A question about wrist positioning

[bttay]

For the past many years, I always played with higher wrist position ie. with the back of my palm forms a straight line with my forearm.

Recently, after watching a video of Claudio Arrau, I tried to imitate him by playing with my wrist lowered so that it is very near to the keyboard. I realized I have to mobilize my fingers more in playing with this positioning and the tone since to sound more "rounded". With my previous playing positioning it sounds more harsh/sharp.

My question is should I vary my wrist position in order to achieve various tones I want or is my previous positioning wrong?

Thanks.

[xvimbi]

Absolutely, you should vary your wrist position. The wrist is one of the most important joints well, actually a whole set of joints) in your playing apparatus, in addition to the finger joints, elbow, shoulder, torso you get the idea. None of these joints should be held in a fixed position throughout one's playing. They all need to be involved and should constantly be adjusted according to the sound you want. of course, certain, short passages will require one or more joints to be held constant, but this is not to be applied to any passage.

Furthermore, the wrist position you described (i.e. back of the palm in one plane with the forearm) is not high at all. A high wrist position is with the wrist a lot higher than that. The "natural" position, which is already higher than what you described, is where elbow, forearm, hand and fingers form an arch.

One example for a typical wrist action is the general way for playing a phrase: start with a low wrist, move the wrist up during the phrase, and lift off the hand at the end of the phrase with the wrist at its maximum height.

[bttay]

Thanks xvimbi.

That really clears my doubts.