Anderson and Roe Play Der Erlkönig...in the Steinway Factory

From their upcoming album on the Steinway label, here are Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe playing Franz Schubert's Der Erlkönig arranged for piano duet:





More Erlkönig on the Collaborative Piano Blog:

Anne Sofie von Otter with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Rammstein
Erlkönig Hacks for the Schubertian Pianist

The Intervals in Inversion Song

What a great way to learn the intervals. A huge thanks goes to David Newman for writing this:

(Via Iman Habibi)

Meme of the Day

Win Two Tickets to 2 Pianos 4 Hands in Toronto November 4

Today's guest post was written by Liz Parker, a publicist who also teachers piano. Sometimes she traumatically frightens her students. You can find out more about Liz at LIZPR.

I am sitting at CBC Radio during a break after a sound check for “Q”. I’m here on a PR run with Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt the creators of the play 2 Pianos 4 Hands, which debuted fifteen years ago in Toronto. It was a smash hit then, and judging by the media interest, will be, again. It’s being re-launched by Mirvish Productions and opens at Panasonic Theatre October 30.

I’m so appreciative of all the media that Ted and Richard are doing – including getting up gross-early (like today) to do sound checks, knowing they have to wait around for an hour before going live on air, plus doing a full media day this past Tuesday that Mirvish set up for them. I was thinking “wow, they’re so discplined about this.” Of course, we all know where that discpline came from.

Both Ted and Richard grew up on a steady diet of piano practice. It was non-negotiable. Either practice or all privleges were suspended. Growing up with a Tiger Mother myself, it was pretty much “practice or throw yourself on that samurai sword right now.”

The whole issue of practicing is one of the most difficult things to deal with if you’re a music student. It is equally one of the most difficult things to enforce as a music teacher or parent. The biggest resentment for kids is practicing, despite refusing to quit. This applies not only to piano, violin, or, god forbid, viola. It applies to other things too: soccer, figure skating, law school, or pre-med. I know I hated my parents big time for denying me the chance to go sledding on a rare snowfall in Vancouver; for denying me a night at “Circuit Circus” to play Ms. Pac Man with my friends; the chance to see films like “Sixteen Candles” on the weekend. Also, if a birthday party, Halloween, or anything fun conflicted with my piano or theory lessons, too bad – music came first, end of discussion. Don’t argue, or you don’t get any dessert. At the time I thought it was pure hell and I was pretty resentful and pulled out the “YOU ALWAYS FAVOURED JACKIE” line a few times because it always seemed fitting to do so (my older brother who won every damn piano competition he ever entered). 

Looking back on it, I can’t get OVER the sheer dedication and endless support my parents gave me. All that nagging to practice paid off. I do understand what it means to commit to something and mean it. I understand that to do well, you have to work your tail off – and it helps if you pick something you do love despite the dreaded practice invovled. All those years of practicing means I can now apply my music skills elsewhere – I work with musicians for a living. I write about them, style them for photo shoots, and understand where they’re coming from. I also teach piano kids on the side – one could say it’s payback – and I’m startled to discover I’m turning into my mother, and at times, my own traumatically frightening piano teacher.  My musical life has come full circle.  

2 Pianos 4 Hands sums up the lives of anyone who either studied a musical instrument or had a dream that didn’t quite work out.

Here's how to win two tickets to 2P4H on Friday, November 4:

Leave a comment after this post stating what you hated most about practicing in 100 words or less. [CF: once you've left a comment, email me at collaborativepiano at gmail dot com with the same comment so Liz and I will know how to contact you. Good luck everyone!]  The deadline will be at 5pm on Tuesday, November 1, with winners announced the following day.

2 Pianos 4 Hands will run at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto from October 30 – November 20. Visit www.mirvish.com or call TICKETKING at 416 872 1212.


Update: Congratulations to tjhewer, who has just won 2 tickets to Friday's performance!

Daria van den Bercken Takes Handel on the Road

Who ever said that the pianos need to be stationary while you play them? Daria van den Bercken's Handel at the Piano project exists as both preparation for her upcoming Handel recording and a unique outreach project to bring the keyboard works of Handel to a larger audience...out of doors.

Here's Daria giving George Frederich Handel's music some fresh air in the Netherlands:




You can also follow Daria's project on Facebook, as well as make a donation.

(Via All Piano)

The New York Festival of Song Presents In The Memory Palace

Part of the art song recital's enduring wonder is its ability to mix artists, national styles, time periods, and genres in new and interesting ways. The New York Festival of Song's In the Memory Palace celebrates at a kaleidoscope of songs by Gabriel Kahane, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Enrique Granados, Frank Bridge, and others, with two shows this week in New York City. Soprano Michelle Areyzaga, mezzo soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb, tenor Paul Appleby, and baritone Stephen Garland are joined by pianists Steven Blier and Michael Barrett.

You can really get a sense of the collaborative music-making energy from Steven Blier and company in these two NYFOS promotional videos:





In The Memory Palace will be showing at 8pm on October 25 and 27 at the Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufmann Center on West 67th. Tickets are $55/40/15.

Full program
Facebook event listing

Open Comment Thread: Student Poaching

Consider the following professional situations:

1. A teacher leaves a community to serve a one-year term at a university. At the conclusion of the contract, he/she returns to their previous musical community, calls up his/her old students, offers them a discount on what their current teachers are charging them, and rebuilds his/her teaching practice.

2. A teacher gives a workshop for a local registered music teachers' association. One of the performers in particular plays at an exceptional level. At the conclusion of the class, the teacher has a word with the performer's parents, expressing concern about the student's current teacher, and offers a place in his/her own studio in order to correct certain issues in the student's playing. The parents, honored to have their child offered a place in such a prestigious studio, then change to the new teacher.

3. A Sessional faculty member has an exceptional freshman student. At the conclusion of the student's freshman year, an Assistant Professor in the same department has a word with an administrator, and the student is then placed in the Assistant Professor's studio for their sophomore year.

Many of you with experience in the music teaching field may agree that these types of situations happen all the time.

These types of actions are also highly unethical.

From MTNA's Code of Ethics under the sub-heading of Commitment to Colleagues:

• The teacher shall respect the integrity of other teachers' studios and shall not actively recruit students from another studio. 
• The teacher shall participate in the student's change of teachers with as much communication as possible between parties, while being sensitive to the privacy rights of the student and families.

From NATS' Code of Ethics under the sub-heading of Ethical Standards Relating to Colleagues:

• Members will not, either by inducements, innuendoes, or other acts, proselytize students of other teachers.

But let's face it, we live in an educational system that values excellence and achievement above all else, and these aggressive recruiting practices are what can help build a studio to a high level. On the other hand, building a studio at the expense of other teachers left in one's wake can cause long-standing resentments in the profession and is clearly unethical as set out in the membership guidelines of educational organizations.

How do you feel about poaching practices by music teachers? Should teachers be held to the highest levels of professionalism towards their colleagues or is this an old-school gentleman's code to be forgotten in the high-stakes world of music education?

Opinions both for and against are welcome, and I'll play the devil's advocate wherever possible. Comments on the Collaborative Piano Blog are always moderated, and allegations towards specific teachers and institutions will be ruthlessly deleted. On the other hand, if you fear for your reputation in talking about this issue, feel free to comment anonymously.

Straight Talk on Learning and Freelancing

I'm a huge fan of Penelope Trunk's blog. She pulls no punches, speaks her mind, and isn't afraid to make enemies. Two of her recent articles are worth reading if you're a professional freelance musician or music teacher:

1. How School Affects Future Earnings looks at some current thought regarding what's important in a child's education. Trunk's emphasis is on striving, confidence, goal-setting, doing the work, and unconventional solutions for each child. I also like the importance she puts on finding a mentor.

Let's face it - individualized instruction is not part of a successful business plan in the education sector. Class instruction is what pays the bills, and most schools simply can't afford to give students private instruction, even in cases where special education needs require it. Which is where private music teachers come in. It is impossible to develop any decent level of proficiency in a musical instrument without hours upon hours of individual lessons. Therefore, private music lessons might be the only one-on-one time that a child ever gets with a teacher (Elissa Milne has also stated this several times in her blog). This puts music teachers in a unique position to have a tremendous influence on a child's development, not just in terms of their progress in learning an instrument, but in their overall attitude towards self-confidence, work, achievement, and finding their true calling. Penelope says it very well:

I coach so many people who want advice about their career, but so often, these people really just need to learn how to figure out what they want: experiment, find what might be fun. Try it for a bit. People need coaching on how to take risks and not worry if they fail. People need coaching on how to find a mentor who is invested in their particular path. I see that all these things are related to earning power, and all these things are what kids learn when they direct their own curriculum.

2. Every freelance collaborative pianist should read Finance Tips for the Self-Employed. Being a freelancer in an urban music scene can be rough. You might rarely have access to your own dedicated studio space. You might go your entire career dragging a backpack around a school of music. You'll often make insane amounts of money from February through April, but have trouble making ends meet in September. Penelope's article won't change any of that, but will help you deal with the difficult stuff. Two of Penelope's points in particular are applicable to many people's freelance work:

4. Have one great client.
5. Self-employment stability requires doing stuff you hate.

Yet Another Piano Lesson Scam Email

A few days ago, many of the teachers in my area received the following email:

Hello,
    I need a patient teacher who loves teaching music to students of all ages for my daughter (Angela) who is coming for an holiday season in your area, i got your advert while searching through your area and i really want my 16 yrs old daughter to be taught by you as you are with tutoring Experiences {Angela} is a beginner and easily catch up.Although,i came to understand that you are in (CANADA} but I've arranged with my client (son's Nanny) living there in the CANADA that my daughter is coming to stay with her for the period of tutoring and she has agreed with me, But we personal reside in Belgium..kindly get back to me with the required information below.

Musical education?

Level of experience?

Personality?

Studio atmosphere?

Type of programme offered?

What is you Charges for an hour?

Your total charges for 6 weeks private lesson (60 MINUTES EACH, 2 TIMES PER WEEK)?

Full name and Address?

Your cell and home phone number?

Regarding where the lesson will be holding,i hope if you don't have a studio where you can tutor,it will be better if the lesson can take place in public facility or in local library in your area.i think that could be okay.I think you just have the option of where to make the lesson available while you hope it will be a successful lesson for you and my daughter.

Thank you very much, I hope to read from you as soon as possible so that the private lesson can commence immediately.

Regards.
Micheal Woods

In case you're unfamiliar with these types of scams, the sender inquires about lessons and solicits a great deal of information. When you respond with the requested information, they immediately send you a cheque for several thousand dollars, followed by an immediate request for the return of part of that amount. The original cheque will bounce, and you'll be out of pocket for the amount of money you sent.

The only way to avoid any fraud attempt is to ignore these emails. The giveaway is the terrible spelling and grammar, as well as what looks to be a cut and paste job on the target country.

Please beware. I know people who have fallen victim to these scams. It isn't fun.

Speedlinking - October 16, 2011

Here are some interesting reads from around the blogosphere:

• Erica Sipes is equally proficient at piano and cello, but chooses one over the other. Here's why.
• Leila Viss talks about why having an EASY button in your studio can make your students work harder.
• Gretchen Saathoff looks at what goes on in a vocal coaching.
• Musical Assumptions' Elaine Fine recently called it quits on her blog, then promptly changed her mind and continued blogging as usual. Thank goodness, as MA is one of the top classical music blogs there is.
• Those darned orchestral reductions are no problem for Eileen Huang.
• Eloy Casas Muñoz is in the process of writing a Spanish-language blog which contains an exhaustive list of international pianists. 
• Ever wonder why the best bloggers don't fall into the proper mold of corporate professionalism? Because crazy people make better bloggers.

Who Accompanies Whom in Mozart Violin Sonatas?

Ever take a look at the title page on an urtext edition of Mozart violin sonatas? The title reads "Sonaten für Klavier und Violine". Yes, Mozart's early piano/violin sonatas started out as piano sonatas with optional violin obbligato. Throughout the course of his compositional career, he gradually gave the solo violin part more prominence and independence. Susan Tomes weighs in on the subject en route to a November 11 concert in Scotland's brand-new Perth Concert Hall:

Piano and violin, I hear you say? Isn’t it ‘violin and piano’? Well, not according to Mozart who called them ‘sonatas for piano and violin’. In his letters, he mentions playing the piano parts himself ‘with the accompaniment of a violin’. That was how they were perceived until the nineteenth century and the age of the celebrity violinist, when things flipped around. These works, and many others like them, started to be listed as ‘violin sonatas’, and the piano part was suddenly ‘the accompaniment’. Even today the violinist is often the one with their photo on the record cover, the one whose name is in bigger font in the programme, or the only one whose name is mentioned at the end of the radio broadcast. 

Why does this matter? It matters because the re-labelling tricks people into perceiving things falsely. They expect the violin part to be the leading voice, when in fact the meat of the musical narrative is in the piano part. If you approach these works expecting the violin part to be pre-eminent, you experience a kind of cognitive dissonance as you listen: often the violin is doing something quite modest, and you sense that the piano part is full of interest and information, but you don’t understand why such prominent material should be relegated to ‘the accompaniment’. The answer is that it isn’t an accompaniment. If you switch to hearing the music as piano with violin, everything falls into place. Of course you still need an excellent violinist, and perhaps even more importantly, an excellent musician, both of which I’m fortunate to have.

Here is pianist Alex Zhang accompanied by violinist Alicia Ciccone in the first movement of Mozart's Sonata for piano and violin K. 304:

Supernumerary FAIL

It doesn't look like that dancer in the lion costume will be hired back for the next production...

(Via Classical Music Humor on Facebook)

The Real Problem With Classical Music

Robert Schumann, proof that
emo haircuts can indeed be
effective on 19th-century dudes.

When choosing repertoire for my students, I always give them a few choices so that they can pick a new piece that seems to fit them best. Last week, one of my students had trouble picking a sonatina. After a few questions, she finally confessed to what her misgiving was: composers for the most part have weird names that none of her friends would ever have these days. In her words, "Why aren't there any composers named Jennifer?"

Let's look at the first names of a few famous composers to see if she has a point:

• Frederick
• Ludwig
• Wolfgang
• Gioacchino
• Arnold
• Antonin
• Jean-Philippe
• Felix
• Johann
• Johannes

Now let's look at the first names of a few currently popular recording artists:

• Adele
• Selena
• Christina
• Wayne
• David
• Niki
• Katy
• Britney
• Justin
• Bruno

More than a slight difference, to be honest. There are a few composers with normal names such as Robert, George, and Richard (pronounced with a "k"). There are also a few pop artists with exotic names such as Rihanna and Gaga. But for the most part, my student was correct, and to make matters worse, the great composers are almost always middle-aged men with crazy hair and/or wigs.

Maybe part of the process of composers being accessible has a lot to do with their names sounding, well, normal. Unpretentious. 

We finally agreed on a sonatina by Samuel Arnold, as I was able to convince my student that he would have almost certainly been called Sam by his 18th-century London bros.

Finally, I would like to set the record straight with my student, who needs to be assured that there are indeed composers named Jennifer. Here is part of the second movement (aka Fiery Red) of Jennifer Higdon's Piano Trio played by violinist Ryoko Arai, cellist Yuiko Arai, and pianist Gloria Shih: 

[Update: Casey McCann has written a very elegant response to this post, which you can read here.]

Cow Piano

This bovine piano scene was spotted in the wild by twistedbydesign on Flickr. If you have any dreadful puns that you would like to share, leave them in the comments...

Memorizing for Adults

One of the recurring themes for my adult students is the sheer difficulty of memorizing music. As they age, pianists who once memorized works without a second thought have difficulty in managing those same feats in middle age. The solution for my adult students seems to be developing an organized and systematic approach to memorization, as opposed to the near-instantaneous recall that younger pianists are capable of. Joy Morin has some resources on Color in my Piano that are worth a look:

• 12 Tips for Memorizing Piano Music
• Thoughts on Memorization: A Skill Integral to Piano Playing?
• Practicing, Learning, and Memorizing for Piano Teachers (the diversity of comments are also instructive)

Also take a look at chapters 13-15 in the 31 Days to Better Practicing ebook for my own ideas on the subject.

But there's another thing I've also noticed about older pianists - sight reading gets easier and more natural. Whereas young students generally tend to need poking, prodding, inspiration, and constant reminders to work on their sight reading, older learners often develop this skill without any undue effort. Could it be that the brain as it ages tends to de-emphasize memory accuracy in exchange for better visual processing? 

What You Need To Know About Buying a Piano

Many of the families in my studio are in the market for buying a piano this fall. Like any major purchase, they need objective information before they buy, a commodity that can be somewhat difficult to find. I recently stumbled on Kendall Ross Bean's Guide to the Piano World (Part 1 and Part 2) at Piano Finders, with plenty of information on price vs. quality, factors to look for, construction materials, brands, and vintage. The hour or so you spend reading Kendall's article is well worth it if you're looking to buy a piano. I particularly liked the detailed comparisons of European vs. Asian pianos in the second part of the article, as well as the sections on what to look out for when purchasing:

Often a dealer will resort to a device I call "artificial urgency" to induce you to buy his piano, at his price, today. Events such as fairs; armory, truck, or warehouse sales; "factory outlets;" clearances; and, most recently, the "University sale" (see below) are only a few of the many schemes designed to generate a feeling of urgency about buying right now. Since these events last only a day, or at most, three (if you're lucky), there is an incredible amount of pressure to make a quick, and often, ill-advised, decision. If you buy at one of these events, rest assured that the price that you are paying is above, or at best, equal to what you would probably normally pay for the piano at the dealer's, and that it only seems like you are getting a great deal. It is a common practice at these events to mark up the suggested retail price. Remember too, that if you purchase an instrument while under pressure to make a quick decision, the chances of your contracting that illness known as buyer's remorse are much higher. If you want to buy at a sale, it is best to have already done your homework, to know what you're looking for and what it usually costs for comparison, and to also know your personal values. It might also be wise to have an expert on hand, one who is not in cahoots with the store sponsoring the event.