I think we all can agree that as
a piano teacher that the benefit of maintaining a practicing and performing
routine is immeasurable. But juggling this with long hours of teaching, family
life, and other adult commitments is by no means easy. But sadly, and
understandably, the number of teachers and adults who no longer practice and
perform far outnumber those who do. If you would like to take that first step
to start performing again, read on.
I’m sure you were at one point of your
younger life were a competent performer; any teachers who had studied for
formal music qualifications had to be. You might even at one point be performing
fiendishly difficult pieces like Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes or even piano
concertos. You decided to start practicing again, resuming from the point where
you stopped. And it soon dawned upon you that you could not move as agile as
you used to, but then you chalked it up to just being ‘rusty’. You decided to
start practicing more, and you began to experience ache or worse, pain.
Sounds familiar? Yes, unfortunately this anecdote is not uncommon. Less
than ideal technique might not rear its ugly head when we were younger. But
like it or not, our body is less flexible and heals damages slower when we are
older. We can no longer get away with limited understanding of piano technique
at more advanced age. I will now share some issues I encountered myself and
offer starting points to help tackle them.
1. Diagnose and correct technical issues.
Even big-name pianists like Gary Graffman, Leon Fleisher, and most
recently, Lang Lang suffered from debilitating injuries that put their careers
on hold. And these injuries could have been preventable had they worked on
their technical issues when they were younger instead of just brute forcing
their way through virtuosic repertoire. While this might be an
over-simplification, from my experience most of the time technical issues that
adult pianists face can be traced to technique that relies heavily on finger
action with little utilization of entire arm mechanism.
This results in high build-up of unreleased tension that would cripple playing
and cause gradual damage to the hands and arms.
Sadly, not many of us were fortunate enough to have a teacher who adopts a more
holistic approach towards technique. But it is never too late to fix this; even
Lang Lang had to do this in his 30s. While it is possible to certain extent to
self-diagnose and correct your issues, it might be a good idea to source a
teacher or mentor who could walk you through the corrective process. Though teachers
who are trained in Taubman Approach or Alexander Technique are usually
recommended for this purpose, any other teachers with holistic technique would be
equally qualified too.
2. Learn adaptive strategies for small hands.
Another common issue limiting adult returners especially ladies are lack of
understanding of strategies to tackle difficult passages that are not suited
for small hands. Stretching our fingers to reach those big chords or intervals
always cause tension, but the difference is with an aging body the tension
threshold is lower and this strategy might no longer be viable. I remembered
having no issue with stretching my fingers to handle for example the wide left-hand
broken chords of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu when I was younger, but now
they are exponentially more difficult to play.
Pretty much all my ex-teachers had large-sized hands; they were often clueless
on how to help me when I struggled with my small hands though they had
excellent technical knowledge. Thankfully, more studies had been done recently on
this issue and small-handed pianists no longer must resign themselves to avoid
playing problematic pieces. The excellent book “Adaptive Strategies for
Small-handed Pianists” is a good starting point to learn strategies for
small-handed pianists. It is perfectly fine not to be slavish to the printed
score and accept that you would probably need to make some modifications such
as rearranging or omitting notes.
3. Dial back the difficulty of the repertoire.
If you realise that you are struggling with at least one issue I have raised
above, then it is prudent to dial back the difficulty of your repertoire first.
Or even avoid repertoire that cause you teething technical issues. I understand
it might feel demoralizing to not be able to immediately play advanced
repertoire like you used to. But look at the silver lining, there are plenty of
attractive repertoire beyond the usual warhorses. You could also choose easier
pieces that help you address technical issues you have. Then gradually increase
the difficulty until you are back at same point where you used to.
Comments
Post a Comment