transcription done by Volodos, but not published anywhere?
During the week I found out that there was an ABRSM group of some description on FaceBook so I took a look in. It was a weird experience, but I wanted to touch briefly on some of the discussions I saw in there. Somewhat surprisingly, there are people who do not like the performance grades.
They think they are too easy and exams are a waste of time.
The discussion I read during the week was sad. One primary push from certain of the contributors was that in the old days it was harder, and the exams were more of an achievement. And that ABRSM only does things for the money. And the exams are meaningless. And if you don’t have to do sight reading or aural or rhythm tests they were just too easy and no one was doing exams any more.
I’m going to be honest. ABRSM should roll back the decision to only issue digital certificates by default. The exams are not exactly cheap but I doubt the diplomas are the biggest problem. That aside, what do I think of it?
Well, these graded systems are really a feature of the British world, and mostly pervade countries that were under British rule when these things were getting off the ground. This explains, for example, why the US is clueless about this sort of stuff but Canada, Ireland and Australia all have parallel systems and because no other countries really do it, if people want them, they tend to ABRSM and TCL. ABRSM is, I understand, especially popular in South East Asia.
What I found infuriating about the discussion is that one of the loudest voices against the performance grades and doing exams in general now Argued From Authority and the authority they argued from was having done all the ABRSM and TCL diplomas. I mean, have they no idea how utterly privileged they are? Most people haven’t time to do all the grades, never mind the grades and the diplomas of two examining bodies? Why would you do ABRSM’s top diplomas if you already had the TCL ones? And vice versa?
In practical terms, I’ve already written about how annoying it was to be forced to do pieces I hated (side eye to RIAM in the 1980s). Once you get to grade 6 onwards, I’m not sure you can actually progress without being reasonably competent in side reading, aural understanding, rhythm tests and some basic theory. That extra piece is a good chunk of work. Being told it’s worthless by someone who implies the whole thing was harder in the past (but easy.cheap and accessible enough for them to do both strands) is utterly insulting. It also doesn’t really deal with the key points here. What are people’s motivations?
What was this person’s motivation to do both FRSM and FTCL? What on earth does their business card look like?
Why does it matter more than mine? I got up in April and said “I regret not completing to Grade 8 when I was a teenager. The only other thing still possible is book writing, the dream of an Olympic figure skating gold was always out the window).
What was their motivation when it all comes down to it, if all they do is belittle the motivations of other people, run down their achievements and then boast they did it all and more anyway?
It must be very sad.