Breaking the piano - Alice Sara Ott

[tchristec]

So a couple weeks ago I had the chance to see Alice Sara Ott when she came to town.  It was a great concert including Mozart, Schubert, and Mussorgsky.  Undoubtedly, her rendition of "Pictures" was probably the most exciting thing for me.  Unfortunately she didn't play any Chopin; I was hoping she would as I love her waltz CD and I always felt she does Chopin especially well, but I was lucky because after the concert she was gracious enough to sign my waltz book so I was pretty elated.

Anyways, during the concert, I was enjoying her very passionate and emotional playing.  She seems to forget anyone else is there when she plays and it is pretty inspiring.  I started to notice a faint, yet audible pounding noise when she played especially animated sections.  At first I wasn't sure what it was but I soon realized it was the noise of her stomping on the pedal.  I was able to hear it from my seat almost 20 rows back.  This is especially astounding due to the fact that she performed in bare feet, which is not uncommon for her apparently.  I literally thought she was going to stomp the pedals right off the piano.  It was very fun to watch lol.  I think I might not have been the only one to notice because between each piece a piano technician kept coming to check on the piano while she went back for a short break to drink water or bake a cake or maybe shoot some zombies... whatever people do backstage during the breaks.

So a couple weeks later I am back at my school practicing and I thought I would try to be like Alice.  I start playing a Rach 32/10 because I thought that would be a good one to try to pull an  Alice.  I get to the middle section with the chords and octaves and I was astounded by my total lack of power, making me feel like a pathetic weakling.  She definitely had me beat but I think I might have gotten the pedal stomping down lol.  I consoled myself by telling myself that Chopin was also apparently lacking in this area, and perhaps my time was better spent focusing on things like voicing within my range of dynamics.  I can't say I have never personally had anyone tell me they thought the piano would break during my performance, but it was more like a 1 time thing.  I know that making a conscious effort to duplicate what I saw was a pretty silly thing to do but I was in a pretty silly mood after all.  Maybe it was Alice's hypnotic beauty, I don't know lol.  Anyways I'm rambling.

Do you think some people just naturally have this piano breaking skill?  Maybe someone like Liszt.  Is Liszt a natural piano breaker while someone like Chopin was more of a piano "whisperer" for lack of a better term?  Or am I just a pathetic little weakling noob? lol

[ahinton]

There's a viable (though I imagine woefully little used) cure for this kind of thing which, let's face it, is representative of technical shortcomings to the extent that it demonstrates that the guilty party/ies neither know how best to use the pedals properly nor recognise that all physical movements at the piano should not only be made exclusively for the purpose of producing the required sounds but also that every bit of wasted physical energy is likely to affect performances adversely (and, after all, one has only to consider how Rachmaninov, Michelangeli and others who share/d their playing manner were extremely sparing in their use of physical energy and consequently rather boring to watch just as they were exciting to listen to) - and it's this; create full pedalling scores for the works that one is going to prepare before practising them and the more frequently these make use of the sostenuto pedal in conjunction with those either side of it the less the likelihood that the kind of thing that you observed in Ott's piano playing mannerisms would occur - the piano, after all, does have one more pedal than the pianist has feet...

Best,

Alistair

[tchristec]

I'm all for conserving energy at the piano.  The performance just got me thinking; If I wasn't able to play with the same force I thought maybe I was missing out on a whole range of dynamics that might come in useful.  I mean, there were times when she was literally not sitting any more because it appeared all her weight was on her hands.  It was pretty fascinating because she was wearing a dress and sometimes she reminded me of one of those magician's assistants who float and stuff lol.  I am sure she wasn't consciously trying to do this I think the music just took her away and she kinda let loose.  I have tried playing like this before but I think that after a certain point you just can't get much louder and the rest is just wasted energy.  I think if something was going to break it would probably be me before the piano lol.

[lloyd_cdb]

I also think the standing/extra energy is fairly dependent on the piano.  From my personal experience, my keys are especially heavy. Playing pianissimo is all but impossible for me (maybe that's just my excuse for a smaller dynamic range?).  There is a huge difference from pressing the key without the hammer hitting the string and the first amount force that gives it contact with the string, comparative to other pianos. That being the case, PP on my piano is closer to M on other pianos I've play. When attempting to get up to FF on my own piano, I am all but standing on the keys.

On a slight side note, I also play barefoot when I'm in my own home or even when I used to have lessons at my teacher's studio.  My one issue with this is it can be awkward when someone asks you to play at random when they see a piano.  It's a bit strange to walk up to the piano kicking off your shoes, although mildly humorous.

[j_menz]

If you want to dazzle people with the activities of your feet, take up the organ or the pedalier (or skateboarding or figure skating or football). 

[tchristec]

Maybe I can write an etude for the feet.  It will be all about using your feet for the pedals so NO playing keys    Do you think that will help launch my big music career?  I can give you my autograph now if you want, just because you guys have been such good fans from the beginning