Up and down are the two simple actions the pedal can make the dampers perform, but just as there are a vast variety of curtains, so there is a variety of shadings these dampers can create. For many pianists the pedal is simply on or off – a binary blindness deaf to the infinite spectrum of possible sound. We are dealing with felt not a light switch, so how much of the fuzz is resting on the strings makes a crucial difference to how much of the sound is damped. I’ve isolated around eight different levels at which the right pedal can be deployed – from all the way down to all the way up. To have a truly sophisticated pedal technique means that we can use any of these levels at any time and in any combination. This can happen over a dozen times in every bar. A level 5 can change to a level 4 to a level 2 to a level 7 – all in under two seconds of music played – and that music can be racing along as if behind the wheel of a sports car.
In Sviatoslav Richter’s notebooks he recalls an evening of chamber music at his festival in Tours, La Grange de Meslay, when there was no pianist taking part. All the pieces were for solo violin and cello and then duos for these instruments, with Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman. He says that, wonderful as the concert was, he missed the sound of the piano – or rather the pedal ‘which would have created an impressionistic sound’. Of course, the pedal doesn’t make any sound itself (unless it has an annoying squeak – unfortunately not unknown!) but it adds life to the piano’s sound. Its absence is muesli without milk … or, indeed, life without music.
Depressed again: the (not so) soft pedal
It’s not just the right, sustaining pedal that has rich possibilities lying between the foot’s first touch and the pedal’s full depression. The left pedal too has a similarly wide range of uses, and also six to eight levels at which it can be deployed. Rather than controlling the dampers, this pedal controls the hammers on a grand piano. It moves them from left to right as it’s depressed, and then back again as it’s lifted. Because most notes on the piano are produced by three identically tuned strings, when the hammers are moved to the right they strike only two of them, resulting in a change in sound. On earlier pianos the hammers could be moved even further across to play on only one string, hence this pedal’s most common name: the una corda.
The una corda is much maligned and abused, mainly by being given the inaccurate and insulting name ‘soft pedal’ – a gross misrepresentation of its action and sophistication. Because of this, there has arisen a sort of shame about using it, as if it might suggest that a pianist’s control of quieter dynamics were inadequate. It can certainly make the sound more muffled or muted, not so much because you are playing on only two strings, but rather that you are using a different, less worn part of the felt of the hammers. Herein lies the subtlety of this pedal’s six to eight possible levels: every time you press the pedal even a millimetre you are striking the strings with a totally fresh set of felts. It’s almost like inserting a new action into the piano with each increment of pressure exerted by a sensitive foot. So, rather than just crudely pushing this pedal down when you want to play softly, it should be used with the utmost delicacy and refinement, and used lavishly on its different levels. It’s like another tool in your kit – a different brush (or eight of them) to achieve different textures on the canvas. I remember the French pianist Vlado Perlemuter suggesting its use at the beginning of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz no. 1 to create an incisive but restrained tone. I didn’t do this myself, but in certain other Liszt works where I want a searing cantabile, I like to take the pedal down a tiny bit to level 1 or 2, where it’s then possible to sink deep into the keys but avoid a strident jangle.
Oedipus might have looked at the modern piano and wondered why, if we have only two legs, there should be three pedals. We now turn to the one in the middle, which few people use.
Seldom depressed: the middle pedal
Richard Dawkins probably has more appreciation for the benefits of frequent Holy Communion than I do for the virtues of the middle pedal. I’m a true sostenuto pedal sceptic. I worked out that I’ve used it fewer than fifty times in over thirty years of playing concerts and over sixty CD recordings. In fact only three pieces I’ve played actually require its use: my own transcription of Franck’s Organ Chorale no. 3, my reworking of Alfred Cortot’s transcription of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Bach, and John Corigliano’s Etude Fantasy.
So how does it work? Well, unlike the sustaining pedal’s vertical shifting of the dampers, or the una corda’s horizontal shifting of the hammers, the middle pedal is either on or off. It allows the pianist to sustain specific notes (isolating the dampers for those strings in the ‘up’ position) while leaving the rest untouched, as if a helpful pair of extra hands were holding those keys down for us. If the other two pedals evoke the world of a master magician weaving sounds mysteriously in the air, the middle pedal is more like a confidence trickster. Indeed, it has about it something of a wide boy’s boast: ‘Look! No hands.’
To be fair, it has been used very effectively by modern composers, and the Corigliano piece cannot be played without it. In the last moments of its Third Etude a minor third is held in the tenor register by this pedal, followed by the right and left hands scuttling up the keyboard in a non legato, chattering flurry of thirds and fifths – a brilliant effect. But I would never use it in repertoire where it was not explicitly requested by the composer. Debussy is the clearest case for me, as he didn’t compose on a piano with a middle pedal. Although some of his long-held chords vibrating underneath other textures seem tailor-made for this device (La Cathédrale engloutie is a good example), it always ends up sounding synthetic to me … like a polyester patch on a woollen suit. Not to mention its mechanical unreliability. So often it either pulls other notes along with it in a mush of unintended discord, or it fails to work at all, leaving the pianist with his pants down, high and dry, the bottom fallen out of his harmonic world.
A different depression: finger pedal
For those who thought we’d exhausted the subject of pedalling there is still the question of something we call ‘finger pedal’. Not to worry, this does not involve getting down on your knees and using your hands to push down the metal levers. It merely means using the fingers to hold down notes as an equivalent of using the sustaining pedal.
Generally speaking, we hold on to a key for as long as the composer asks us, and then we release it when we move on to the next note. In fact, one of the signs that a student is progressing in the early stages of learning the piano is when such independence of the fingers is perceived, and when the digits are moving up and down with logic and litheness. When we add a skilful right-pedal technique to such clarity of fingerwork we are reaching the stage of true proficiency. However, that is not the end of the story. We want to have our cake and eat it. We want a clear melodic line, unblurred, unconfused – but we also want the harmony to blend and to provide us with the foundation of a bass line. This is the moment to use finger pedal: a deliberate holding on to notes, making it sound as if we have included them in the sustaining pedal, but actually giving that foot pedal the freedom to enhance the melody rather than just bind together the harmony. In, say, a Mozart sonata we can cling to the contours of an Alberti bass (the omnipresent zigzag accompaniment of the Classical period) keeping the harmony from sounding dry while allowing the melody to sing above, untrammelled by muddy pedalling. Indeed, in some of Chopin’s works he even notates this, giving the bass line longer note values.
A skilful use of this technique requires the most sophisticated virtuosity when we begin to create not just harmonic foundations, but inner melodies – counterpoint underpinning or weaving around the principal voice, everything working together in unity but with total independence of sound and rubato. As with the use of the left and right pedals, the possibilities of finger pedal are limitless. From whole passages to a single note, it can liberate lines, clarify textures, and enable our foot pedalling to be free to support the greatest flights of sonic fancy.
Trills I: easy
does it
The trill is described by the Dolmetsch Online dictionary as ‘a musical ornament or embellishment consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes of a scale’. A little more surfing and you can read about a great variety of ornamentation. This is one of the few areas in music theory and practice that has become simpler over the years. Harmony, rhythm, orchestration, form and instrumental techniques have increased in complexity, but trills since the time of Beethoven have stayed as trills: take a note and wiggle up and down with the note a semitone or whole tone above it.
I don’t want to talk here about the vast topic of embellishment in earlier styles but rather about the practicality of actually executing trills on the piano. The guiding principle is evenness. If a trill is even, in volume and in the rhythmic space between the notes, it will sound good. This might seem like an obvious point, but trills frequently sound lame and lumpy because one of these aspects is missing. In particular, pianists often try to play trills too quickly. A slow, even trill will sound faster in a hall than a rapid, uneven one. It is also possible for a trill to be louder if it is played more slowly: there is literally more time to address the vertical stroke of finger pressure on key.
All of these points apply too to the trill’s cousin, the tremolo. One example of this is at the end of Liszt’s First Concerto where there is a tremolo between both hands that should be capable of drowning out a fire bell. With a relaxed arm (and a sufficiently brilliant piano) it can be a thrilling moment. If you play this piece, try that tremolo as fast as you can; then try it again, taking it down a notch or two in speed. You’ll find that it is more powerful if it’s slightly slower and completely even.
Trills II: a good fingering but not with the fingers
So trills will sound good if they are even, and a well-chosen fingering is a crucial aspect of this. The Russian pianist Josef Lhévinne had a nice saying in support of using alternate fingers (first and third; second and fourth; third and fifth): ‘Neighbours don’t like each other.’ There is a physiological element involved here: neighbouring fingers share tendons and muscles, and so trilling with the third and fourth fingers is an inefficient employment of the hand’s natural design. But the real issue is a technical one: except for short, decorative ornaments, trills are best executed on the piano with wrist rather than fingers. If you trill with the thumb and the third finger (probably the best all-round choice for a strong, even trill) then these digits should remain almost still with a low-held wrist, rocking left and right, supplying all the motion. There is tremendous power and endurance in this sort of trill.
A few summers ago I was playing the Liszt First Concerto at the outdoor Blossom Festival with the Cleveland Orchestra. The performance was but a few minutes under way when a ferocious thunderstorm swept in. Shrieks came from all over the auditorium because it sounded (and felt) as if we were in the middle of an aerial bombardment. I had reached the long trill (E and F sharp) at the top of the piano in the third cadenza passage. What to do? The conductor John Storgårds had put down his baton with a broad smile, as if to pause the performance. But I kept trilling. The storm continued to rage. Should I stop? I kept trilling as I considered the options, preferring not to stop the piece. After about a minute or possibly more the centre of the storm moved away and I was able to continue the concerto from the trill, which had kept the faith while all around had doubted.
Without a relaxed arm and a gently rotating wrist it would have been impossible to continue this embellishment for as long as I did without seizing up. Perhaps when audience members ask to see a pianist’s hands they should really ask to see his or her wrists, forearms, elbows (especially), shoulders, and feet too for they all have an essential role to play when seated in front of the keyboard of a piano.
Trills III: six random tricks
If a trill (say, from A to B) is causing you problems, try thinking it downwards (from B to A).
As well as slowing down your trills to gain evenness, try measuring the shorter ones in exact numbers of notes. We sometimes think a measured trill will sound stiff, but any trill does actually have a finite number of notes. Sometimes it can be useful to decide on that number before playing.
Starting a trill can be tricky. Try starting the trill slightly more slowly and making an (imperceptible) accelerando.
Ditto with ending a trill. Sometimes we can swallow the endings of trills and create a lump. So consciously relax as the trill ends.
Experiment with fingerings. It can be good sometimes to start with 13231323 and then switch to 1313.
If you want to make a diminuendo in a strong 1313 trill, try switching to 1212. This automatically makes the rotating movement of the wrist less wide, thus automatically reducing the trill’s volume.
Up to speed
I made the point earlier that there’s no such thing as a difficult piece but Hummel’s B minor Concerto op. 89, to take one example, raises an interesting issue. Although it is not difficult to learn the notes – the patterns are all easily memorable, and the figuration usually lies quite well under the hand – it’s extremely difficult to play. This is due to a combination of the speed and digital dexterity required to play the double-notes and awkward extensions when the tempo is as fast as it should be. To play one of the harder passages at crotchet (quarter note) = 60 is, shall we say, about Grade 8; to crank it up to crotchet = 100 is not just a bit harder (‘Press down the accelerator a bit more’; ‘Practise for three months rather than three weeks and you’ll find it falls into place’). It involves a totally different technique. We need to fit a whole new engine in the car. We have to lighten and clarify articulation at high speeds, to shape chordal textures, to adjust reflexes, and the key to this new technique largely rests in the way the elbow serves as a fulcrum.
Aunt Mabel chasing after her cat as it runs towards her beloved vegetable patch might hitch up her skirts and achieve quite a speed, but on an Olympic racetrack she is not going to be able to come close to a world-record holder – even if she’s being chased by a tiger.
Agile wings not muscular legs
Controversies about fast tempos do not just occur in fast pieces. Chopin left us metronome markings for many of his works but some people find them too fast, especially for the ‘slow’ pieces. His Nocturne op. 27 no. 2 is marked dotted crotchet = 50; and the Étude op. 10 no. 3 is a similar case, marked quaver (eighth note) = 100. In both of these pieces I’ve not heard a single recording or performance that comes close to the tempo indicated by the composer. The étude has a lovely, romantic tune … so people simply play it slowly. Chopin gave us metronome markings for all his études so why is it that they’re played by everyone (who can manage them) at roughly the tempos marked, except just this one, and the other slower Étude op. 10 no. 6? In many performances they barely reach half tempo. What makes the case of op. 10 no. 3 extra puzzling for me is that when we reach the central section (when the lovely, romantic tune is finished and it is marked poco più animato) pianists often simply double the speed. Could Chopin have been right with his original choice of tempo? I absolutely think he was, and only in Josef Hofmann’s Chopin recordings (sadly he didn’t record these three pieces) do you hear how these slow, but not so slow, tempos in Chopin might sound. The second movements of the latter’s Chopin concerto recordings come close to the metronome markings and sound perfect to me.
I think there are two vital clues to finding a solution to this tempo conundrum: first, Chopin’s style is a step forward from Hummel, not two steps backward from Rachmaninov. It is ‘Classical plus’ not ‘Romantic minus’. Second, the bel canto, coloratura style that so influenced Chopin aims for maximum grace, poise, lightness … and velocity. It is the virtuosity of leggiero: agile wings, not muscular legs.
Beats and bleats
It’s misleading to refer to the middle movement of sonatas or concertos as ‘the slow movement’. It would be more accurate to label them slower movements, as, historically, they served as a contrast in pace between two
livelier sections. Too often this uniform ‘slow’ appellation is misleading. We reach the middle movement and everything sags and comes to a halt, including our pulses. Pulse is a wonderful way to describe the rhythmic undertow in music because it’s related to the very lifeblood coursing through our bodies: the heartbeat of harmony.
The second movement of Mozart’s C major Concerto K. 467 is marked Andante (walking pace) and in two beats rather than in four by the composer. This makes the pulse slower as the music is faster. Here is an example of how this works. Try singing and conducting (probably best when no one is around) ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ in four and in two. In four the stress would be on the italicised words: baa baa black sheep have you any wool. See how stodgy it sounds. Now try it in two: baa baa black sheep have you any wool. Although the pulse is slower, the music flows; it has a line. The same is true in the Mozart, although many people play it too slowly. So slowly in fact that its two ‘baa’s barely bleat in the same breath, and it is almost impossible to hear it in two.
Tempo is one of the most subjective elements in music as it depends on acoustic, instrument, and often on context and mood. It seems that performance tempos have generally become slower over the years. When this flows from a desire to inject expression into music we love, it can be excusable – and sometimes sublime; less so when it is an artificial attempt to appear profound. Some composers have resorted to using metronomes to narrow down a performer’s choice of tempo, although it is curious how our selection of the exact beats-per-minute can change from day to day. Brahms gave a few of his works metronome markings but then, disillusioned, gave up. One of the pieces to which he did give a marking though (the Second Piano Concerto) is a fascinating case. The first, second and fourth movements (unusually, this concerto has a symphonic extra one) are totally non-controversial – the marked tempos are roughly observed by everyone. The ‘slower’ third movement (another Andante) is almost never done at Brahms’s suggested tempo. This example is particularly interesting because it rules out the frequent excuse that a composer’s machine might have been faulty. A few notches slower could be a matter of taste or circumstance; half the speed is simply wrong.
Rough Ideas Page 15
