I am not speaking about simple piano playing, what I often prefer to define as a pushing down of keys, depressing pedals like the accelerator of your car with a typewriter technique. Not at all.
It is very important not to strive after a quite impersonal and unattractive style of playing.

How do you consider your being a pianist?
Did you set your own mission statement about your personal musical development? If not, believe me, you should.
Unless you want to play rather for yourself in your free time and not for public.
But remember: being a pianist is only the step before you become an artist…

Thepianist.com starts with Glenn Gould, the eccentric Canadian pianist who certainly set a milestone in the history of the piano and pianists.

A large source of information has been written, spoken, broadcasted about Glenn Gould.
It will not be necessary to put more information about him, as it is already available. And everybody knows that there are controversial opinions about his interpretations.
Let us simply remember Glenn as someone who wanted to change the old patterns of classical music, to bring more life in the masterworks of great composers, to suggest new and original approaches to the score.

Glenn´s personal note was doubtless his conducting the music he was playing (when one of his hands was free, of course) and, last but not least, his permanent humming over the notes, the phrases or the bass-line, whatever he thought it was right to do.

Another personal note was also his polyphonic playing.
He perfectly understood how to study the score, how to read the voices in the context of the composition, how to analyze the structure and finally how to play like a string quartet or even an orchestra.

My personal recommendation to all pianists:
Don´t try to be a second Glenn Gould, the world has already one and he is enough. But you can take him as an example.
You can also decide to continue his purpose.
Be yourself, like Glenn was, and your style will develop in the right direction.
“Thank you Glenn, for showing us what to do, what not to do, how to do it, how not to do it.”

Oh my God, this terribly sounding word…our teachers threatened us with it, I am sure that the more your piano teacher repeated this word during the lessons, the less you wanted to do it.

I practiced up to seven hours a day during the time of my former music education, not only because my teachers said that, but also because I felt that spending many hours at the piano was necessary to get an appropriate technique.

However, practicing should not be just a matter of being a diligent student. If you consider your daily practice like a passionate exercising, you will be improving both your finger technique and your entire personal expression as a pianist.

Practice is the secret of being good in life.

If you repeat every day a task you are still not experienced with, you will be able to discover the strong power of practicing.

Practicing is repeating, repeating is learning, learning is living. And living is knowing more and more who you really are.

Maybe you are now fascinated by reading this and you want to know more about efficient piano playing.

But we will make a break now.

Do you know why?

Because we go practicing…