Please, come home and practice the piano

Chapter 1139 399 Playing the Game with Mom [8]

Chapter 1139 399. Playing the game with my mother [XVIII]

When gunshots sound, it can be accompanied by gun smoke, or it can be like the singing of birds in a valley in imagination.
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This statement is actually a bit like a discussion about the tone of the piano.

Arthur Schnabel, the German-Austrian master, once gave the following advice to young players regarding piano timbre:

He said that performers don't actually need to always use bright tones. When you have to control yourself to use only black and white tones, you should present it clearly and elegantly.

If you want to use many different colors, the highlights of these colors are like a prism and they must be unified into a whole.

The old man’s meaning is very clear. The change in timbre is closely related to the mutual changes between the subjective and objective during the progress of music.

The relatively important harmony and melody in a work will also affect the timbre.

When harmonic factors dominate, the levels of sound are not easy to distinguish.

At this point, timbre begins to play a role.

However, before that, there is another issue that needs to be discussed.
From a physical point of view, the timbre of a piano cannot really be changed except by using the left pedal.

So in most cases, the change of piano timbre is almost always accompanied by an indirect meaning.

By dimming the intensity of the sound, it is the best tool for performers to produce changes in timbre.

Among many factors, what makes the tone dull depends not only on the way the keys are touched, but also on the way the keys are released.

Here we have to mention the first time Wu Fusheng, Lao Tang and Jin Jiaqi formed a group to come to Chengdu.

As soon as the three of them arrived, they caught up with the Blue Sky Cup competition being held at the Huayang Theater.

The five little ones took turns to play in that game.

At that time, Lao Tang had just arrived in the Chengdu area and had not created a character yet, and did not even know Xiaobei, Xiaohu and the other children.

Perhaps listening to a group of unfamiliar children competing was a bit boring, so Lao Tang and Wu Fusheng played a game.

The content of the game is that the two guessed that those children might be Ang Lee's students based on the performances of the young contestants on stage.

The result of the game was a tie between the two.

Because none of them guessed wrong, starting from the appearance of No. 07 Xiao Liu, they guessed every student of Li Ang.

The reason why they were able to guess each child accurately was because of the touch and release of the five small keys.

The two who had competed with Li An on the same stage had a very deep understanding of Li An's key touch. Li An was one of the few players who used key touch to control pronunciation among all the players participating in the Xinhai Cup at that time.

This is actually not a very advanced skill. To put it simply, it is about shaping each tone image. The technique requires control from key touch to key release.

To put it more bluntly, if Ang Lee wants to highlight a strong note in a phrase, the first way he chooses will not be to rely on the great force of a certain link, but to achieve this effect through the speed of key placement and key release.

As long as you release the keys quickly enough, the reaction to the intensity will increase.

He will get the strong tone he wants.

The fortissimo here has gone beyond the simple scope of sound size. It is a fortissimo that is clearly recognizable in actual performance.

The finger technique for which Ang Lee is always praised comes from his skillful control of the technique after touching the keys.

It is also one of his teaching characteristics as a piano teacher.

Ang Lee would require every student to control the keys and develop the habit of controlling the keys.

This is why Lao Tang and Wu Fusheng were able to identify all of Ang Lee's students from the stage just by listening without them knowing anything.

As Ang Lee's most outstanding student, Xiaoche's key control skills have actually reached an extremely high standard.

During the holidays, I have to control every sound for six to eight hours a day. It is no exaggeration to say that I have been tempered through a lot of practice.

It’s just that Xiao Chemei’s finger technique has always been overlooked. Perhaps it’s because every time she plays music in public, it’s too dazzling, so people inadvertently ignore her tone.
However, when playing the piano, how can we skip the aspect of timbre?

If you remove all the embellishments, what else can people hear in the sound of the piano other than the pure sound of the piano?

Perhaps everyone was expecting contestant No. 01 to play a different kind of Bach before she raised her hand again.

Expect her to be as savage and powerful as she was in the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata No. 1 in F minor.

Expect her to sparkle and dazzle like she did in The Puppy Waltz.

Expect her to be as fantastical as in the Nocturne No. 1 in Op. 55.

Perhaps it could be as irresistible as she is in the Mazurka.

Some obsessed listeners, who have accumulated too much expectations, are eager to continue to hear something unusual from contestant No. 01.

But when the piano sounded again, it was actually a work by Bach?

This is bound to surprise the audience once again.

From contestants 09 to 02, each contestant chose Chopin's etudes as their final virtuoso piece.

As expected of contestant No. 01, he chose a three-part Bach Invention as the last piece of music for this round.

The difficulty of Bach's works is recognized by the industry.

It is difficult to memorize the score, has multiple parts, many melody repetitions, and various reserved notes and rests.

The above is only the superficial difficulty of the score. The real difficulty of the score is that Bach's works do not have clear markings of strength and weakness.

So you can play your Bach, I can play my Bach, we can all play Bach, we are all Bach.

Bach has no standard answer; it has neither the framework of classical works nor the mood of romantic works.

It shouldn't even be on the playing field, whether it's for adults or children.

Contestant No. 01 not only chose Bach, but also directly challenged the three-part inventions.

Just imagine a girl who seems to have multiple performing personalities. How would she use her hands to control three parts in parallel?

"Ding-"

The eager audience, with their fervent anticipation, pricked up their ears from the first verse on stage, from the first middle voice line that appeared.

As the girl's fingers danced in front of the piano, they heard the second high-pitched line appear.

Then, after a simple upbeat, they heard the third low line appear.

Three lines just appear so easily?

As the music unfolded, doubts arose in the hearts of the most obsessed audience.

Although they heard some changes in the rhythm of the bass line, these changes were not caused by contestant No. 01's performance, but were already in the score.

Until contestant No. 01 finished playing the first four bars, the scenes they expected still did not appear, and there was no sign of them appearing.

Including the four judges sitting in the middle, after listening to the four pieces, they seemed to have already determined in their hearts that contestant No. 01 was extraordinary.

But this time contestant number four just played the piano.

Apart from this, contestant No. 01 did nothing.

Only the round notes rolled down one by one from the highest point of the raised grand piano castanets, as if they were diving in a line.

Then it fell to the floor of the stage and evaporated instantly.

That's it.

Looking at the ten fingers on the keyboard, they seemed a little tired and could not speed up any melody line at all.

However, as the music continued to move forward, after the next group of waves appeared, gradually, three melody lines of different colors magically appeared at the same time.

this!
When the solid lines shuttle through the clean and neat phrases, giving people an infinite sense of power, no one can divert their attention from the piano sound in their ears at this moment.

Only later did they realize that contestant No. 01 had such a unique voice.

Every note is crystal clear. A little more force would make it heavy, a little less force would make it weak.

This is something that no one noticed when contestant No. 01 played the first four pieces.

As the clear piano sound pushes the music forward, the three melody lines seem to start a free rhythm.

Sometimes they were staggered in a regular pattern, sometimes they were parallel to each other, and they began to flicker faintly with mechanical rhythmic fire, which made people's hearts palpitate.

At this point in the music, the scene on the stage seemed to become a little different.

Looking closely at the piano again, I could see that contestant No. 01 had moved closer to the keyboard at some point, and his hands on the keyboard seemed to be pinching a cluster of starlight every time they were raised and lowered.

This is Xiaoche's Bach Three-Part Invention, a three-part invention that belongs to her and her teacher. Teacher: "Linlin, music is a spatial art. How three-dimensional it can be does not depend on how three-dimensional the performer can imagine it, but on how the performer arranges the notes."

Student: “It’s still musical notes.”

This conversation comes from a corner of a daily classroom session between a teacher and a student on a moonless afternoon.

In this class, Ang Lee used painting as an example to describe to Xiao Che how the three-part invention should be developed in complex harmony.

Without the moon, the night would not seem peaceful.

It was in this class that Xiao Che realized for the first time the importance of timbre to musical notes.

When harmonic elements dominate, the levels of sound are difficult to distinguish, and this is when timbre comes into play.

Just like the three-part melody lines presented on the spot at this moment, they are fully developed in her dexterous hands, and at the same time appear very compact, giving people a feeling of coming one after another, as clear as crystal.

Listening to this performance, even the most demanding judges had to admit that it was rare for a thirteen-year-old child to play a three-part Bach Invention to such a level.

Not only that, in the presentation of the last piece, they also heard contestant No. 01, as a pianist, having the most direct touch and dialogue with the piano.

Beneath this kind of dialogue, there is an extremely pure sense of timbre.

Two-thirds of the way through the music, there is no trace of performance design or any emotional embellishment.

Just clean and neat key placement and release.

There was one more thing Alex was very sure of.

He could tell that contestant No. 01 voluntarily gave up using most of the piano effects in this piece, such as sudden changes from weak to strong.

This should have been contestant No. 01's forte.

The cleverness of contestant No. 01 giving up his forte is that this will prevent the entire piece from becoming too piano-like, which will improve the quality of the entire piece from another perspective.

There was no piano in Bach's time, and his keyboard works were mainly written for harpsichord and organ.

Compared with the modern piano, the harpsichord has no changes in volume, and the organ has no difference in timbre.

Therefore, Bach's keyboard frets need to focus more on the timbre itself and the gradual changes in tension between musical lines.

This idea remains the aesthetic orientation of Bach's music to this day.

From this perspective, Alex can say in any public occasion that all attempts to play Bach beautifully or with strong and weak expressions are just self-conceit.

On the contrary, today's young performers always try to reveal a completely new connotation of Bach's music in their performances. They will uncontrollably establish a hierarchical connection between several melody lines that is different from the traditional one, trying to attract attention.

Those who often do this are those contestants who are extremely good at using techniques, just like contestant No. 01 in the first four performances.

But at the very end, No. 01 chose the simplest way of playing in this Bach work, playing the flowing notes with the most authentic timbre of the piano.

It presents a Bach work full of the beauty of composition, making people feel as if they have returned to an era without pianos.

however.

Indeed, even an experienced Alex made a mistake this time.

Contestant No. 01 had to tell the truth, the last piece was the one she spent the most time and effort designing.

In other words, every detail in the music heard by the audience at this moment is her careful design.

"Linlin, let's have one last lesson about this Bach piece."

“A performer’s first reaction to a piece is intuitive, even if he or she wants to look at the score objectively.”

"As he further studies and connects with the piece, he begins to worry that gaining more knowledge will undermine his initial emotional connection to the piece."

"Do you know why?"

“Because playing by intuition is thrilling, we don’t even know how it will end, and this adventurous way of playing will also be particularly attractive to the audience.”

"But Linlin, you have to understand that this is an unreliable idea."

“It’s a fallacy to think that the more you understand music, the less you feel it.”

“We can’t define a beautiful sound.”

“It’s all a matter of personal experience, but there’s no denying that the pleasure of sound has an almost intoxicating quality.”

"If you easily settle on a certain sound you imagine, you'll start to see it as your only way of expressing yourself."

“So I suggest you start with this piece and carefully experience the various changes in timbre.”

"For example, by changing the intensity or the speed of key control."

“Only through various comparisons can you find the tone that is truly suitable for this piece, provided that it is a tone that you really like from the bottom of your heart, and not just to cater to the work.”

“At this point, timbre can serve as a means of expressing your musical emotions.”

Our contestant No. 01 spent a long period of time searching for the tone she wanted.

Finally, she found her own voice for this piece.

It is also an offense to the teacher.

The car chose the tone of the teacher's daily piano practice.

"when!"

When the three melody lines playfully intersect again in the air, the fun and inner rhythm are balanced, and they are as free as waves.

Under the stage lights, the tip of the girl's nose was already sweating.

The smile on her face at this moment should be the one that Ba Wan is most familiar with, but no one knows what the scene in her mind is like at this moment.

Perhaps it would be the scene of her and her teacher practicing piano together in the study that evening.

When the two C major scales merged into one in the next second, in front of the two pianos, the teacher and the student touched the keys almost identically and had identical expressions, and the sky outside the window darkened.

The teacher and student just played their own content, and they seemed to be one with each other. Occasionally, there would be a hint of Bach's fugue in the overlapping of two scale parts.

That day, Ang Lee did not tell Xiao Che that Bach's three-part inventions contained multiple parallel voices, nor did he remind Xiao Che what he should pay attention to with his ears at this moment.

That day was the first day the car was moved to the teacher's house. The fate of the teacher and the student seemed to be buried in the future poems along with Bach's foreshadowing on that day.

"Ding-"

Perhaps Bach's music has no story, only digital sound flowing in a large, logically rigorous building.

But maybe having no story is also a kind of story.

When gunshots sound, it can be accompanied by gun smoke, or it can be like the singing of birds in a valley in imagination.

"when!"
-
Now the car has played all three melody lines.

She felt like she was going to go home from school soon.

Ok.

If we review it a little bit, it’s Beethoven in F minor, um!

Waltz, eh!
Nocturne, eh!

Mazurka~A little flaw, but it's okay!

Of course, the three-part creative song by Lin and the teacher is super awesome!!
"when!"

After playing the last note, contestant No. 01 raised his hand and stood up.