“High finger action is not so necessary for beginners as most piano teachers imagine.  It is much easier to teach pupils to raise their fingers high, than it is to teach them the acquisition of the legato touch at the piano, which is only to be attained by playing close to the keys, without raising the fingers.  It is difficult to get pupils to play a perfect legato who have had years of training with high finger action, something which should be taken up for non-legato and staccato finger work after the more difficult legato touch has been mastered.

TONE PRODUCTION

“The subject of tone production is one which is much neglected by piano teachers.  Viewed from this standpoint the piano is an instrument apart from every other, except in some respects the organ.  A young violinist, ’cellist or flutist has to study for some time before he can produce a tone of good musical quality on his instrument.  Think what the beginner on the violin has to go through before he can make a respectable middle C; but anybody, even a totally unmusical person, can play middle C on the piano without the least trouble.  It is just this ease in tone production at the piano which leads to carelessness as to the kind of tone produced; and so piano teachers, above all others, complain they cannot get their pupils to listen to what they are playing.  Pupils should be made to listen, by means of a special course in tone production, which should go hand in hand with the technical exercises used at the very beginning.  Otherwise they imagine they are making music when they place the printed page on the rack, and set the correct keys in motion.

“There is no other instrument with which it is so easy to ‘bluff’ a large part of the audience; for the character of the piano is such that the general public often think it fine music if the player makes a big noise.  Pianists of considerable reputation often take advantage of this lack of discrimination on the part of piano-recital audiences, which, above all the other audiences, seem peculiarly incapable of judging correctly the musical value of a performance.

“Of the hundreds of piano recitals which take place yearly in the musical centers of Europe, only a comparatively small number are of real musical interest.  In many cases it seems as though the players were merely repeating something learned by rote, in an unknown language; just as though I should repeat a poem in Italian.  The words I might pronounce after a fashion, but the meaning of most of them would be a blank to me—­so how could I make others understand them.

RHYTHM IN PIANO PLAYING

“The subject of rhythm is an important one, and more attention should be given it.  Leschetizky once said that tones and rhythm are the only things which can keep the piano alive as a solo instrument.  I find in pupils who come to me so much deficiency in these two subjects, that I have organized classes in ear-training and rhythm.