I haven't read about this point (hand dependence, independence) before in this forum, so this sounds very interesting to me.
There are so many cases, where I do fully agree with Bernhard's wonderful approach to piano playing and teaching it.
But in this case, I definitely do not agree.
Bernhards explanations continue as follows:
b. Hand independence. As one becomes aware of the limitations of the above approach, one reasons (ah! Logic!) that surely the way to go is to have complete hand independence: if one hand does its job completely and regardless of the job being done by the other hand, and if both hands are right on time, the lines will come beautifully together.
Is this really true? Is our brain really able to do
completely different things at the same time? I don't believe it.
I
never thougt of having two hands when playing piano. I always thought of having 10 fingers, and it's only a minimal difference to play a phrase with fingers of the left hand, with fingers of the right hand or with alternating fingers from both hands. The melody doesn't lie in a hand - it lies in the brain. Same is for chords, pedal, pauses etc.
But even more important: the feeling of playing is very different when playing a melody without the harmonies or the harmonies without some notes. Music is sounding so different and the feeling of the fingers touching the keys is completely different.
I don't want to make so many words, so in short, I want to say, I don't like to learn music this way.
It seems now clearer to me, why quite a lot students don't like to study
new pieces and instead play their old pieces over and over. If they are forced to play the thing voice by voice, single note by single note, it can't be very enjoyable for a long time. It's like all the other shitty work you must do, but nobody enjoys to do.
I never had this feeling, when playing or learning music.
Perphaps I'm a real foolish guy. Perhaps I don't know how to play music well from a professional point of view. But music is so much fun to me, it's the best, life can give us - if you don't take it
too serious and if you don't look at it as something, you are forced to do by obligation.