small hands

[A-flat-minor]

I have small hands... personally I think it's unfortunate. Is there any ways that could train a small hands person to be stronger perhaps in playing chords and octaves? gah... I think we'll just have to practise more than others...  

[rachfan]

Small hands, large hands--I think the best thing for anyone is simply to use their given capabilities to best advantage.  A person with large hands (like me) can shine in music such as Rachmaninoff's that often demands difficult chords, rolls, etc.  A pianist with small hands is often very adept and agile with classical era composers like Mozart, or fast stacatto music such as Mendelssohn's.  With my large hands, I'd hate to have to face off with someone with small hands playing Mozart--that pianist would run rings around me!!  Through the years there have been many famous virtuosi with small hands like Hofmann, Slenczynska, and Ashkenazy to name just a few.  Small hands never seemed to hold them back any.

[BoliverAllmon]

My teacher actually prefers students with small hands. She says it is easier to teach technique to them. I have large hands and if I am not careful I rely on the length of my fingers and get real tight wrist and make terrible tonal quality. She says that peope with smaller hands have to have good technique or they can't play pieces with any kind of efficiency. So, don't fret about small hands, it will be ok.

Boliver Allmon

[Bosendorfer_214]

I have large hands and don't seem to have any difficulty with fast technical passages ie: CHOPIN Etude Op. 10 no. 4.  I think it is a great advantge to have large hands.  I can reach an 11th and play scales in 10ths.  I do however agree with you RachFan that it is much easier to efficiently perform Rachmaninov and his large handed russian contemporaries.

On the other hand (no punn intended)  I can see how people with small hands may have an easier time with Bach and Mozart.

Please.. Small handed people, don't try to strech your hands...  You may be doing more damage than you know.

[BoliverAllmon]

Didn't Schuman damage his hands beyond repair from attempting to stretch and gain independence in each finger?

Boliver Allmon

[amee]

Yes, he did.

He invented a contraption in the hopes of stretching each finger.  It was basically a piece of string tied at one end to the ceiling, and the other end was tied to his finger.  The idea was it was to stretch his finger as he slept.  As a result, he almost paralyzed his 4th finger.

[chelsey]

I have really small hands and they've always been an obstacle throughout my piano education. Until about a year ago I couldn't reach an octave! My piano teacher found me exercizes I could do at the keys and off the keys which has greatly increased my flexibility to the point where I can almost comfortably reach a ninth. Part of my problem before was that I relied on my hands too much and never played with my wrists or arms which caused me problems with chords, octaves and general endurance. When I started with a different teacher last fall he was able to correct it. now of all my technique chords are one of my strongest facets as long as they are not larger than an octave.



Chelsey

[Kel]

i have really small hands as well and i asked my teacher a few months ago actually
he said that it doesnt matter, just that i will have to learn to roll chords a lot more rather a person with larger hands i guess
dont let small hands get in the way of your dream

[A-flat-minor]

Great opinions here. I realized (or, I've been realizing) that, if a small-hand-person wants to take the advantage of their small hands, they will HAVE TO learn how to use different kinds of energy, force... which is a very subtle thing to recognize... which is hard!

[amee]

Yes, but having small hands does not necessarily equal having weak fingers.

I dont think it really matters how big/small your hands are.  Sure, those chords can be a big pain for someone with small hands, but that can be made up in agility and strength of fingers.  Also if you have massive hands, there's also the danger of them getting stuck in between the keys.

[Franz_Liszt]

 I can reach a tenth at most and I can still play Bach pretty well.  

[BoliverAllmon]

AGreed amee, big hands can be a problem. I have gotten my fingers stuck on several occassions, but the real pain is when you are playing octaves or other large stretches and you jam your middle finger on the back of the piano (if this even makes sense).

Boliver Allmon

[ericnolte]

  One frequently hears pianists bemoan their small chops, but think of Joseph Hoffman and Alicia de la Rocha.  They could do anything (well, okay, they sometimes had to roll chords that others could play simultaneously.)   The point is that they could play everythng with surpassingly apparent ease.  

  To play with this kind of ease is an accomplishment, even where great talent is involved.  To say that such apparent ease is a matter of coordination means, I believe, using your mind to employ whatever physical equipment one owns, and make it fit the problem at hand (so to speak....)

 Within a certain range, I agree that the size of one's hands is not a big problem.  Pianists who can't reach an octave are handicapped, to be sure.  Pianists whose fingers are of too great a girth, or diameter, and can't slip their fingers between the keys are also saddled with a big problem, regardless of their hand span.

  Pianists with exceptionally big hands sometimes have a more difficult time than those with smaller hands in negotiating convoluted, rapid-fire passage work.  I'm not sure why this would have to be true, but an image comes to mind, as a matter of intuition: think of a big tennis player or footballer running full tilt and then trying to change directions rapidly.  Maybe the big-handed pianist's issue of agility here has something to do with mass and inertia.  Or maybe the relation and dynamics of finger to key.  Maybe something about the ratio of finger to key size.

  The actual proportions of one's hand may be a bigger issue.  For example, it's a problem if one's thumb is not long enough, in comparison to one's other fingers, because, for one thing, this configuration tends to make the remaining fingers cramp up into an unnaturally tight curve; imagine the shape your hand makes when all one's fingers play with the fingertips in a straight line on adjacent keys. If the thumb is too short, it cramps the remaining fingers.  A similar problem happens if one's 5th finger is too short, especially when compared to one's 4th finger.

  One's mind is the bigger issue, the manner in which one brings reason to bear on the problems at the keyboard.

Best regards,

Eric Nolte