I was looking for a piece of music I learned to play when I was about 11 or 12 and I knew some of the exam books I used at the time were still at home. I even knew when where they were. The piece of music was a Sonatina and some research around exam organisations didn’t turn up anything when I searched IMSLP. So the piece was in the grade 2 book. It was a Sonatina in G by Thomas Attwood. You can find the music here (youtube sorry). I’m also interested in a Sonatine piece that was on the Grade III book.
Looking at the list, what strikes me is that Khabalevsky turned up a couple of times.
I’m reasonably sure that I did Grade 5 as well but the book was nowhere to be found, I don’t remember what colour the cover was but I am reasonably sure that Fur Elise was on the list. If anyone from the RIAM from nearly 40 years is still knocking around, I’d be interested to know.
I grew up with an English upright that had, I’m told, been restored before it was bought for my sisters. I decorated it myself when I was about five, using the chimney of my dolls house. It had a handy little nail in it which I could use to make marks on polished wood. I drew a house. I had more faith in my art skills at the age of 5 than I did for the subsequent 40 years. And probably more, let’s be honest.
Anyway. My life was upright pianos for most of my childhood. My teacher had an equally old piano; I think it might even have been older than ours, and to be frank, I don’t remember it having a brand. I think the wood had a polished banded pale gold pattery. That there were special pianos knocking around is something I didn’t really realise until I was 13 or 14 and read a book called A Genius at the Chalet School. The genius in question was an orphaned teenager who happened to be a gifted pianist. Her father had died, leaving her to some cousin or other as her guardian. She didn’t really integrate well with the teenage children of her guardian because she was, not to put too fine a point on it, a gifted pianist, and frankly, obsessed, possibly unhealthily so. She was sent to the Chalet School because they would work with the whole piano thing. Her cousins’ school put a limit of two hours on extra curricular activities, of which they considered music to be one. The Chalet School facilitated four hours of practice and ensured she had a decent teacher which was jolly good of them.
Anyway, all of that tedious detail aside, while her father was still alive, some teacher had told her father it was a good time to get her a good piano. He bought her a Bechstein.
I had never heard of a Bechstein but I assumed it was one of those grand pianos I occasionally saw on television. And now, I dreamed of seeing one, maybe even playing one.
It is far from grand pianos I was raised, to use a common put down in Ireland. Moving swiftly onwards. When I was about 15 years old, I went on a trip to London with my cousins and one of the touristy things we did was go to Harrods. They had expensive pianos. Life changingly expensive pianos. I’m not going to go all communist on you and talk about the evils of capital but in 1988, a half sized grand Bechstein in Harrods cost £24,500. I had just coughed up 14% of my total assets at the time on a copy of Rach II in Boosey & Hawkes so a casual piano purchase was off the table.
But the piano was beautiful. It was truly beautiful and they allowed me to play it. I was a lot worse at playing the piano at the age of 14 than I am at the age 50 (stands to reason), but I was able to understand why Nina, the girl in the book, played a Bechstein. It was truly a good piano.
At some point, I will re-write all this into a piece about children’s books that tangentially feature the playing of piano, the fact that they were written in the context of the British class system but that’s not what this story is about. The truth is, a Bechstein in Harrods was the first grand I ever played. My cousins thought I was nuts to touch something that cost as much as a house in Ireland did at the time. Now that I think of it, houses cost more than a Bechstein these days.
Since then, I’m not sure how many grand pianos I have played. I’ve a good idea of the different builders I have played. I’ve played another few Bechsteins, in piano dealers in Ireland, the UK and I think also Germany. In particular I played one of the pianos that occasionally goes to the Royal Albert Hall. It was a beautiful piano, no doubt about it.
Possibly the most beautiful Bechstein I played was not the concert grand in a dealer in London, or the salon sized grand in Harrods, but a rebuild of a piano in a cabinet which I think date from 1882. It’s such a long time since I have seen it, I’m no longer certain of the date. It was in Pianos Plus in Dublin for a good while, and I played it most times that I went there.
But Bechsteins are not common as they used to be. Absent going to a C Bechstein showroom (I think the nearest to me now is the one in Paris which I skipped on a very hot day when I knew my fingers were not going to cooperate), I don’t get a chance to play them very often unless happenstance.
I’m not afraid of asking if I can play a piano in a piano shop and this means I have played quite a lot of pianos depending on opportunity. I spent a couple of years looking for a Fazioli because I had heard so much about them and in the end, went into a dealer in London (I may be dreaming here but I think the same dealer had the concert Bechstein that I played) and found a concert sized Fazioli, had a good with it, and did not get on with it at all. I was surprised and a little disappointed.
I’d heard so much. I can’t exactly explain what didn’t click. Mostly, it’s a question of feeling, how your body responds to the vibrations of the strings. But it was just one of those things. My local piano shop got a brand new salon sized one at some point, and it was a superlative piano. There was maybe only one or two other pianos I have played that were better than it, one is the 1882 Bechstein I mentioned above. The other was, somewhat unsurprisingly a Steinway D.
The plus point about the smaller piano is there’s an outside possibility you could eventually afford one. I still haven’t. The things I loved about the piano included its resonance – notes took an extraordinarily long time to fade away and you could do very interesting things given how sensitive the hammers were. I haven’t played that piano for a few years because I moved away but it’s definitely one of the best pianos I have ever played. Would I buy it? It depends on a lot of things. I don’t think it would be a safe apartment piano for me because I would never be able to give it full welly, as it were.
The very best piano I have played was a 15 year old Steinway Model D.
Steinway. Current lords of the grand piano world. I got to play this a few times (honestly, every pianist should make friends with their local piano shops), and I also played a couple of brand new Model Ds in another nearby Steinway dealer. I get kickback from this but this is the only piano model that I would buy sight unseen brand new. I’ve played several and all of them have been excellent pianos. The slightly older one shaded it.
I’ve been told that if you order a Steinway D, you go to Hamburg to choose your own instrument; I dream of doing this. This, of course, is a totally unworkable dream given that NOWHERE I have ever lived even had a room for this.
In addition to the D, I have played a bunch of other Steinway grands, several Model Os of different ages, a couple of Model Bs and one Model C. When the time and money align, the likely battle could be between a Model B and a similarly sized Fazioli. As this is not the budget zone I am operating in at the moment, I need to temper my desires.
Aside from the Steinways, I have played at least one Boston, also salon sized, I think maybe 2m or the closest size. It’s a beautiful piano but this doesn’t totally surprise me because they are built by Kawai,. and I like Kawai pianos.
I have played quite a few Kawais, including one Shigeru Kawai (beautiful piano but not quite for me). I’ve played various ages from brand new to around 30 years old. I’ve played them in Dublin, Belgium and Luxembourg. Mostly, I have expected that when the time comes, I might find myself with a Kawai, again depending on budget and space. For a while, I preferred the older ones; now it will be a question of an individual piano. They are solid and reliable. They have a beautiful touch. I’m saying this because I have also played Young Changs (not for me) and also, I have played a few Yamahas.
The Yamahas have been an interesting mix. By default, I would say that Yamahas and I do not get on very well. I find them to have a very heavy action in general and I struggle to get a soft note out of them. They are physically more demanding to play than almost every other piano I have ever played. That being said, I have played two really beautiful C3s, one in Germany, one in Ireland. The one in Ireland followed a conversation with the piano salesman in Pianos Plus who told me there was one I should nevertheless have a go with; it had just been voiced by their technician and he had done an exceptional job on it. This was true. At that point in time, that Yamaha was as perfect a piano as I had played at that time in my life (but it couldn’t compete for my heart with the 1882 Bechstein).
Other pianos which I have played include a couple of Schimmels (nice pianos and I would love to visit their factory) and two pianos with French names, an Erard and a Pleyel, both of which I think were built in Germany. I wasn’t, to be honest, all that lost about either of them. They looked the part but did not really feel the part. I also have played a couple of Hanlets, one on French about 30 years ago, and one in Belgium about 25 years ago. They were nice pianos but not life changing.
For a long time, the main “big four” piano that I had not actually tried was Bosendorfer. This is another piano that comes with a huge reputation and I have so far only played one. I did not feel at ease with it and I’d like to play some others, maybe a very big one, and a 1.7 or sized one. I don’t have a Bosendorfer dealer near me so I think this will be a while.
Most recent “new” pianos that I have encountered are a couple of Belgian designed pianos. I’ve played a few Doutrelignes; there are two in the airport in Brussels and if they are free and I have time before my flight, I play them. They are lovely pianos; they have a gorgeous sound and from a keyboard action point of view, they are close to the top in my experience. I occasionally meet one when I hire a practice room at my local piano shop. I like them. Part of the deal with playing some Doutrelignes is that you are in a shop that has a Chris Maene straight strung piano, and yes, I have played it. What I will also say is I would like to play it a lot more. It generates beautiful heart moving vibrations. I needed to be alone with it.
The closest I have come to buying a piano is something I hadn’t previously heard of. I came across a prewar Ronisch. I loved it on first play. I can’t tell you why; it’s a prewar piano which means two pedals and ivory keys. It was not a very big piano but it has a beautiful soul. In a way, I think it reminds me of the 1882 Bechstein I mentioned about 90 minutes ago when I started writing this. I did a little research on the brand when I got home and one of the lovely selling points for me, at least, is that Rachmaninoff used to play one.
The piano itself plays beautifully but that little snippet of information, well “chef’s kiss”. His is now in the Rachmaninoff museum at his old summer house. Such a pity it’s not likely I will get to visit it any time soon. I am still reflecting on this.
And by the way, currently my own piano is a Kawai digital CA59. I love it because it allows me to play any time I like. Even if I eventually buy the Ronisch, or a Steinway B, I will keep it for that pleasure.
I wanted to get some plastic covers for my Henle music that I carry to acoustic piano practice, and also, I wanted non-tearable manuscript notebooks.
On the sheet music, every time I buy some, I think that’s the end. Most of the Rachmaninoff that I own is published by Boosey & Hawkes and I couldn’t get everything I wanted in London a couple of months ago. I was also experimenting with Prelude in G minor the other day (perhaps not the greatest idea) and I realised I didn’t much like the quality of the paper I was working from. I never thought I was so picky. I could see Henle had an edition of it so I decided I wanted that. I’ve been increasingly. Elegie and chunks of Etudes Tableaux are on my to be learned at some point in the future when I don’t hurt myself trying to do this, and I wanted the 117 intermezzi as well. I have one or two of them in the Brahms piano book (I should probably do some reviews. Score happy me.
Of course I should do this electronically, space and all that.
I’ve never worked out whether I prefer the v or ff spelling and today I bought some more music published by Henle who spell it with a w. Gotta love German.
Anyway. I’m fully aware of my limitations – I started working on the second piano concerto when I was 15 and still struggle with polyrhythms – and I like to think I pick my encounters with Rachmaninov carefully. I have some pieces on my longer to do list and then I have some snippets on my snippets. I lately came across Heart of the Keys having a go at the Prelude in G minor (playable by people who have been learning since yesterday 4pm according to Reddit) and it occurred to me that it had been a while since I had listened to it. So I did and it’s broadly an ABA structure, which is nice from a logical point of view, and the B is really a gorgeous piece of music.
I already had the sheet music, in a Boosey & Hawkes edition [and I have say I am not totally lost on the paper] so during a bout of insominia yesterday I got it out.
The sheet music is here on IMSLP, if you want to have a look. This is the key part, right at the beginning of what my popmusic soul still calls the bridge:
Clip from the sheet music of Prelude in G Minor, first bar of B section
See that chord highlighted in red? That there is an innocuous looking little octave sized chord where the position of the D and the F which is an F sharp courtesy of an earlier accidental are basically impossible for me to play at this point. Yes, I hurt myself.
I have a 9 white note span. I was not expecting this and I would be disappointed except Ouch.
So, basically, I’ve been busy, the site has been neglected and now, for my own satisfaction, I have decided to start working towards piano exams again.
5 December, concert at work. I volunteered despite the fact that the previous time I did it, I had been terrified. In a way, I did it because it did terrify me. I sometimes wonder about my motivation.
I sit at the piano; in this case, a rather lovely K Kawaii which I imagine is around 20 years old. The previous time I did this, my hands shook so much I could not fix them; this time, they shook too. But this time, unexpectedly, I could control them. It transpires that talking, however briefly, to an audience, goes a long way towards soothing my nerves.
During the year, I volunteered to play at a concert of international music, just a couple of pieces from my home country, and following that, I now occasionally get invited to play again at regular work concerts. I love the idea; I’m not always around but I want to do it because the first time I did it, I had a major attack of the nerves at the keyboards, and it did not go as well as it could have, compared to rehearsals.
So really, I need to do it more often, to cater for dealing with stage fright.
The run up to Christmas sees an interest in Christmas music, and so, I was looking at Christmas carols from Ireland. There are actually very, very few carols in the Irish tradition. A good chunk of the ones actually in Irish are basically translations.
The best known of the Irish carols is probably the Wexford Carol – everyone has had a go at it (there’s a particularly interesting version involving Alison Krauss, for example). It is sometimes called the Enniscorthy Carol as well, another town in the Wexford area. In the Irish language, we also have Don Oíche Úd i mBeithil. After that the options are a little limited.
The Wexford area, however, has another set of carols, which are very tightly bound up in a local tradition. They are called the Kilmore Carols and they are song in the church in Kilmore every year. They used to contain large chunks of Yola, which is a local English dialect, although that has been standardised to some extent, in the intervening years. They have been sung in that church every year since the 1700s and they are sung by a choir of six men. That choir, since the 1700s, has always included at least one member of a local family line. According to research I have done, they used to be sung in most churches in the Wexford area as an annual Christmas habit.
In terms of style, they can be described as a combination of sean-nós and plainchant. There are snippets of them online, and the sheet music has been available for years.
I am still looking at the choice, limited as though it is, and considering which I will arrange for piano. But I am looking forward to playing them.
Yesterday I got to visit the friendly Model D Steinway which I am in love with but will never own so that made the day a rather lovely day. I did it early in the morning too, so it started off well.
Friday, I went to my friendly local sheet music shop. I was looking for School of Speed by Carl Czerny and if I could have found the Opus 27 C sharp minor Nocturne by Mr Frederic Chopin, I would have been happy. Instead, I picked up one of the other items on my list; the Preludes. On the downside, I have not actually had any time to do any serious practice in the past week or so and I don’t really have any major progress to report. I won’t have time tomorrow either.
I have been thinking about how I can minimise the impact of the lost days – tomorrow I will spend a lot of time travelling, for example, so how can I best use that time?
Well, I have big gaps in music theory, so I have downloaded some reference books to see about filling those gaps, and I am weak in some respects in reading music, so I have apps to work on that (it’s been effective so far).
The other thing I will want to do is finally set some goals and objectives. I have a lot of sheet music – I went to the trouble of listing the music I have here (as opposed to the stuff which is in storage in Ireland) – and there is plenty of it. I’d like to learn some of it.
I have two major targets, both of which are overwhelming jobs for someone at my level, one of which is the Valse Fantaisie by Glinka/Gryaznov. The other is Ballade number 1 by Chopin (although there is a good chance I will travel there via Ballade number 2 first). They are both big pieces of music. Alan Rusbridge talks about the time he put into the Chopin – we are talking a full year and then some. The Valse Fantaisie is an equally large challenge although I suspect it has a different set of obstacles.
But these are not good goals for measuring progression. So I bought Hanon, and now also the School of Speed and from the point of view of piano technique, I plan to work through the Hanon and Czerny on an ongoing basis.
In addition to that, I need to finalise an arrangement of some Irish Christmas Carols (Wexford Carol, I am looking at you) for a concert on 5 December, but these are not as taxing as the thing which cause me to get better at various aspects of the piano. So I am wondering about some shorter pieces.
I have had late night Arrangements with Chopin (that man….) and his posthumous Nocturne in C# Minor. I love the opening chords and when you have been spending many hours over a bunch of octaves, the accessibility of what has to be one of Chopin’s least difficult pieces from a finger position point of view (whatever about interpretation) is very welcome. Particularly if you are doing this at 1am because you’re suffering from insomnia.
So that’s on the list of targets. The other item I am reviewing with a view to putting it on the list of short term targets is Valse Triste by Sibelius. I have two great recordings of that, one by Alexandre Tharaud and one by Leif Ove Andsnes. There is some fantastic emotion in that piece. I expect it to be challenging, although hopefully, not as high a mountain as the Valse Fantaisie is.
Today classifies as a not particularly productive day. Missed the 7am slot (frustrating but not unusual lately). I had some time free this evening so I played random stuff by ear.
Mostly, I play piano either very late at night (thanks insomnia) or first thing in the morning, so I’m more often than not, plugged into headphones. At 7pm, I cast them off on the grounds that well, it’s not like anyone should reasonably be trying to sleep at this time. The piano sounds a lot better without the headphones. But I didn’t play especially well; this is why I prefer doing the hard graft in the mornings. My fingers hurt after a day at a computer keyboard, a day sitting down. And truth be told, my planning isn’t going that well at the moment.
I probably should do a little more planning and a little less random entertainment. Today, I played my way through the Irish stuff which is instinctive, if not second nature, Sliabh nBan now that I’ve identified the name of it. The party pieces of Trip to Ireland, Kimiad, Foggy Dew. Stuff I can play with the rhythm on Róisin Dubh. But it was more a trip to play rather than practice. I am not sure how productive it is.
I have decisions to make. There is a Christmas concert coming up which I may or may not volunteer for, and so music will have to be chosen. I will choose from the Irish repertoire because there will be other people to choose from the higher level stuff. I’ve already chosen two pieces which I will need to arrange. I’ve looked at both of them tonight but am not really sure that I have them down the way I want them to sound. So I need to think about that.
After that, one of the jobs I want to do is list all the sheet music I have to hand. There’s quite a lot. I’ve been looking for a decent sheet music manager and I haven’t really found the one I want. I don’t want to spend hours scanning music, and I prefer working with paper (Tommy Doyle talks about ForScore here and I’m really not sure). But I also don’t know how much time I want to spend typing up lists and maintaining databases. I sort of wish there was an Apple Music Match for sheet music. You know, I’d point it at my copy of Ludovico Einaudi’s greatest hits, and magically it would appear in my library. But then there is loads of other music like the stuff I download from Petrucci or Freescores or Piano Street. It’s an admin job rather than a piano job.
So yeah, that needs to be done, and I need to transcribe my own arrangements of stuff, my own occasional compositions.
Today I was looking for Christmas music from Ireland for the piano, or at least Christmas carols and I remembered that Micheal O’Suilleabhain had a piece called Oiche Nollaig which means Christmas Night. There is a very striking arrangement of it on an album called The Dolphin’s Way I think but there’s a very decent youtube video of it played by Sean de Burca.
The sheet music doesn’t seem to be available. I had a look for it.
Anyway, while I was doing that, it occurred to me that really, I know Micheal O Suilleabháin for composing and arranging and I wondered how he approached piano practice. Presumably he’s done a lot of it over the years because certain things are just really second nature to him and you don’t get there without a lot of work. I mean, my instincts to build almost anything in the keys of Am, Em, G, D, Dm, C, A and E are fairly nothing compared to some of his fun things.
I realised I did not really know how to define practice. It was much easier when I was a teenager, of course. Here’s the RIAM grade N book, here’s a bunch of scales you need to be able to reproduce. And there’s some theory you need to know. You do the grade pieces under protest. You do the scales under protest
But I don’t do the grades any more. Oh I’ve thought about it. And is it really practice if it doesn’t hurt a little? What is training really? For someone who is a composer/arranger, what do they do? How do they build their practice routine? I mean, I bet some of these guys have forgotten more music than I have ever known.
Does Micheal O’Suilleabhan spend a few hours practising his own repertoire or is that just playing for pleasure the way I see it for myself? Or does he knock out some Liszt and Chopin etudes when no one is watching?
I don’t know. I don’t even know how to imagine answering that question.
Anyway, in tandem with that, I read a rather inspiring book by Charles Cooke where he deals with restarting the piano as an adult. It was written in a very different era to mine, of course, and the exhortation to buy records (which were almost luxuries at the time) was charming in a world where all you have to do is go to Youtube, iTunes, Google Music, and find pretty much any recording you want to find, of any piece of music. Including my hated Pentatonic thing by Bartok. But Cooke had one message which is as relevant today as it was when you would be lucky if your local record store had the recording of a piece of music you were looking for. Practice.
Practice for at least an hour every day. I pretend I do this, although real life is fighting hard against it. In theory, though I practice between 7am and 8am most workday mornings at least. The question is, how do I get best out of that time?
Cooke suggests time spent between repertoire, sight reading and technique. He suggests the bulk of time should go to repertoire and it should be repertoire you like. Maybe 10 minutes should go to technique. But that you should control the repertoire and the technique you choose to do. And if you practice for an hour daily, you will get better at piano.
I know for the last 40 years that if you practice something, you will get better at it. But I don’t know how to structure the practice really at the moment and this is something I am thinking about. I know you can’t practice in a vacuum and that you need goals and objectives. I know that I will be a year at least at Valse Fantaisie and I also suspect that one of the reasons I often default to the stuff I find easy is because I find it easy and because the rate of progress with Valse Fantaisie is glacial. Also, I am a perfectionist. Those 8 bars are hard
Also, I bought Hanon, and have found it less so much tedious and rather therapeutic.
So, I am thinking more in terms of strategic planning. I have plenty of sheet music. My daily music activities often include time on the tram working through sight reading apps. I know that’s improving, particularly on the top of the staff. Does this count as practice? Well yes, even if it’s away from the piano. I need to take account of the effort there. The bottom of the staff is proving harder and I need to move to the bass clef too
In terms of repertoire, I’d like to start AND finish something. This is probably unrealistic in the short term with Chopin Ballade No 2 and Gryaznov-Glinka Valse Fantaisie. They cast a different glow on things like Nocturne in C Sharp (posth) and the Moonlight Sonata. So I see an argument in favour of working through a challenge piece and a more accessible piece.
So, in short, for my piano practice duties, I see the following being necessary:
Scales
Technique/Therapy Hanon
Technique/School of Speed (Czerny)
Repertoire Accessible
Repertoire Impossible Dream
Pitch practice
Sight reading practice
Transcription of own output
After that, I can have self indulgence time. Playing the easy stuff, the stuff I already know, the stuff I want to maintain. I need party pieces and I used to play cliche Fur Elise and cliche Mozart Sonata in C (first movement). I’ll find out soon enough if they have made it to my piano music storage here but meh, cliché.
I should probably write up some goals to be honest and also, set priorities for those days when I don’t get to everything.
I moved from Dublin to Luxembourg in 2016 and part of my journey to Luxembourg took me through the Gare de L’Est in Paris. Flight to Paris, you see, and a train to Luxembourg. I had HOURS to kill in Paris, armed with quite a lot of luggage.
Gare de L’Est has a Yamaha piano, and I summoned up all my guts to play it – if you look for the #pianoengare hashtag, you’ll know that the SNCF pianos are often played by extremely able pianists and I think there is video of Valentina Lisitsa, for example. It’s intimidating and I have to be honest, I didn’t at that time, have a lot of self confidence. What I had, I summoned up and noodled at the piano for around 20 minutes before I got cold and went in search of something to drink. It was…interesting. I had not actually played the piano regularly for many years.
It’s a good piano.
I have a dreadful tendency not to be able to say no sometimes, and especially, if someone is asking me to do something which in a way, terrifies me. This year, I got asked to play piano in public-ish (how public is an even which features a bunch of your work colleagues) and with a lot of concern, I agreed. There were some limitations in terms of repertoire and eventually, having decided on some pieces, I got on and did it. I won’t say it went perfectly – I had a nervous crisis at the piano, precisely because I knew all these people. In a way, the train station pianos are easier.
But it was good for me, not least because it provides an unusual motivation to practise, and it made me think about how I approached the piano. Do I play for me, or do I want to shine and sparkle for others?
I tend to think I play for myself. That it is a self indulgence. I’d like to hope it’s one which will stave off dementia in about 40 years time (I dread aging for some reason). But I also felt that accepting the risk of doing things which scare me – like performing in public – is good for me. Not just because it motivates me to practice, but also because it motivates me to open up. Both pieces I played back in May in a work concert were arranged by me (with not one piece of sheet music to hand because that’s just not the way I work). I’ve been asked about a transcription since, and that too, has motivated me to think about how I might approach that. There is software on my iPad, but I find, I prefer to play the piano than actually sit down transcribing what I play. No matter.
The other point is that, there is a difference between the safe things I play in public (ie the things I can’t possibly make a truly ridiculous mess of) and the things that I challenge myself with at home (Ballade No 2 by Chopin). I am thinking that perhaps, this needs to change.
