The Craft of Piano Playing: A New Approach to Piano Technique

In The Craft of Piano Playing, master pianist Alan Fraser offers readers an original and comprehensive approach to piano technique, offering over 100 illustrations and a series of unique exercises to guide the reader. Drawing on his many years as a performer and teacher, his long-standing collaborations with pedagogue Phil Cohen and virtuoso Kemal Gekich, and his professional training in the Feldenkrais Method, Fraser introduces his truly innovative piano technique by
- Teaching how to move your hands with greater sensitivity, power, and accuracy, and honing the skeletal alignments to help you access your innate, structural potency.
- Linking your physical technique to musical expression, creating an "absolutely natural way of moving at the piano that is powerful, flexible, and musical" (Piano News, Germany)
- Keeping your hands healthy while avoiding the threats of tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, focal dystonia and RSI.

CONTENIDO:

Illustrations
Musical Examples
Applications
Acknowledgment

I. The foreground pianistic problems in musical craft
1. Getting started
- Introduction
- How to use this book
- Background, Middleground and Foreground: A plan for work
- Where to start?
2. General principles of movement at the piano
- A meditation on some inner workings of movement
- Slowing the key down
- Form follows function
- Arm weight
- Matthay, Moshe and movement
3. Hand strength and function A: perfecting legato
- Physical legato is the foundation of piano technique
- A capable hand can free your arm
4. Hand strength and function B: the special role of the thumb and its relationship to the forefinger
- The thumb and grasping
- Thumb pushups: the hand as suspension spring
- Clarification of the thumb-forefinger relationship
- Quality of movement in thumb pushups
- Forefinger are swings for thumb function
5. Hand strength and function C: Octaves to synthesize hand and arm function
- From the thumb across to the Fifth finger: Hand structure and function in octave playing
- Fortissimo octaves
- Replacing arm swoop with cobra strike
- Big sound from a small hand
- Tremolando octaves
- Teutonic beef
- The octave arm-sweep
6. Hand strength and function D: Maximal articulation of the fingers
- On fingertapping
- The structure-supported slap
- The sound of one hand clapping
- Legato vs. finger articulation: The cooperation of two antithetical activities
7. Above the hand: the role of the wrist and arm in legato
- Active hand, passive arm?
- Functionally supported movement: The whole arm as finger
- Efficient functionality: The forearm as lever
- The underlying musical purpose of arm movement
- Minimize auxiliary movements to maximize efficiency
- Further musical improvisations of proper arm-hand cooperation in legato
8. Rotation
- Forearm rotation in Liszt
9. Natural finger shape
- The natural hand in passagework
- Using the yin/Yang finger phenomenon in orchestration
- Natural finger shape and tonus in chords
- Maintaining natural finger shape in scales
10. Some other touch strategies and combinations
- Synthesis of various strands of thought
- Pressing and holding in legato
- The hidden problem in legato
- Chopin's B flat minor scherzo: two fundamental principles reviewed
- Mutual aid between thumb and forefinger in the Scriabin concerto
- Articulations
- The Feldenkrais-Horowitz connection
- Flat fingers
- Pedaling
- Together!
- Questionable contradictions

II. The middleground some general aspects of musical craft
11. Rhythm
12. Phrasing
13. Orchestration

III. The background tell a story
14. Emotional content
15. A few last thoughts

Appendixes