Bartok - Reschovsky Method help?

[eldergeek]

Hi folks,

I am a somewhat elderly learner who has recently found a teacher prepared to help me learn piano using the Bartok-Reschovsky method book - I am something of a fan of Bartok and Mikrokosmos (not to everyone's taste, but I like it).

The copy of the book that I have is in Hungarian and German, unfortunately. My knowledge of Hungarian is nil, and my knowledge of German is from 44 years ago, but I figured that the exercises written in musical notation ought to be relatively self-explanatory, and I have had some fun working through the little pieces which I believe are well-written for mastering technique.

I would like a bit of advice from someone with knowledge of either this method book, or German, or Hungarian:

In the earlier part of the book, they have a number of exercises which I had assumed meant that certain notes are to held down silently whilst other notes are played by individual fingers, but it has occurred to me that maybe the "silent notes" actually mean that the fingers should just rest lightly on the keys rather than holding them down - a bit like the exercise mentioned recently in the thread about "Benefits of an unweighted keyboard?".

I think the relevant bit of the text in German might be this:

"die des eingekreisten noten entsprechenden tasten werden nur berührt, nicht niedergedruckt. "

Can anyone clarify if the notes are held down or just touched lightly by the fingers?

[jon88]

The circle means to lightly rest the fingers on these keys, but not press them down.

[eldergeek]

Many thanks for the clarification. I suspected that was the case, and have spent a bit of time practicing it that way (much harder than the alternative of holding down the keys) and found it useful, despite having progressed with the method book quite a bit further.

I assume that the same holds true later when he has 3 notes circled while two fingers play two-note chords - this I find even harder!