(...) Leschetizky's approach. (He is quoted to have said he had NO Method).
There is an element of truth in this.
A couple of days ago I had a piano lesson with a russian teacher that graduated at the Moscow "conservatoire". In her opinion, the main strength of "russian" pedagogy, is that teachers have studied all the different piano methods, from 17th century to now, so in addition to be excellent pianist, they are excellent pedagogues that have learnt all the possible methods to teach piano, and they are able to quickly pick whatever exercise will best suit the need of any particular student. So they know all sort of things about how Cortot, Marguerite Long, Chopin and other great pedagogues used to teach piano, and they use this knowledge to teach you as best as they can. In that respect, saying that there is NO method is somewhat true...there is a lot of methods and they can use them all.
Btw the piano lesson was amazing. She was able to help me on some subtle technical details and I have learnt a lot in so little time. I am extremely thankfull to this woman. What a difference a great teacher can make...obviously the increments to my technique will probably become smaller and smaller with time, but I am already satisfied with what I've already learned, it will help me for the rest of my life as a pianist.
Also, I had the opportunity to look at an antique russian book that she uses to teach for children : this is extremely well designed. Quite short but quite smart. Very progressive exercises, quite quite good. Short pieces of music, lovely sound, with one new technical "trick" at each time...basically it seems to be designed to take a child at level 0 and to drive him to the "Small Preludes" from Bach in the shortest timeframe. I was so impressed when I compared to all the sh***y method that I had to use as a child.
The interesting thing is that it is not designed for "genius children". A genius child will simply do all the exercises much quicker than the average child, of course. It is just very very smartly organised small pieces of music and I was really impressed.