The Craft of Piano Playing: A New Approach to Piano Technique

Abstract

A few years ago, I attended two piano recitals within days of each other: same hall, same piano, same acoustic. The only variable was the recitalist. One was diminutive and sculpted like fine porcelain, the other was distinctly porcine. Exhibit A became a human resonator, filling the building with sound, while Exhibit B produced barely enough noise to fill a teacup. Alan Fraser’s book is (paraphrasing the dust jacket) concerned with the question of how any player can harness a greater awareness of muscular–skeletal structure to ‘produce astonishing sonic results’. Like other pedagogical books, however, it is intimately concerned with (rarely articulated) questions such as: What can be learnt from people with ‘natural’ talent, and how can this be modelled and even systematized? What is success or ‘genius’ in any field of endeavour and how can this be replicated? Fraser addresses these issues by adapting ideas from the physical movement system of Mosche Feldenkrais (1904–84). In his book The Potent Self (Berkeley, 1985), Feldenkrais writes: ‘I believe that there is no essential difference between what we call a genius and everybody else except that the so-called genius finds the correct method of using himself—sometimes by unfortunate circumstances, but more often by searching for it. Once the method is found and the new pattern is clearly presented, many can do as well and often better that the originator of the method’ (pp. 2–3). Feldenkrais’s own method was based on empirical experiments with movement (partly spurred by a persistent knee injury). These led him to develop movement strategies that were not formulaic but that could be adapted to an individual’s needs, beginning with what that individual already knew. The aim was to ‘make the impossible possible; the possible easy; and the easy aesthetically pleasurable’. Functional improvement, for Feldenkrais, was to be achieved through subtle and mindful movement. This expanded kinaesthetic awareness would in turn precipitate a reorganization of the nervous system. Feldenkrais, therefore, intended his educational method to transform habitual patterns of movement, and therefore the self-image of his students. He envisaged that this change would be more than a powerful humanist metaphor, but that, by contributing to the achievement of human potential, his method would actually change society.