What has dramatically transformed the teaching of piano students?

[rachfan]

Hi Kelly,

Great pianists like Rubinstein, Horowitz, Serkin, Richter, Moisewitsch, Cortot, Hess, etc. were the Old Guard from the Golden Age of Piano.  They were the last of a breed.  They did not play with flawless techniques and struck wrong notes sometimes.  Audiences didn't care a whit about that.  These were artists with wonderful interpretations who allowed some individuality into their playing, who likewise shared emotions in their playing,  and took risks in pursuit of their art.  They knew that as mere mortals, we can strive for perfection, but never quite get close enough to reach out and touch it.

I recall being at Symphony Hall in Boston once for a Rubinstein recital.  The hall was sold out and the stage was packed with stage seating for the conservatory students.  There was truly electricity in the air. When Rubinstein came onto the stage there was a thunderous standing ovation.  When he sat down to play you could hear a pin drop.  Was his performance completely accurate?  No, he dropped a few notes under the piano... and people could have cared less.  They new they were hearing playing that reached back through the decades.  They knew they were witnessing history.  When the pianists in the audience left after that recital, I'm sure most were greatly inspired.  I know I was!  Similarly, when Richter (an unknown in the U.S. until then) released his recording of "Pictures at an Exhibition", it caused a huge sensation!  I remember sitting in a dorm room with others listening to this recording.  We were agog at hearing this genius, wrong notes and all.  Why?  It wasn't because we very rarely got to hear Russian pianists.  It was because he knew how to move us.  

So what do we get with the current crop?  And I don't mean Lortie, Lugansky, Pogorelich and some other very worthy artists.  Mainly what we get instead is technical precision and correct notes, a plain vanilla rendition, and little or no heart in the playing.  That also describes what the juries at competitions are seeking, despite their glib lip service calling for individuality in performance.  And you're entirely correct: Who would want to spend time and money to see/hear that?  Instead you can sit home anytime and listen to a CD featuring cautious playing and edited for accuracy.  You're quite right again--in being a judge at a competition, focusing on technical acumen rather than artistry is, sadly, the easy way out.

A pianist will never touch the heart of a listener unless that performer has a heart.  It's as simple as that for one to connect to the other.  As far as I'm concerned, it's the sine qua non of playing the piano and putting a piece across to the audience.  Increasingly it seems like a lost art.

David

       

[rachfan]

Hi m1469,

I don't think the world is actually thought of as lacking PIANISTS (and -true artists or not aside- generally pretty good ones) ... so, where are all of them in concert halls?

Yours is an interesting question.  And I'm not exactly sure of the dynamic in play or not in play.  As I think back to my youth, the first thing that comes to mind is that my first piano teacher took me to recitals in Boston as well as to local community concerts featuring important pianists.  I got to hear a number of them that way.  Also, there were some neighbors who were music lovers, and knew that I was a student pianist, so when they would go to a concert, they took me in tow.  Later when I was at university, a group of us would sometimes drive to the Tanglewood Music Festival to hear Serkin and others. Nowadays maybe teachers don't emphasize going to concerts as emphatically as they did when I was young. And perhaps neighbors and fellow students are too busy or disinterested to make the effort. Or, possibly the kids themselves today are just so busy with regular school work, music lessons, extracurricular activities and sports that they simply have no time left over to go to recitals. So then when we look for young people at a classical music event, we hardly see any.  That's just speculation on my part though.  

One thing I know for sure though is that in the U.S. the community concert associations that used to feature many piano recitals for up-and-coming artists have all but vanished.  What happened was that the fees became unaffordable, and the organizations eventually disbanded.  Because of that, everyone lost out--the concert associations, auditoriums, audiences, performers, and their impressarios.

David    

[nyiregyhazi]

A pianist will never touch the heart of a listener unless that performer has a heart.  It's as simple as that for one to connect to the other.  As far as I'm concerned, it's the sine qua non of playing the piano and putting a piece across to the audience.  Increasingly it seems like a lost art.

      

Almost. However, there are a small number of exceptions:

Even the likes of Cherkassky and Hofman don't come close to that! While he's pretty much a one-off, at the moment, I do suspect that there will be a return to the old-fashioned style from others.

[rachfan]

Hi nyiregyhazi,

Thanks for that link.  That was a breathtaking performance from a teenager!  I think he is already playing in the "grand manner" if that Moszkowski piece is a good indicator.  He combines a highly refined technique with expressiveness.  Excellent!  I hope you're right about others returning to the older style.

David

[lostinidlewonder]

I cannot understand why some feel that classical music is on the diminish. I strongly believe that it is easier today to make money from concerts than before. It is money that is important to determine if your concerts are successful, people can start saying things to highlight that money doesn't matter but in all reality it does matter. You try to host concerts all your life making no money or losing money, there is no point in doing such foolish things unless money is really of no object.

The world today is a much larger, busier and most importantly connected/integrated place than before. People nowadays have more disposable incomes than before, the general population is a lot richer. It is easier to promote yourself these days too, the internet is an extremely powerful tool if you know how to use it, there are a lot more organized groups within society and it is much easier to access these particular groups of interest to sell your tickets to.

I feel world now more interested in "old fashioned" entertainment since we have all been conditioned with the technology serving us the entertainment for quite a few decades now. To witness someone performing music through instruments is a real experience and the reason why you can still easily sell tickets. Of course it is not easy, business is hard work and that is where I think most aspiring performers fail, but this is all easier than before where Chopin might have a concert and fail to make money, it really makes you realize how hard it was back then or at least highlights how poor management is fatal to even the greatest product.


I do not believe that there needs to be a pianist that everyone likes and that the world needs such things, no such pianist has ever existed. There will always be people who disagree with this or that in someones playing or think that someone else plays it better.

Most of these critical minds are people who merely sit and listen to recordings on their technology they rarely/never go to live performances. They of course can be extremely critical what they listen to because they must subject themselves to constant repetition of the same recordings. This is, for me at least, NOT how I enjoy listening to music. Because I can play most of the music I am interested in listening to I can entertain myself by creating the sound myself. This makes me interested in hearing how others do it also, but I am not overly interested in one way of doing things nor have even favorite recordings really. I can go listen to a fairly unknown concert pianist and be as entertained as going to someone who is famous. I do not put on the "critical goggles" when I sit in a concert hall, I merely enjoy what ideas is being presented and how the performer connects to me as an audience member. This way you fully get the value for the event. If you sit with a critical mind why don't you then get the sheet music out as well and pen, paper, torchlight and start examining them? Is that enjoyable? I don't think so. But unfortunately although technology has been great to us, it has also destroyed for some people the ability to appreciate live music because they expect it to sound like a recording studio.

There is no such thing in my mind of the old school of playing the piano being lost (you do get this emotion popping up throughout musical history and it really is just a pseudo-fear), the world is in safe hands.

Perhaps how a performance were packaged yes, there is the old school walk in bow, play and no talking, this is dying out very fast because the general population of the world is not really interested in this (and for the better!). Back in the old day the people liked to be bedazzled and not understand how things where done or the secrets behind music without spoken words, but in the Age of Information that we live in, people generally do not appreciate being left in the dark, it does not impress them, what impresses them and empowers them a lot more is if they attend a concert and come away with more knowledge/understanding and if you really did attend a wonderful concert, you walk away from it with something that changes the way you look at music.

We want to hear something special in someones playing but it really this is only one part of the picture for a live performance. I have attended concerts of famous pianists and they play with great perfection and masterful interpretation which blows the mind, but they had no connection with the audience. I merely felt that they where just a tool on stage, fingers playing piano by a stranger that I didn't know. Then I attend concerts where the performer is speaking to me personally as they address the audience. I get to know them and what music means through their words and descriptions. They bring the music alive and the honor the composer with interesting anecdotes. They inform us about the music but do not drag us through unnecessary academia, they empower the mass.



But what are people actually worried about when they think classical music is on the diminish? I believe it is comparing how classical musicians fare against the modern music group. They look at some of the big name singers pull in massive crowds and make countless millions of dollars from their concerts where the worlds most successful concert pianist would make a mere fraction of that. But this is no different to the old days either, the famous singers of the day would be the most famous and make the most money, that hasn't changed to this day. I have to however say that an unknown band trying to make money is MUCH harder than an unknown concert pianist trying to make money. There is a curiosity attached to instrumentalists, but a band singing modern style music most of us have been exposed to that to the extreme to even bother.


Some might fear that we have lost the old masters who showed us something new, fresh or revitalized the traditional ways of playing. As technology progressed more and more of society could readily have music with them everywhere they went. So the world became more and more conscious about what type of masters there where and exactly how they sounded in certain recordings. We would be spoiled by listening to these interpretations day in and out. Unavoidably then there becomes categorization of the top titans of the piano world and their works all carefully recorded and organized so we could have easy access to them. Then we start to wonder who else can be added to these lists and this list has continued to grow. But as the list is quite large now and hardly we can keep track of all the new additions it starts to make us think that there really is no more top list and the first members of that list are the ones we remember as the exclusive greatest. Then we can take this further and start worrying that the old masters will never return to us and it has been lost this golden age etc etc. It is dramatic thinking and makes you feel better when listening to the greats recordings, but it is in my mind at least not the reality at all.

[pianowolfi]

Another really great post from you, Lostin! 

[rachfan]

Hi lost,

Thanks for all your additional thoughts.  I'd like to comment on some of them here.

But unfortunately although technology has been great to us, it has also destroyed for some people the ability to appreciate live music because they expect it to sound like a recording studio.

Yes indeed!  Modern electronic wizardry is fine up to a point; however, I worry that professional recordings on CDs are sometimes over-edited thereby creating the ideal or "perfect" performance (which we know cannot exist in this world), rather than the actual performance captured on the recorder.  Then when people purchase and listen, they take it as reality, and then, as you say, expect that in the concert hall.  What made the recordings or recitals of Cortot, Gieseking, Rubinstein, etc. so riveting is that you could hear their striving for perfection, but also an error here or there as they took risks to near perfection.  It made them human.  Now, we get the cautious, sanitized, accurate renditions that don't speak as well to the human spirit in my opinion.  Nobody cared about Cortot's wrong notes.  His incredible poetry far more than compensated for it.

what impresses them and empowers them a lot more is if they attend a concert and come away with more knowledge/understanding and if you really did attend a wonderful concert, you walk away from it with something that changes the way you look at music.

I agree to a point.  Here in the U.S. and elsewhere there is the format of the "lecture recital" where the pianist gives a bit of background about the composer, piece, or whatever, mentions some anecdotes, and then performs the work.  It's undeniably informative.  But while the lecture recital has its place and adherents,  in the general scheme probably traditional recitals will still be essential and appropriate for certain audiences and occasions.

the famous singers of the day would be the most famous and make the most money, that hasn't changed to this day.

Yes, in history we need only look to Enrico Caruso and Feodor Chaliapin as examples, or more recently "The Three Tenors".

there becomes categorization of the top titans of the piano world and their works all carefully recorded and organized so we could have easy access to them. Then we start to wonder who else can be added to these lists and this list has continued to grow. But as the list is quite large now and hardly we can keep track of all the new additions it starts to make us think that there really is no more top list and the first members of that list are the ones we remember as the exclusive greatest. Then we can take this further and start worrying that the old masters will never return to us and it has been lost this golden age etc etc

We probably feel this more acutely now that most of the old guard has passed away--Michelangeli, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Richter, Serkin, Arrau, Bolet, Cadadesus, Hess, Cherkassky, etc.  But then again, some of the younger professional pianists are already forming their own replacement top tier--Lugansky, Porgorolich, Berezovsky, Kissin, Hamelin, Lortie etc.  Probably the key to it all is that top artists studied with top pedagogues who passed down all the traditions which ensures continuity of the art.  In a sense it's like one class graduating as another takes its place at a later time.

Thanks again for contributing so many good and provocative thoughts.

David  

[lostinidlewonder]

....What made the recordings or recitals of Cortot, Gieseking, Rubinstein, etc. so riveting is that you could hear their striving for perfection, but also an error here or there as they took risks to near perfection.  It made them human.  Now, we get the cautious, sanitized, accurate renditions that don't speak as well to the human spirit in my opinion.  Nobody cared about Cortot's wrong notes.  His incredible poetry far more than compensated for it.

I think it is a little bit like appreciating art in an art gallery. To some people it would make no difference looking at the real thing or a print out, but for others who appreciate art, seeing the real thing is the reason for going to the gallery! But with music, the recordings are like to me a print out of the artwork. It is not real, it is artifical, it is only capturing one moment in time. The pianist doesn't play the piece like that all the time! I can vouch for this listening to many pianists in live concerts and comparing them to their studio recordings. Everyone notices a difference and there is a good reason for this! However, you get people who will be dissapointed that say Hamelin doesn't sound exactly like one of his recording. Craziness.

I find the older recordings of these great names much more musically charged which interests me a great deal more being a musician. I am not interested in complete eveness and accuracy of notes although it is certainly something to admire it is less important than the musical expression.

...Here in the U.S. and elsewhere there is the format of the "lecture recital" where the pianist gives a bit of background about the composer, piece, or whatever, mentions some anecdotes, and then performs the work.  It's undeniably informative.  But while the lecture recital has its place and adherents,  in the general scheme probably traditional recitals will still be essential and appropriate for certain audiences and occasions.

I hear you here, I have listened to many concerts where they try to inform and entertain the audience at the same time but they come across as lecturing. This is something you need to really avoid I feel. You need to tie in the teaching with the entire program but not let the audience feel like you are teaching them (as a teacher I am pretty good in fooling people into learning things ). I did for example Ravel's Ondine but I didn't recite the poem to the audience, that would be too burdensome. I merely took them through the main images that the piece conjours up i.e Shy spirit, shy spirit sees man, spirit asks man to visit her kingdom, they dive under water [the tricky downward moving couple patterns in the RH] ,they come up to the kingdom, he sees the under water palace, they rise back up, he denies her his love, she cries tears [I emphasised this as the single notes on the piano describing the tear drops], she laughs and drives back into the water, like the chapters of a book.

I do not use theory terms in my talking at all because I know there are many in the audience who do not know these terms. I do not bother defining musical terms to the audience either, I have seen some performers try to explain what a Sonata, prelude or fugue form is, and it is just too boring. You also get some decribing the life of the composer but it has no connection to the piece that they will be playing. What you say needs to have relevance to what you play and you need to personalize it with your own experience of the music, that is the complete cycle.


Even with good public speaking training you still need a personality and charm to capture your audience. They do not want to think of you as a stuck up know it all snob, they do not want to think of you as a lecturing teacher. What the music means to me personally usually is what drives what I say to my audience. The triangle of performance drawing together The Music, The Composer and The Performer, if this is effective in speech then you will not come across as lecturing I feel. If you merely connect the Music and the Composer and there is no connection to you personally as the performer then you will come across as a lecturer. Solo concerts are about me as much as the composer and the music, if the audience doesn' get to know me then theres something missing. Some performers are very hesitant to reveal a part of who they are on stage and/or feel that it should be removed from a performance. I strongly believe this is not the right way.

We should not overwhelm the audience with information, but we should trick them into it absorbing it. We trick them by entertaining them and encouraging them to laugh. I know this is a silly thing to say, but if the audience is laughing at certain things you say this is a very good sign. Often I do not even realize why they are laughing, perhaps it is how I am describing things. I remember describing Mussorgsky's Baba Yaga Witch story, of a house with chicken legs, a talking gate etc etc... People where laughing while I was describing the mad image, then I highlighted it is a children's story... and added just randomly Russian children like to be frightened! I mean it has nothing to do with music really, but it makes the audience enjoy the fact that they see this mad image and can imagine it when they hear the piece. That they laugh makes them rememer a little joke and remember a bit of knowledge attached to it.

I love it when these unexpected things happen. I remember describing how musicians where poor in one concert and they often struggled to survive. In some way the decription started sounding like I was talking about myself and then one audience member threw me some money Certainly this is not a traditional piano concert because I speak freely to my audience, but incredibly it works so much better for the performer and the audience I feel.

[kellyc]

Hi David:

Perhaps another thing that has changed is that our great concert pianists today are not also composers. They are specialists it one area of music. Look back and we see as an example, Mozart, Clementi, Beethoven, Brahms, Grieg, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmoninoff, and many others.

Why today do we not have the Lang Lang First Piano Concerto, or the Kissen symphony #1 , or the Agerich Piano Quartet, or a Zimmerman Scherzo. If as some believe the Classical musical audience is shrinking , perhaps it is vibrant new material from our great concert performers that would help fix this.

On another note, I don't believe that Classical music is doing well from a financial viewpoint. How many major symphonies or Opera houses would go under where it not for grants from major corporations, or government support , or private charitable donations. Many musical organizations cannot charge enough to actually support there business model.

A major producer of Musicals in an interview said that the only thing that determines if a Musical can make it on Broadway in New York City is if they can fill the theater each night with people willing to pay Two  hundred dollars a ticket. Many Classical venues can't charge enough to support themselves. If there was no outside intervention , Classical music Concert halls would begin collapsing all over the planet and quickly.  This all makes me quite sad as I would gladly pay a good deal more than I pay now to see a fine classical music performance.

Just more random thoughts,  Kelly

[rachfan]

Hi Kelly,

In the last generation of pianist/composers, I can think of Robert Cassadesus (classical), Earl Wild (mostly transcriptions), Leonard Pennario (film music),  and... drawing a blank.  As to the current generation... I can't think of any off hand except one--Marc-Andre Hamelin.  Maybe others can think of more.  So I guess you make a good point.  Audiences loved hearing Rachmaninoff, Godowsky and others playing their own works in recitals.  Seems to be mostly a thing of the past now.

Yes, the performing arts are not self-sustaining, rather dependent on ticket sales, subscriptions, contributions, and grants.  I well remember years ago the struggles of the Boston Opera Company under Sarah Caldwell, for example.  Seemed like a minute-by-minute ongoing financial crisis.  There are many organizations today in that very same boat.  Over the years this sad situation hasn't changed very much for the better.

David

  

[loops]

We have to take a step back and not expect results from our students that might be too far from their natural understanding. I feel that natural understanding of musical expression is an important skill to cultivate but really there is limitations to students. I do not however believe it is something that cannot be learned, however the discipline required is quite monumental and what separates those who are really serious about it and those who are not. The younger you are the easier it is to instill this musical understanding, the older you get the more you tend to try to put everything into logical terms something that does not always work with musical expression which is something you can feel like a language not a mathematical proof.

Hmmm, as a professional research mathematician and as an emotional adult (classical piano nine years, now starting to compose), I felt very sad when I read this.

Thought 1: When solving a new research problem, one has to find the appropriate conceptual language and this can be very messy and creative indeed.

Thought 2: you don't have to be an adult to be emotionally frozen. I know, because I was frozen by the age if 7. As the eldest child with an harassed mother, it was beyond her to be kind when I was emotional. (It turned out later to be worse than that, she had been abused as a child and the sight of a child in need led to inappropriate behaviour on her part).

So let me tell you what happened when my parents, who were *not* bad people, organised a piano teacher to come to teach me at home. There I was, frozen by fear of verbal and physical punishment not to do anything wrong, which as far as I could tell was according to arbitrary and capricious rules and regulations. At the end of the lesson this teacher told my parents that there was no point their spending money teaching me as I was not appropriately expressive.

The one thing that might have helped me at that time (my school was a horrid old fashioned private nightmare) was denied by a well meaning and experienced piano teacher who had plenty of pianistic musicality and overt emotionality but absolutely no real insight into the range and depth of human problems and fears.

So, fast forward 40 years, and I'm learning a Chopin Nocturne and in particular the musicality of it. My teacher probably thinks I'm a frozen mathematician, but he also knows that I think of mathematics as the clear cool waters that relieve one in the face of a difficult world. He is a very kind person and despite that he probably thinks the same as the person I quote above, he helps me to bring out what I feel on the top of a rock solid technique. And yes, there are occasionally glimpses of genuine fluid emotional playing, for both our private pleasure and my essential need.

PS my preview function

[lostinidlewonder]

I missed this response sorry but I found it now

Thought 1: When solving a new research problem, one has to find the appropriate conceptual language and this can be very messy and creative indeed.

I taught a maths teacher with Asperges who unavoidably connected maths with how he learned the piano. We only ever seriously studied Bach but now and then dabbled with Debussy and Chopin. When he played Debussy, challenging him to find expression was much more difficult because the language of Debussy is certainly different to Bach. Where Bach can exist much on mathematical deductions, Debussy tends to bend rules a lot more and leave more space for expression by comparison.

We had wonderful experiences tackling problems where his maths would not work (and where it would, syncopation in Debussy he especially focused on) and I certainly notices a fresh creative approach to his problems although he did still seek to find a formula to the method. Debussy would take him a lot longer to learn than Bach because of these creative challenges that faced him (and putting one with Asperges out of their comfort zones is a real challenge, that he actually achieved something was brilliant in my mind).

How do you describe tasteful use of rubato for instance if one cannot hear it and feel it themselves creatively? Sure we can break it down and notice which notes fall in where and which intensity we depress the notes, put everything into words and instruction, but these stepwize considerations can force us to work in much lesser creative grounds. A piece is not played the same way every single time you play it, you should know how you can play it and not depend on merely parroting one single way of playing. If you can sing a phrase of music you will be encouraged to understand many ways in which you could indeed sing that phrase. However I find some adults find that creative approach quite difficult, when I teach Blues to children asking them to reverse a pattern they can do it quite quickly and asking them to make up their own patterns which are similar to what I gave them they can often come up with ideas much faster, but adults tend to think too much, they look at too much without just going ahead and trying it, testing out, hearing for themselves, creatively approaching the problems without trying to solve it consciously first.

Of course not all adults are like this, it would be very short sighted to be that general.

Adults by nature tend to like routine and pattern. Something that confirms that what they do
is right and correct. Playing a piece of music is not always the same though, ok we have the same notes, same type of expression etc, but how do you play it exactly is not always the same, we sometimes give more here or there, feel more effected by something we play on one day compared to the other. I like my students who do not do exams to be emotional players, that is, play a piece and know how to express it in many ways. Not just one single routine and continually repeat that, but have yes a single concept of how it should sound, but know how to dance around that, understand the language of music so that you express yourself creatively not just follow a totally preconceived idea in your head.

Thought 2: you don't have to be an adult to be emotionally frozen. I know, because I was frozen by the age if 7. As the eldest child with an harassed mother, it was beyond her to be kind when I was emotional. (It turned out later to be worse than that, she had been abused as a child and the sight of a child in need led to inappropriate behaviour on her part).

I think that we all are emotional beings, privately inside ourselves without anyone else observing or helping us. Those who seem unemotional actually internalize a lot of their emotions, I can relate to that a great deal with my late grandfather. You could easily mistake them for being unemotional but it is certainly a case of not judging a book by its cover! EVen the response I find from students that tend to be unemotional I have to be careful not to think of their response in my terms but in terms of what kind of person they are. Sometimes it is a physical mannerism which gives away their emotion, it doesn't always have to be an expressed word.

So let me tell you what happened when my parents, who were *not* bad people, organised a piano teacher to come to teach me at home. There I was, frozen by fear of verbal and physical punishment not to do anything wrong, which as far as I could tell was according to arbitrary and capricious rules and regulations. At the end of the lesson this teacher told my parents that there was no point their spending money teaching me as I was not appropriately expressive.

If the teacher could deduct this in one lesson they where a terrible teacher, or at least a teacher who had no personal interest in your musical development and could select students that they wanted instead. It takes a good half a year of teaching a student before you can really get to know them, how can you tell how persistent they are in their work ethic, how can you tell how they tackle challenges, set goals, how can you see their emotions in playing without hearing them as they learn to play many pieces? etc etc.

The one thing that might have helped me at that time (my school was a horrid old fashioned private nightmare) was denied by a well meaning and experienced piano teacher who had plenty of pianistic musicality and overt emotionality but absolutely no real insight into the range and depth of human problems and fears.

I think this really hits on an important responsibility that teachers should always consider. As a teacher I play many different roles I am not just here to teach how to play the piano. A teacher sometimes is required to teach much more things that have nothing to do with the subject that you are teaching! Giving a student the lessons of confidence, self motivation, believing in themselves and so many more life lessons all are constant and forefront issues determining a students progress. Unfortunately in schools where we still mass teach our children and young adults, many of them never get personal help and are forced to fend for themselves or fall behind and miss out. As a private tutor predominantly I have the time and focus to look at the individual and have always found it important to understand who your student is instead of just treating them like cattle that need routine and rules.

So, fast forward 40 years, and I'm learning a Chopin Nocturne and in particular the musicality of it. My teacher probably thinks I'm a frozen mathematician, but he also knows that I think of mathematics as the clear cool waters that relieve one in the face of a difficult world. He is a very kind person and despite that he probably thinks the same as the person I quote above, he helps me to bring out what I feel on the top of a rock solid technique. And yes, there are occasionally glimpses of genuine fluid emotional playing, for both our private pleasure and my essential need.

I think it is fantastic that you maintained your interest to create music so much so that you are now playing! Who really cares if something you do isn't perfect or like so and so's recording, music is not a competition, it is a personal relationship first and foremost and really it can happily exist just on that!

[pianoplayjl]

One of the things is probably the involvment of technology in a teaching lesson though only a few use abit of tech to teach I think.