Hello, I need help with a few things

[mmro]

Hi, I'm I student:

First, I'd like to know what could I do to improve my trills.  I need to alternate the notes more quickly and make them last longer. I'm also having trouble executing the piano trills. Particulary (sp?) the trills in Mozart's K332 second movement, I can't make them sound soft. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Second I'd like to know what do you think of this pianist: Daniel Barenboim.
I personally don't like the way he plays. In my opinion, there's nothing special about it and there's no expression. Especially in his Beethoven and Mozart... But anyway, I'd like to know someone else's opinion.

The third thing is only a comment, . I love many composers, and admire all of them greatly, but my favorite one, both for his  work and his personality, is Mozart. I don't know if it's just me but there's something childish about his music. I find it full of innocence and tenderness... it tells a lot about his attitude too. That's what I find so special about him... to be able to compose all that beautiful music directly form his heart, when he had an extremely difficult life,  reveals the beauty of his spirit...
Sadly, he's so underrated today...

Oh, well thanks in advance...

[pianistimo]

i had been thinking my trills were quite fast and even until my last teacher, who suggested to play them with flatter fingers.  in my mind, for trills to be really nice - i thought a bit of curve to the hand precipitated moving quickly over chromatic areas.  but, i found you can push and pull the hand in and out.  this helps with reaching the chromatic notes and also to play with flatter hand.

now, with trills - you can also start pairing notes together at the start.  for instance play three notes at a time in your mind.  this accents (in your mind) the first auxillary note (on the top) and the next note on the bottom.  when you have a lot going on with a melody and the trill seems superfulous - just do a triplet from the main note.  especially when the previous note is an auxillary note already. 

mozart is so beautiful when simple, imo. 

[shortyshort]

Hello,

I have the same problem with trills. I only play as a hobby, and teach myself.

When I was first learning "Alla Turka" I didn't even know what the little "tr" meant. Once I knew, I thought, "there's no way I can do that". What I did was play the piece at normal speed, but then slow everything right down to fit the trill in. You soon find that you're speeding up with each practice. I'm now having the same trouble with Pathetique sonata Mvt. III, at the end of the first section. But I am getting there, (I think).

As for Daniel Barenboim, I quite like his playing. I think he plays with passion, and is not scared of deviating slightly from the music, not the notes, but the tempo and pauses and the such like, He makes it HIS music. I know there are always people who disagree, but thats what this forum is about, isn't it??

I personally love Beethoven, as I said, I'm currently trying to learn Pathetique sonata Mvt. III, when you first look at the music and play it first time really slow, you think thats not going to sound right, those notes shouldn't go together, but it all fits in beautifully. I also like Mozart and Satie, but Beethoven wins for me.

Anyway, I'm no concert pianist, so my humble opinions are probably quite worthless.

Cheers,

Shorty

[arbisley]

Your opinions are probably worth more because they are not influenced by years of technical details and learning from specific schools of music, not to say that I do either!

I find it useful in trills to play them trough slowly sometimes and think of where the accents are in the beat. Playing slowly is not to enable you to get better at them technically, but musically, because you are trying to hear what you are actually doing.
then speed it up mentally first maybe, remembering especially where the accents are. The main thing is to just think musically about where these accents should be, and then you can even "disguise" the fact that you aren't playing a decent trill by playing the rhythms exactly at the right places.

I think this is enough up to a certain level, except if you want to be really really really.....good.

[pianistimo]

i don't really put accents in, per se, but just pretend in my mind that the notes are paired in different ways when i play trills until they become even.  you can sort of 'trick' yourself.  mozart used to put turns at the end of some of his trills - and not that many people do that anymore.  experimenting with the trills of the time period is nice because in a way - it is simply a little bit of improvisation here and there.

[kempff1234]

As for trills, I just use 1321321321 etc . It does work and after hours of practice I can play trills softly, loudly etc. It comes down to what position and fingering you're more comfortable with and you can control your fingers.

I like Barenboim but when it comes to Beethoven, I tend to have some skeptism about some of his performances. Apart from that, he is one of the greatest pianists and conductors alive today.

Mozart might look simple on the surface but beneath there is the same power and emotion that Schumann, Chopin, Beethoven, ... possessed. Schnabel once said: Mozart is easy for children, difficult for adults. And it is true, today we only have a handful of Mozart specialists.

[arbisley]

I thought it was music is too easy for amateurs, and too difficult for professionals.

and yes, I suppose I just meant pairing the notes of the trill, but accents are also quite useful in short trills where the length must be exact.

[kempff1234]

I thought it was music is too easy for amateurs, and too difficult for professionals.

and yes, I suppose I just meant pairing the notes of the trill, but accents are also quite useful in short trills where the length must be exact.

I think on the Brendel documentary 9man and the mask), he quotes "Mozart blah blah..."

[pianistimo]

dear kempff1234,

thanks for the insightful fingering.  i'll try that sometime!  it probably keeps one from exhuausting the hand and giving some stability by occasionally using the thumb.

[kempff1234]

Don't thank me, thank Kempff but since he is not hear, I'll accept onhis behalf

[gruffalo]

when starting this piece with the trills in it, use the slow practice period to its advantage and play the trills slowly and in time, keeping the hand steady, relaxed, observing what you are doing, keeping the arms and shoulders relaxed. this does not directly help make your trills become fast, but i believe it is essential either for someone who can trill fast or cant, to go through this process whilst in the slow practice stage. i didnt do any specific exercise to get my trills going, they just sorta clicked one day, but i guarantee that the slow timed trills were a great help.

Gruff

[asyncopated]

I've been thinking about your trill question, and find it extremely difficult to describe how I actually (or at least try to) execute trills and other ornaments. 

The thing about trills is that i don't think practicing trilling or different types of ornamentation will help if you don't have the sound in your head first.  The ornamentation itself is a florish and should be secondary to the actual note being played.  I think that the first step I take is to omit the ornamentation and make sure I know which note is the important one.  I find that playing the ornament from the outset may confuse the sound.  Also ornaments should never be heavy, and played lightly with the intention of leading up to the main note.

To get the sound, my advice is to listen to a good soprano or tenor.  I find it better to listen to Baroque era singers/choirs.  The style tends to be much lighter than those specialising in romatic or morden works.  To give you an example, the Tallis singers and
Sixteen are the right sort of direction for this.  When I listen carefully trills and other florid passages actually send shivers down my spine.

Once you have that in your head, try to produce that with your fingers.  I find that if I do it right, it comes automatically and rather effortlessly.  If I had to describe it, it feels like when you blink automatically, or fluttering your eyelids (if you can) rather than closing and opening your eyes.  If I am concentrating on actually pressing a particular key or keys, it usually sounds a bit odd.  So think cantabile, and of a light soprano singing and let if flow.

I almost forgot one last thing.  This was taught to me by my teacher and i find it very effective.  When you play a cantabile passage, try to use the very tip of your fingers.  If you imagine your fingers as pin tips touching the piano, this should be approximately correct.  A smaller surface area automatically lightens the touch, and will allow you to trill with less effort.  A few months back, I was using flater fingers, and found it much more difficult. 

I don't really know if this helps, but as i said before i can't seem to find the words to describe how to do a trill.

All the best.

PS. I just realised what i said is in direct contrast to what pianistimo said .. about using finger tips.  I will experiment more and write more about it later.

[asyncopated]

oops

[gruffalo]

whilst thinking about trills, always remember that the trill technique requires loosness in the arms, so that the blood flow to the hands is not blocked. the trills are a combination of  the alternation of the two fingers and also the oscillation of the wrists. dont think too much about this, just keep it in mind.

[bachfan87]

I used to have sooo much trouble with trills too. The thing is, you can practice it with the metrinome all you want to try to work up the speed, but you have to have the correct hand motion.  It's like this tremor, kind of hard to describe. Just sit down at the piano and pick two notes and try to play them as fast as you can for a second, then try for longer and longer. Also make sure your hand is rocking back and forth slightly and not stiff.

2) yeah, I have to say that I don't like Barenboim either. I've heard recordings of some Beethoven sonatas, and they're just kind of blah. Plus I heard that he's an *** in real life!

[landru]

For the longest time (years in fact) in my self-taught  hell of piano playing I avoided trills like the plague. The problem was that my practice routine subsisted of playing everything at speed by sight-reading with hands together. When I came to a trill everything just went kerflooey as I concentrated on making my fingers go as fast as possible. By kerflooey, I mean, rhythm, tone, the other hand etc. I so concentrated on the trill that I ended up hating it...

Then I finally got a piano teacher who told me the secret (secret to me at least...) to piano practice was hands separate and slow and in rhythm. A whole new world opened up and so did trills - by practicing them very slowly and with a rhythm I got past my block. Now I can do mordents and short trills without stopping everything else that needs to happen in the music. Phew!

About Barenboim: recently I got his Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 and even before I read this thread, I thought as I was listening "there is something missing here..." Now that I've read this thread, I have to say I agree. Pity.

[andresdo]

Oh, I agree on your opinion of Mozart. But, did you listen to the requiem? Ok, sussmayer(his student) completed it after Mozart's untimely young death, but still - this is quite serious music. Which makes him a truly great composer.

About the trills: Let's say you trill between c and b (from above; cbc).
1. Try to alternate the fingers (3-2 or 4-3) that you trill with as to get the feeling of the keys.
2. Try to vary the speed. Keep trilling for quite some time going faster and slower. Be sure to make these differences gradually and graciously. Don't carry on for too long. This my cause muscle exhaustion and permanent (nervous) damage
3. See to it that the hand is completely relaxed. Put your right elbow, vertically, on the combuter-table before you. Fingers completely relaxed. The index finger will look sligtly pointed to the left. With your left hand, grasp the right-wrist just below that knucle that is prominent below each hand. (The middle-finger should now rest on that knob) Now, push with your left index-finger into our right palm as to push the hand slightly upwards. Repeat this pushing a couple of times. Keep right hand relaxed. This is how your hand should feel when playing any trill.
4. Don't have a complex about it. Firstly, take it in your stride as if playing tennis with your upper arm. It is also one of the last finishing-touches to a piece as it should blend in with the main tune, and therefore: don't try to perfect it as you start practicing the piece.
5. Personally, except for recommedation 1, you shouldn't practice it too much alone. Take at least a measure before or a few counts before playing the specific triller. The triller alone is insignificant and therefore useless to practice in its alone-stand.
6. Stop directly after the triller and lift your hand graciously away from the keys up into mid-air. don't loose sigt of where the keys are, though. Don't play on after the triller. This is the feeling you should have.

Good luck.
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This is quite difficult to explain, but I think it may help.