Piano Masterclass–March 04, 2006

This morning, I attended a piano masterclass taught by Dr. Howard Kim.  A boy played a Bach Invention, another student played a Chopin Mazurka, the next student played the Schumann Phantasiestucke (last 3 pieces), and the last student played Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2.

There weren’t too many people in the audience.  There were probably less than 20 in the audience.   There is sure to be more at the next masterclass because it’s Dr. Rebecca Penneys teaching (Dr. Kim was under her tutelage at Eastman’s).

The students’ performances were what you would expect from amateurs.  Good effort and some good ideas here and there, but very raw, unpolished playing (i’m probably no different).  Dr. Kim’s a very funny guy and really knows how to get his point across using funny analogies.  Here’s what I learned:

In a lot of Baroque music, the ending is ‘long’ and ‘late’.  Long refers to how long you hold the note(s) before the last chord/note (Dr. Kim used the image of a skateboarder on a halfpipe, up in the air, then down again).  Also, because of the difference between a harpsichord and a more dynamic instrument such as the piano, you want to make the 16th notes sound much more busier than the 8th notes.

With the Chopin Mazurka, he encouraged the student to take breaths between phrases lest the audience get bored and confused about the message.  In chromatic passages, rubato has an interesting effect.  Exeriment with rubato in passages containing chromatic notes.

Silence can be golden.  Dr. Kim mentioned how when Horowitz played, he would play loud passages that were immediately followed by a half-second of complete silence and this had a delirious effect on the listeners.  Created more drama.  Experiment with this.

The Schumann piece lacked the ‘punctuation’ needed to create excitement.  Pay close attention to which notes are stressed.

The Liszt piece was very raw and Dr. Kim asked the student to use more rubato in some passages, and if you’re going to play a cadenza in the beginning, you need to play another cadenza later on in the piece (which the performer forgot to do).  Also, there’s a fulcrum in the 2nd or 3rd finger and work on wrist rotation.