Piano Forum

If you understand spoken French, you may wish to glance at a few videos of performer and teacher Elie Drai. Many of his over 500 videos are pedagogical, and although he appears to earn his daily bread by teaching, he has still posted an impressive amount of free lesson-oriented material.

I am not qualified to evaluate him, but he seems like the real deal. He is a devoted follower of Cortot's book (Rational Principles of Piano Technique) and his Youtube catalogue includes a series of 12 videos explaining and demonstrating the exercises; he also uses Czerny, Hanon, extracts from repertoire, etc.

Series 'Tout le piano' - 12 videos



(or just search for 'Elie Drai' on Youtube and check his playlists)

Here is my translation of how he introduces the series in the first video of the 12:

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We are going to study all the aspects of piano technique. By that I mean the technical aspects that one finds [first] in classical music, and [second] in songs. I exclude certain aspects of technique which are completely specific to what is called 'modern' music.

We have many subjects to deal with.

For this, we are going to base ourselves on some works, the principal among them being that of Alfred Cortot, 'Rational Principles of Piano Technique.' I recommend of course that you purchase it. And this work has the immense merit of treating everything in detail. It is difficult, but it possesses the immense quality of being the [main] reference work of all the conservatories in France.

We will also make use of some other works -- 'The Virtuoso Pianist' of Hanon, which is also a work often used by students; but also certain works of Czerny -- Czerny wrote many works, and this is but a selection of his writings, with for example, this work, '160 Eight-Measure Exercises', 'The School of Velocity', et cetera.

This is what awaits us. this is our program. And we are going to try to be precise, very detailed, in order to explain well both the concepts and [how to put them into operation.]

Off we go then!

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