Why Technique?

When I reached my grade 8, I hit a sort of technical wall. I had never previously struggled with repertoire at my grade – passing my exams with distinction for very little effort. At grade 8, I scraped a pass mark (and think I was lucky to get that).

One of the first comments on the write up about any concert pianist is invariably to describe the technique – with generally a superlative of some kind to (flawless, masterful, amazing and so forth). It seemed to me to be a self-evident step when returning after all these years to research what constitutes great technique and then work out how to acquire it.  Google to the rescue (again!)

The great strength (and weakness) of Google is that there is a wealth of material.  As always, this ranges from the seemingly sensible to the definitely dubious.  Coupled with this, you’ll find very plausible reasons from different authors as to why the the same piece of seemingly sensible advice is either right or wrong.

Here are three of the most frequent topics:

• Hand position
• Seating position
• Silver bullets (such as Forearm Rotation, Thumb Under)

Hand Position

Is there a good hand position? Most decent teachers will teach you to use a ‘natural’, curved finger, hand position. The advice generally goes something like: let your arm hang loose by your side, lift it and let your hand fall gently onto the keyboard – your fingers will generally form a nice curved position. Playing with your hand in this position is ‘good’ -other positions are to be avoided. However, and this is where it gets confusing, many of the great pianists (past and present) have seemingly terrible hand positions.

The legendary Vladimir Horowitz played very often with fingers flat and straight (especially in his left hand), he was also renowned for having a curled up little finger on his right hand (a sure sign of tension apparently). Arguably the best of his generation, Ivgeny Kissin, holds his hands in the most bizarre of shapes.  I’d be prepared to wager that any youngster playing like that would be admonished by his teacher. When you watch the superlative Yundi Li, he often has either a flying or curved little finger (again, sure signs of tension). I could go on … Clearly, it is difficult to imagine how these truly outstanding artists could be technically any better than they already are by eliminating their ‘bad’ habits.

Seating Position

What about seating position? The importance of a balanced ‘whole body’ position – generally governed by bench height, distance from the keyboard and even how much of your behind should be on the bench are, many say, one of the foundations of good technique.  Basically, general advice is that you should sit back from the piano but forward on the bench.  Your elbows should be slightly in front of your body with forearms sloping gently down towards the keyboard (plus a whole range of other consigns).  This is all good until you see a video of the amazing Glenn Gould play . He doesn’t even use a proper piano stool – preferring a dining chair, sitting low to the piano with wrists mostly underneath the keyboard.  It should be impossible to play well but there are few who would say he isn’t one of the most influential pianists of this century. He’s not alone either – have a look at Alfred Cortot for apparently terrible posture (yet the value of his work is world-renowned both from a performance and a pedagogical point of view).

Silver Bullets

I also came across various ‘silver bullets’ such as Forearm Rotation and Thumb Under to name but two.

The Rotation school of technique basically seems to infer that correct use of the forearms is all that matters (forget those useless little fingers – they are almost incidental). I had to smile one time –  I saw a video demonstration by Graham Fitch via Pianist magazine where the words ‘Taubmen’ and ‘Forearm Rotation’ were both anecdotally and very relevantly used. I re-watched the same video a few weeks later and it was prefaced by a massive disclaimer indicating that Graham wasn’t allowed to teach the ‘Taubman Technique’ – clearly feathers had been ruffled!

Thumb under is one publicized by Chang in his book ‘The Fundamentals of Piano Practice’ as being the only way to play at speed.  I mentioned in another post I have read vitriolic criticisms of this.  Yet I’ve also seen lots support for the general principle (usually by different names).

Conclusion …

So what should we take away from all this? Let’s take flat fingers.  I can’t be sure but maybe Horowitz realized that he could produce a much more controlled tone in this way because his point of contact with the piano key was much closer to the fall board and therefore the amount of motion in his fingers would be reduced – so key velocity could be better controlled. To achieve this you would need both strong and extremely precise fingers – which he of course had. Could a beginner or even many advanced players achieve the same result? Almost certainly not.

You will hear very talented pianists either espouse or refute certain ways of playing. You will even see people say you should play in a particular way and when you watch carefully they don’t follow their own advice.  The old adage is that ‘those who can, do, those who can’t, teach’. I certainly don’t particularly subscribe to this – working out how to analyse and explain things takes a massive amount of skill and possibly as much as that of a virtuoso performer.  Nonetheless, if you take Martha Agerich for example, can she really know exactly how she is using her fingers, wrist and arm when playing at the phenomenal speed (with exquisite control) of which she is capable? I honestly doubt it – she can probably only tell you how she practiced.  However, would that even help? Horowitz is said to have had the best octave technique on record but when asked how he practiced, his response was no different to most sensible advice you would get.

I concluded – there is unlikely to be any single right answer. Probably much matters on the size of your hands, the material you’re trying to master , the way you want to interpret that material etc.  So, trial and error it is I suppose.  Listen to advice given, try to out, if it works great, if not try something else.