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The Craft of Piano Playing presents a new, comprehensive and highly original approach to piano technique with a fascinating series of exercises designed to help the reader put this approach into practice. Alan Fraser has combined his extensive concert and pedagogical experience, his long-standing collaboration with the virtuoso Kemal Gekich, and his professional training in Feldenkrais Method to create this innovative technique. Using numerous musical examples and sketches he shows how many common movement habits at the keyboard can be counterproductive, and provides a new way of manipulating the skeletal frame of the hand to produce astonishing sonic results from the instrument.
This book suggests that in the light of new insights into the physics of human movement, a further development of piano technique is now possible, and that improved physical ability can free musical individuality to express itself more fully. The series of movement exercises presented activates the physical functions necessary to the pianist, helping both students who need remedial work in basic strength at the keyboard, and those who seek a new dimension of musical understanding and a new path for the development of pianist skills - thus synthesizing musical and physical issues. This approach can also serve as an effective antidote to debilitating performance anxiety, increasing one's emotional security by improving the physical and musical basis for it. By filling in a missing link between intention and physical execution, this book truly aims to advance the "craft of piano playing."
Visit Alan Fraser's web site at http://alanfraser.faithweb.com/
Published | Mar 19 2003 |
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Format | Ebook (PDF) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 1 |
ISBN | 9798216245582 |
Imprint | Scarecrow Press |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Alan Fraser has written a formidable and insightful volume on piano technique. Using the Feldenkreis Method as his foundation, he has presented 417 articulate and often eloquent pages....the teacher working with younger students might find his book of great interest...I am pleased to recommend Fraser's book...
Louis Nagel, American Music Teacher
This study is the result of years of searching and thinking about piano performance and pedagogy; Fraser brings to it his astoundingly profound knowledge of body movement and structure, acquired through his training as a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, and his study of Eastern martial arts such as T'ai chi, in addition to extensive experience as a concert performer and pedagogue...Fraser challenges many common pedagogical beliefs and ideas of movement, with detailed discussions of such areas as arm weight and the role of the arm, legato playing and natural finger shape among others. Although this study is devoted primarily to the physical aspect of playing the piano...fascinating insights and ideas are also provided into the middleground and background, namely rhythm and phrasing, and the emotional content of music.
Manus Carey, Journal Of The Isstip
There are many useful ideas here, not just in the technical exercises, but also in the shorter sections on communication and interpretation.
Classical Music
The most detailed and intensive study of the subject since Otto Ortmann's seminal work, The Physiological Mechanics of Pianoforte Technique (1929).
Daniel Stearns, Piano Magazine
All serious piano students should acquire this book, which is well-devised, carefully structured, and always laced with humour on this very serious topic…...
Nadia Lasserson, Journal Of The European Piano Teachers' Association Uk
Fraser fills his book with interesting observations, procedures, and thought-provoking personal concepts. Recommended.
Choice Reviews
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