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Re: Technique

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-10-03 04:54

Bob Bernardo wrote:

> I was chatting with Ricardo Morales a few months ago in Philly....
>
> If he's preparing a piece and it's in the key of B, or C#, any
> key for that matter he practices all sorts of scales in that
> key to get his fingers, tonguing, arpeggios everything in sync.
> So if he gets the scales down smoothly playing the actual piece
> is a lot easier.

Even Morales may find this useful when he needs to play something in keys that involve larger key signatures with lots of awkward intervals. But by the time someone's level is up to tackling Weber's 1st concerto, he or she is probably already fluent in the scales and arpeggios that are needed to play most of it.

I think there's definitely a place for practicing rudiments - scales and their variants, arpeggios, etc. and Baermann 3 or Klose Daily Studies or Kroepsch are all valid sources of exercise material. I am not minimizing or denying their value.

But I also think that, if you want to learn to play the Weber 1st concerto, there is no better music to practice than the Weber 1st concerto. But to play it, your execution needs to be secure. You can learn to tongue, learn to play the scale and arpeggio passages, learn to increase breath span and learn to produce a clear, controlled tone using the music you're trying to learn. And at the same time you're dealing with the musical problems that are unique to the piece.

I once went to an orthopedist for a diagnosis and treatment of some severe shoulder pain. In response to a question I told him I worked out in the hospital's gym three times a week. When he asked further, I told him what exercises I was doing - a lot of it involving fairly heavy weights. His response was that, unless my goal was to develop a beach body, I was wasting my energy and probably risking injury. In his view, I wasn't building what I needed to deal with daily life, unless that life was going to be spent on a beach without a shirt (believe me - that isn't and wasn't ever gonna happen). He prescribed exercises that were easier, involved less stress, but gradually strengthened my rotator cuff muscles in ways that better supported my shoulder.

The parallel to instrumental technique isn't exact, but IMO it's close enough to be worth considering. The techniques you need to play the Weber 1st are there in the music. What's needed is to improve your ability to execute those techniques as Weber demands.

Karl

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sarawashere

2015-09-30 18:20