If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. Henry Ford
Going back to the very first post:What will stop them? What is stopping them right now?(This is a very serious question. Give it enough thought, and the path is open for you to bring them to any technical level you want ).Again, what will stop them?However there are many hidden assumptions here that need to be brought into the light.1. Finger dexterity – Everyone (assuming normality, that is ignoring special conditions like arthritis, for instance) has enough finger “dexterity” to do anything. The problem is never finger “dexterity”. The usual problem is actually lack of complete knowledge of the piece/passage. As some research showed, accomplished pianists and non-pianists had the same finger speed. It was just that the accomplished pianists knew where to place their fingers. This very misguided idea: that what someone needs to be an accomplished pianist is finger dexterity (one does not: one already has it) has lead to infinite hours of drudgery at the piano doing silly exercises that claim to increase dexterity but actually doing nothing of the sort. That time would have been much better spent getting to know one’s piece inside-out. This ultimately means that a teacher trying to improve a student’s playing by focusing on “technique”, or “strength” or “dexterity” will fail. Hence the often held (wrong) conclusion that teenagers/adults cannot develop technique beyond a certain point, when the correct conclusion is that the teacher’s perception of the problem and prescription of a solution is completely off the mark to start with.2. Natural technique. What is meant here by “natural” technique? Everything that occurs in the Universe is natural by definition. Or is it meant here a technique that looks “natural” (that is, easy and effortless). Have you ever considered the high jump, where the athlete jumps over a bar by jumping backwards and falling on his back? Athletes look very “natural” doing it, but is the technique “natural”? Not until 1968 when Dick Fosberry surprised the Olympic world by doing it. And since he established a new world record, clearing the bar by almost a foot above the previous record, by the next Olympics everyone was jumping the same way, even though jumping backwards can arguably be classified as one of the most unnatural movements on the planet. 3. Famous pianists opinions. They are to be taken with huge amounts of salt. Most of these pianists acquired their technique at an age where they simply cannot remember how they developped it. Most of it is now unconscious patterns. They will say one thing with the utmost conviction and do something else altogether. Besides, for every famous pianists that endorses method A, there is another who assure you that method A is crap, and vouches for method B. Did Volodos started at 16? Sure, this maybe the marketing, but I wonder… Like the myth of self-taught pianists, all you have to do is dig a bit deeper and out come the names of the several teachers they had over the years.4. “foreign accent”. What is that supposed to mean? Everyone will play with a “foreign accent”. Or does German music has a German accent? And if this is the case (which I very much doubt it is), are we supposed to believe that Ashkenazy being Russian can play Beethoven without a “Russian accent”?Ears, and the capacity for hearing (making sense out of sounds), five fingers in each hand, and the capacity to move them at will, these things are inborn. Nothing else. The piano was invented less than 300 years ago. How could this have any evolutionary influence whatsoever? This is the same as saying that Chinese people have an inborn facility to speak Chinese. We all have an inborn capacity (precluding abnormalities and diseases) for language, but there is no gene for specific languages. People like Kissin and Hamelin may have inborn superiorities (like superior ears, superior intelligence, etc.) but these inborn charcteristics would serve them well in any area - not just piano playing. That they are superior pianist can be traced down to their environment - just like the fact that a Chinese speaks Chinese is environmentally caused. Yet this very same Chinese may have inborn facilities that make him a literary genius. But he would be so in English, had he been born in the UK. Anyone at any age has the potential to achieve virtuoso level of playing (this is a completely different statement that anyone can become a concert pianist – since then market factors enter the picture). Very few achieve this potential. But the reasons have nothing to do with finger dexterity, “natural” technique, age and so on. And amongst these there are a few who will excel beyond anything imaginable. Take ohysicists. Anyone has the potential to become a physicist. But only a few will get a Nobel Prize. Surely some inborn talent will be at work, but it has nothing to do with physics per se. There is no "gene" for Physics, and it would be silly to state so. Yet the idea that somehow piano playing is genetically determined hangs on.Unfortunately these ideas (finger dexterity, “natural” technique, ageism, and so on) are deeply ingrained in the tradition of piano teaching. I suggest that if you want to further your student’s development in these areas, that you thoroughly and critically re-examine them.Best wishes,Bernhard.
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Topic: Is it too late? 