Ernst Dohnanyi

[sefdavis1960]

Hello, I have just discovered the finger exercises of Dohnanyi, I was wondering if there are any demonstrations of them on Youtube or anywhere else, just so I can confirm that I am actually practicing them properly. Thank you in advance.


Steve.

[j_menz]

Methinks you would be netter engaged finding out what other charms Dohnanyi may have to offer.

[sefdavis1960]

Thank you J Menz, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I have just got back to the keyboard after 30 years and would love to get playing again so I need some pretty intense finger exercises to get me limbered up again.

[kawai_cs]

Dohnanyi's finger exercises are pretty difficult. I would not recommend to start with them since they might cause a lot of tension in your hands if used too early.
Myself, I came back to playing the piano after 15 years just a few months ago.
I started with... Hanon.  I was raised on Czerny but now I did not feel like learning his etudes. I wanted something that would allow me to concentrate on my hands only - not on the score.  And of course scales and arpeggios - everyday. So during the first months my piano sessions would only consist of Hanon, scales and arpeggios and later I added Dohnanyi. It worked for me.

[sefdavis1960]

Thank you Kawai CS, I actually started tinkering about 6 months ago, Hanon, some scales and Czerny's School of Velocity, I am up to about number ten in the book, I find that I am able to loosely put each piece together in about an hour but then I go back and start focusing on the piece more intently to iron out the imperfections so I am making some noticeable progress, I suppose I am just looking at other angles, I have started the first Dohnanyi exercise and have found that I am making some progress in practising it but as originally stated, would love to hear it actually played by someone who has mastered it so I can compare my own efforts.

[gr8ape]

Methinks you would be netter engaged finding out what other charms Dohnanyi may have to offer.

hungarian rhapsody in C major (played by fischer on youtube)

dat epic
dat supertonic modulation romantic passage

[michael_c]

Methinks you would be netter engaged finding out what other charms Dohnanyi may have to offer.

Methinks likewise. Dohnanyi wrote some fine music, but his finger exercises are downright dangerous.

You do not need stronger fingers. The fingers of a child of eight are perfectly strong enough for playing the piano. What you need is better coordination between finger muscles and the larger muscles in the rest of your body, in particular the arms and torso.

If you haven't played for a long time, the most important thing is to wake the muscles up gently, not to strain them with such unnatural things as the Dohnanyi exercises. If you are absolutely bent on playing things called "exercises", Czerny is much less destructive than Dohnanyi. But why not limber up with real music? Practice Bach inventions or preludes for finger exercises, or easier Debussy to help your playing to be relaxed and fluid, or whichever composers really inspire you.

[kawai_cs]

michael_c - nobody here in this thread has meant they need to build "stronger fingers". We all know we do not need to make our fingers stronger for better technique. What we however need are INDEPENDENT fingers. And that is what the excersises by Dohnanyi aim at. They build finger independence - if you have seen the book you would know. 

[michael_c]

michael_c - nobody here in this thread has meant they need to build "stronger fingers". We all know we do not need to make our fingers stronger for better technique. What we however need are INDEPENDENT fingers. And that is what the excersises by Dohnanyi aim at. They build finger independence - if you have seen the book you would know. 

Yes, I have the book in front of me. It starts with what are presented as "Exercises for the independence and the strengthening of the fingers".

Just looking at that first page of exercises makes me ill. As an antidote I suggest the teachings of Matthay and Taubman, or for more modern texts that follow along the same lines, What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body by Thomas Mark and Piano Technique Demystified by Neil Stannard.

We'd need to go into more detail to talk about "independence". For the present I will content myself with quoting Neil Stannard:

"The fingers are not physically independent, but they can be made to sound that way by aligning them properly with the hand and arm"

[j_menz]

Thank you J Menz, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I have just got back to the keyboard after 30 years and would love to get playing again so I need some pretty intense finger exercises to get me limbered up again.

Much better than exercises would be to drag out the pieces you learnt all those years ago - not necessarily the very last, but some of the earlier ones first - and work on them. Somewhere in there is a memory of them, both in your head and in your hands, and that will assist in the process.

[sefdavis1960]

Ha ha, Michael C, love your comment - "Just looking at the first page of exercises makes me ill"! Well, I am not at that stage - YET, but will not discount the possibility further down the track. Thank you for your suggestions though, will have a look at them. J Menz, a good suggestion about dragging out earlier pieces, the Czerny School of Velocity is one such book I did learn all those years ago and it is funny how you mentioned the memory of them, perhaps that is why I have been able to loosely complete nearly ten of them in a relatively short time, perhaps the memory of them is stored in my fingers! I never really looked at it like that. Kawai_cs, I have just started to do the first exercise with both hands and it certainly does teach you independence, my interpretation of independence in this instance is being able to raise one finger without also raising another one, like when I first started this exercise, I found that I was inadvertently raising a finger that should not have been raised but now that is starting to become under control. Thank you all for your input and advice, it is very much appreciated!

[michael_c]

Much better than exercises would be to drag out the pieces you learnt all those years ago - not necessarily the very last, but some of the earlier ones first - and work on them. Somewhere in there is a memory of them, both in your head and in your hands, and that will assist in the process.

Excellent advice. I'll come back to explain about "finger independence" in more detail as soon as I have the time.

[michael_c]

my interpretation of independence in this instance is being able to raise one finger without also raising another one

Don't raise your fingers. Piano keys are beneath your fingers: piano playing goes downwards. Just relax a finger and the piano key will push it up by itself.

The fingers are not independent: they are interdependent. The same muscle (extensor digitorum, in the forearm) lifts both the third and fourth fingers, for instance. The only way we can lift the fourth finger while not also lifting the third finger is to prevent the third finger from being lifted by pulling down on it with a small muscle in the hand, the second lumbrical. We have two muscles pulling against each other, with the smaller one having to work very hard to overcome the strength of the larger one.

Luckily, in order to play the piano we hardly need to lift the fingers at all. Try this:

Play a C-major triad (CEG) with the first, third and fifth fingers of the right hand. Let your fourth finger rest lightly on the F key. That's as high as you need to lift the fourth finger! If, when you play that triad, the fourth finger does not also play the F, then it is already independent enough.

Exercises such as the Dohnanyi ones, with fingers holding down keys while other fingers play, lead almost inevitably to unnecessary tensions. If you already have a very advanced technique, if you take great care, making correct use of arm weight and rotation, it is possible to play them without too much fatigue, but there is really no point in doing this. They will not help somebody with a less advanced technique to develop better habits.

[anamnesis]

Don't raise your fingers. Piano keys are beneath your fingers: piano playing goes downwards. Just relax a finger and the piano key will push it up by itself.

The fingers are not independent: they are interdependent. The same muscle (extensor digitorum, in the forearm) lifts both the third and fourth fingers, for instance. The only way we can lift the fourth finger while not also lifting the third finger is to prevent the third finger from being lifted by pulling down on it with a small muscle in the hand, the second lumbrical. We have two muscles pulling against each other, with the smaller one having to work very hard to overcome the strength of the larger one.

Luckily, in order to play the piano we hardly need to lift the fingers at all. Try this:

Play a C-major triad (CEG) with the first, third and fifth fingers of the right hand. Let your fourth finger rest lightly on the F key. That's as high as you need to lift the fourth finger! If, when you play that triad, the fourth finger does not also play the F, then it is already independent enough.

Exercises such as the Dohnanyi ones, with fingers holding down keys while other fingers play, lead almost inevitably to unnecessary tensions. If you already have a very advanced technique, if you take great care, making correct use of arm weight and rotation, it is possible to play them without too much fatigue, but there is really no point in doing this. They will not help somebody with a less advanced technique to develop better habits.

I think the insistence that piano playing goes downwards is too simplified.

How we move up and away from the piano and what we do in the time and space between is just as important as when you play down toward the piano. In fact a lot of ease of play, is learning how to move up and away (particularly from the forearm) from the piano and still produce tone.

Understanding how to use  proper up movements allows you to find rhythmic, circular movements that flow into each other such that you are never wasting an up-and-down cycle.  

[sefdavis1960]

Thanks Michael_c, I think I used the wrong word in "raise", taking your latest comment into consideration, I think I meant to use the word "movement", which really makes more sense in light of what you are saying. Thank you for your suggested exercise, I will try this, I am at work at the moment and used my office desk to get a feel of where you are coming from, but when I get home I will do it on the keyboard. At this stage my technique is a little grubby after not touched it for so long, I think I just have to be patient and persist with good quality daily practice. Will keep you "posted" (pardon the pun!).

[Steffen Fahl]

Here you can listen at least two of his studies:
https://klassik-resampled.de/dohnanyi
perhaps it helps to get an impression of his wonderful music....
best fahl5

[sefdavis1960]

Thank you very much Steffen, will have a listen.

[kawai_cs]

Great playing Steffen! Now I want your advice how I can come closer to playing so fast, lightly, evenly, heavenly...

[sashaco]

I had never heard of Dohnanyi, but I just looked at the first few pages and was stunned to see how similar some of them are to an exercise I created for myself a couple of years ago to help with trilling and playing another voice in one hand.  I play a trill on 5/4 while playing 1-2-3-2-1, then do the same with 4/3 while playing 1-2-5-2-1 and so forth.  I find it's good to listen to the slow voice sometimes and the trill sometimes.  I think the key to finger independence is as much in listening for the voices separately as it is in the athletic issue of persuading the fingers to perform separate functions.

Cheers, Sasha

[michael_sayers]

I had never heard of Dohnanyi . . .

Cheers, Sasha

Hi Sasha,

Ernö Dohnanyi was a teacher of Ervin Nyiregyhazi.


Mvh,
Michael

[ewalker1]

I do Dohnányi exercises every day and it hasn't done me any harm
Rather...lots of good!

Look at some of the greatest pianists ever...Busoni, Rachmaninov, Liszt...all did technical exercises.
So unless you have a higher level of natural technical control than Liszt(!) I would recommend them.

Even modern concert pianists (not naming names, but I can think of countless people that have told me) will recommend exercises, so it can't be all bad...

[michael_sayers]

Here you can listen at least two of his studies:
https://klassik-resampled.de/dohnanyi
perhaps it helps to get an impression of his wonderful music....
best fahl5

Hi Steffen,

Just listen to this . . . the Rhapsody in G Minor, Op. 11 No. 1 . . .

Mvh,
Michael

[tombikadam]

Methinks likewise. Dohnanyi wrote some fine music, but his finger exercises are downright dangerous.

You do not need stronger fingers. The fingers of a child of eight are perfectly strong enough for playing the piano. What you need is better coordination between finger muscles and the larger muscles in the rest of your body, in particular the arms and torso.

you need I think also strong fingers, why can you play a difficult piece easly on a light key-weighted piano? because your fingers are too strong for them so... 

[anamnesis]

you need I think also strong fingers, why can you play a difficult piece easly on a light key-weighted piano? because your fingers are too strong for them so... 

To be that's more of a sign that your technique needs work. 

The only issues that would need to be worked out between different pianos, no matter the weighting, are slight timing and voicing issues.

If it feels much easier on a lighter keyboard, you are more than likely over-burdening your fingers.

Trying to strengthen the fingers is really a red herring.

If you can dribble a basketball, your fingers have all the strength they need. Whether, you know how to coordinate and efficiently use that strength is another matter. The goal is to learn how to synergistically use other muscle groups so that your fingers don't tire out.

The main role the muscles that control your fingers is to setup the skeleton to deliver the power from the rest of your body. They are not the source of the power, nor should they be the source of most of your precision. They are points of contact that are captured in (and do not drive) the rhythmic flux of the rest of the body.