Pedal on final chord

[ravenscroft275]

I wonder what the correct way is to lift up your hands and pedal after the final chord in a song. Do you lift up your fingers and let the pedal stay down for a while, or what is the best way?

[iansinclair]

There is no one correct way.  It depends on the piece in question and on the piano and on the space.  First, there is the question of whether you use the pedal at all.  On a final chord, all the pedal does is change the tone quality -- with the dampers raised, other notes on the piano will be sounding in addition to the ones you are holding.  This changes the tone quality -- sometimes quite a bit.  Is this the sound quality you want?  Try it both ways.  Having decided whether the raise the dampers or not, then the question becomes how long do you want that last chord to resonate?  That depends on the piano and the space, and is, again, a judgement call.  Sometimes you may want the sound to fade to silence.  Sometimes you don't.

[pencilart3]

I wonder what the correct way is to lift up your hands and pedal after the final chord in a song. Do you lift up your fingers and let the pedal stay down for a while, or what is the best way?

I saw Sean Chen play ligeti staircase etude (

) live and at the very end, he just held the pedal - for a REALLY LONG TIME. The effect was really really really cool. +1 about depending on the piece you're playing.

[werq34ac]

Depends on the notation, but for most pieces I like to take both off at the same time. The only exception is for certain French pieces (Jeux D'eau comes to mind), the composer will notate a short note value but with a slur going into a rest, which I take to mean release the note but let the sound linger with the damper pedal.

[richard black]

The most important thing (at the end of the piece and everywhere else in the piece) is to let the pedal come up rapidly but without making a huge thump. Takes a small amount of practice and beyond that just a little self-control. At the end of a piece it's often good to let the pedal up just a fraction before you take your fingers off the keys, so that the sound decays in a more neatly controlled fashion. I sometimes refine this further by taking the outside end of my left hand off the keys last, though only by a small fraction of a second.