Help with Czerny, Op. 740, No. 1

[ilychy]

Hello everyone, can someone help me understand what Czerny means by "For evenness of finger action, with a quiet hand" in his Op. 740, No. 1? In the opening left hand passage, for example, is my goal to not move my hand at all and lift my fingers high up to execute the notes? Or, as I've noticed, it seems like I can assist the legato by moving my hands along with notes, e.g., when playing C-D-E-F, I can curve my wrist/hand towards the F note. Sorry if this is not making sense. My underlining question is: How should I play the finger actions with a quiet hand?

Thank you for any help, and thank you for this wonderful forum.

[becky8898]

Hi: Generally I think of a quiet hand as one where only the muscles that actually need to be used are used.  Muscles that dont need to be used should be relaxed and quiet.  to me a quiet hand is one where there are no added motions that dont contribute to your playing.  A quiet hand is already to play the next phrase. This is mostly important for two reasons, one - it conserves strength and makes long difficult pieces easier to play. two  - Czerny is trying to teach velocity . Really fast execution requires your hand to be very efficent. No extra movments to throw you off balance.  NO wasted impact into the keys.  To sum up  - Relax as much as you can. 

Best of luck with your studies. 

Cheers, Becky

[ilychy]

Thank you so much for your reply, Becky. I'll do my best to try and relax.