I learnt from a teacher who learnt from Horowitz’s sister. Tension, co contraction at its most extreme, and very low wrists were the mandate. The outcome? A number of students developing dystonia.
@@alanfraser2948 that doesn't really surprise me, although it is sad. When it comes to the titans (Horowitz, Richter, Gould etc) I love them as much as the next person, but idolising them beyond first analysis is not a good idea if you, yourself are a training pianist.
No, @@santorinischnabel Romanovsky learnt from Magarius (who taught at the same school in Kharkov years ago). My teacher was Makarov. As I understand, Magarius and Makarov were pretty much enemies. Makarov in any case was an over-hyped simpleton who has spent the last 15 years in jail. He did, though, have a number of very, very good students.
@@alanfraser2948 A little knowledge? How do you know the poster has "a little knowledge"? How much of his knowledge do you expect him/her to write in a RUclips comment in order to make a single point?
I'm not talking about Dennis, whose knowledge is vast and admirable! I'm talking about the people who developed a dystonia because they didn't know what they were doing.
I played the Horowitz piano when Franz Mohr toured with it in 1990 (the piano by then was own by Steinway), the year after Horowitz's death. What Denis Zhdanov says about the action is absolutely true. I have never played a piano with an action that light (I started lessons when I was 5; I'm 81 now, so I've been doing this for a while with some wonderful teachers, including Martin Canin and Mme. Rosina Lhevinne). I have also never played a piano voiced so brightly. It sounded like the hammers were glass. That muscular sound that Horowitz made in the bass? I made the same sound. It was the piano, not him, not me. Interestingly, I played the F-major Etude (10/8) in my session with his piano. At the time, I could not get through the piece on my own piano, a Mason and Hamlin BB, because of tension in my own technique that I have worked to eliminate over the years (I still have that same piano and at 81, I can play that Etude at a respectable tempo without tiring). But even with my deficient technique at the time, I easily got through it on the Horowitz piano. The action was so light I described the keys to others as switches, on or off. I had a very difficult time controlling the dynamics with such an action. It is incredible to me that Horowitz was able to draw such colors from a piano set up this way. I played the Horowitz piano again in 2003. Steinway had completely redone the action and voicing, turning it into an ordinary Model D and in the process, destroyed a historical document. I don't understand what possessed them to do this.
I’ve both played the Chopin F major Etude here and I’m a piano technician. I believe Horowitz’s piano had a 45g down-weight and 30g up-weight. Most people could not even control an action this light. Additionally, the high upweight meant the key virtually sticks to the fingers on the way up. Additionally, very bright voicing gives the feeling of an even lighter action. So yes, I’m not a fan of his technique, but his piano was conditioned to accommodate his style very well in a way that I doubt any other piano could without thorough action adjustment.
But at the end of the story it is all about the talent, the will and the immagination. Exploringn the ideas all the time in real time and not playing like a robot. Nobody can teach you that, it is internal and intimate realtaion between the piece and the performer. Techique is emerging thing but not the extrrnal tool.
Vladimir Horowitz was my neighbor on the Upper East Side in Manhattan back in the day. One time, a friend and I were pushing our bikes up 5th Avenue near Central Park and saw Horowitz sitting on a park bench with his wife and another woman, (Horowitz was always friendly, his wife not so much.) I can't remember how we got on the subject, but knowing we both played piano, he said the brakes on the bicycle was bad for your hands, as you had to squeeze and stretch them too much, and he held his hands up to demonstrate. I've never seen anyone's hands look like that; my whole hand would have fit in his palm. They were just so unusual, very long and thin fingers which you can't really see when they're on the keyboard. Maybe he used a different technique because his hands were so different. In this case, the ends justify the means as he certainly got the job done, one way or the other.
Thanks for the story. It’s nice to hear personal moments with the greats. I’ve always been jealous of his hands. Mine are very different, short fingers and a huge palm. But my grandmother was a top notch pianist with the tiniest but also strongest hands ever so who am I to complain. 😂
@@gailrodgers4434 your analogy for me is spot on. His hand size as well as his physical make up, allowed him to do things in a way other pianist could not.
I love Horowitz above all other pianists, but I have no problem admitting that some of his interpretations are very problematic and that in some respects his technique was not the best. But what the heck! That miraculous sonority, from the most tender poetry to the most fiendishly electrifying crash chords, leaves most of his fellow pianists looking tame and bland. Excellent video, very revealing and extremely interesting.
Does it bother you that sometimes those fiendishly electrifying crash chords were actually not written in the scores he played, but added by Horowitz himself? That bothers me enormously, especially when he does it not just once in a special moment, but time after time within the same piece. You admit that some of his interpretation are very problematic, but what the heck? That to me is very bothersome, as the interpretations can sometimes distort the music considerably away from what is written in the score. I think I prefer tame, bland pianists who can give an expressive performance of a piece while staying true to what the composer actually wrote. I remember having a debate of sorts on such matters with someone in RUclips comments somewhere, and I happened to comment that I liked Ruth Laredo's performance of Scriabin's piano sonatas above all others, and the response was that it was too tame and bland (words to that effect, anyway - I forget the exact way it was worded). But to me, an accurate performance that still manages to be expressive is to me far more exciting than a self-indulgent performance that willfully makes alterations whenever the performer feels like it, often in the form of adding crashing chords that the composer did not write as chords, and in general makes the performance about the peformer himself rather than the composer and his music.
of course playing with tension is bad technique, but playing with a certain elasticity is good technique, and you need to be able to tell the difference!
@@MJE112358132134As Mahler is supposed to have said: ”Das Beste in der Musik steht nicht in den Noten.” Horowitz had a keen eye and ear for what was not written in the score, and if he (like so many renowned pianists) reversed the dynamics on occasions it was because he thought what was written didn’t work with the overall conception of the phrase or work.
Thank you for your explanation Denis! I read three biographies about Horowitz. In the Plaskin biography Horowitz explains he could not play some of the Chopin etudes on modern pianos, as their touch was too heavy. Besides that Horowitz had large hands with long thin fingers. Indeed he had long periodes he did not perform in public, and used drugs on doctors advice. However I was very surprised to watch him playing pieces like Etincelles by Moszkofski very fluently, as well as soirees the Vienna by Liszt. So on his old age he still had this wonderful technique. Indeed his piano keys were modified to 44 grams. And that helps a lot too. After Horowitz' death his wife Wanda did send his piano around the world and it landed in a piano shop in Amsterdam, and I was able to play on it. Indeed the touch was very light but I had to get accustomed to it...But he still remains one of my favourite pianists, along with Cherkassky and De Larrocha.
It’s interesting to see how bench position affects how one perceives the piano keys. Once I went to a friend’s house to play his piano, and we both thought that piano was heavy. A few weeks after and I visited again. I found myself playing effortlessly on that piano. We spent a long time thinking about what has been changed. I asked if he had regulated his piano. The truth was that he just heightened his bench a bit, and that made a world of difference.
I felt like the Scarlatti sounded better in your first run-through using 'Horowitz' technique than when you did it with your usual technique. There's something to be said about inefficient technique leading to more interesting sounds, because once everything is 'perfect' it quickly becomes boring. Great video, I did agree with just about everything else you said.
I had similar impression that the finger-only Scarlatti sounded better. Generally, I find playing with fingers-only on a modern piano produces a smaller tonal range, and using more of the body produces bigger range of tonal color. For Scalatti I'm used to hearing a small and even tonal range without huge dynamic changes, and has the impression of sound & tonal range of early pianofortes/keyboards. That said, of course, it's not worth injury. (But personally, even as an amateur, I stay away from Scarlatti.)
@DenZhdanovPianist This is exactly the difference in mindset between old-style men and modern men. Old and "romantic" people prioritise aesthetics over everything. To these people it doesn't matter that the old cars may be way more dangerous, because the aesthetic of how it looks and feels is more important. Same thing with Horowitz's piano playing. Same thing with Michelangeli, he always looks clean and professional and his clarity in piano playing is the most imprtant aesthetic to him.
Yes I agree, the Scarlatti of Mr. Horowitz is much better, than both examples of Mr. Zhdanov … no strong evidence of his theories… I want to add that I could imagine Horowitz would be very unlucky use his Tokyo 83 Concert for such a Video
The most insightful comments on Horovitz I have seen so far! I always wondered about Horovitz‘ peculiar style of playing. Now I begin to understand what he was doing and why it is not a good idea at all to try to copy him. Thank you for your explanations and demonstrations!
As far as technique, probably not a great idea to try to copy Horowitz, but as far as his musical conceptions, what I wouldn't give to be able to render as Horowitz did any number of pieces that I love. The range of sound, the tonal beauty, the vocal quality. And an overall piano sound that, in my listening experience of 50-some years, was utterly unique. I was only able to attend one recital of Horowitz's, and that was at Orchestra Hall in Chicago in either the late 1970s or very early 1980s--I forget the exact year. It was in a sense a bad recital for Horowitz since there were lots of missed notes and big memory lapses. But I've never heard a piano sound like that in my life--his sonority was staggering and so orchestral. John Browning once said in an interview that he felt that Horowitz had gone beyond the piano. In any case, although I agree with Mr. Zhdanov that Horowitz's physical approach to the piano was not a healthy one that we should try to emulate, when it comes to the musical results that Horowitz achieved, I'm all for trying to emulate him. If only that were so easy!
You perhaps don't realize that Horowitz's piano was voiced in a manner that imitates fortepianos from around 1830. He had the hammers replaced every year during which the hammer heads were ground down to the smallest size possible consistent with a reliable repetition. You will notice when watching videos of him playing his piano in concert that the keys bobble when suddenly released. This indicates that the weight of the hammer heads are barely able to guarantee a snappy return of the key. Under this set up in the action, he never had to fight the weight of the keys to depress them. The slightest touch of the fingers on the key will produce a mezzoforte so when playing softly the hands, fingers, and arm had to function reliably when totally relaxed. This is how the Fortepianos have to be played. Any forcing of the muscles will cause them to misfire by being too loud. His technique was predicated on playing a softly as possible consistent with his interpretation, You will also notice that he rarely plays FFF and when he does that FFF only appears to sound FFF because the light hammers are also very bright sounding, which means he hardly has to work at all to generate strong differences in volume because he relys on how the human ear adapts to whatever volume is first heard and everything heard thereafter sounds either louder or softer by comparison. He was supposed to quantify a minimum of 29 levels of touch. His interpretations are best understood by reading The Craft of. Musical Communication at themusiciansstudio.com to understand the cantabile style of playing prevalent throughout Europe and the US before 1940.
Yes I do realize that, and this doesn’t contradict to anything I’ve said. I have not criticized his cantabile or any other interpretational choices, by accentuating a few times throughout the video that I admire him as an artist, having concerns solely about technical approach from the positions of a life-long sustainability, but people apparently are not able to comprehend that there are more options to attitude and research on people then a 100% worshipping or 100% hatred😂
@@DenZhdanovPianist What you don't get is that it is posible to play with low wrists and without tension. I mean, I play like that and don't feel any stress on my fingers after finishing playing. So, you just sit there, try to play the etude and, as you haven't practiced it in that position or whatever, you come to the rash conclusion that that position creates tension. But I say, if you weren't so suggestible, you could sit there and play it without tension. Tension is more a matter of internally feeling free. You can play without tension even with flat fingers and low wrists. Tension is a thing of starting playing and you don't realize that your wrist hurts. The moment you realize it, you can just release that tension and that's about it.
My violin teacher in university was a completely natural player, he just intuitively understood how to move. But he didn't really understand how to explain how to move. It was tough learning from him lolol. I was the same way a bit. I grew up just understanding how to play freely, but for me, later in life when I started hitting the limits of when my intuition just wasn't enough, I started having to have a more intentional approach to movement. I think intuitive players who are really really talented can completely master the instrument without hitting those walls. But when something changes internally, like physical or mental health, and you start thinking about the instrument differently, sometimes those people have to go through a relearning process where everything they did intuitively has to start happening intentionally. I think that's why teaching can help your playing a lot, it forces you into that thought process early. To me, that tense recording where he was struggling was just him having a learning moment that most of us mortals encounter a whole lot earlier haha, and he had to go "why the heck isn't this easy."
I agree . I remember his concert in 1986 in Leningrad when I was shocked by his hand position, by his maybe pianistically imperfections, pedaling in Mozart. My reaction was that I spent my life for nothing by studying in the most respected music schools. It was the greatest experience in my life( Im visiting Carnegie quite often). It takes a genius to overstep boundaries , rules, physical laws and to achieve such an effect on audience
If you watch the video of his Mozart A major concerto in Milan, 1987, you can see that he has what looks to me like dystonia by then. His fourth and fifth finger are curled in and he has to really push to throw them out in order to use them. Regarding his breaks from playing, I've always suspected repetitive strain injury was a factor in this, and was probably a factor in his need for pain killers. His technique was very much based on an old-fashioned school of playing as described by Czerny for example. There are bits of that school which are good and bits that are not so good as you highlight here. The light action of the pianos could just be that he preferred that, and if you consider that old Blüthners and Bechsteins, and possibly old Berdux pianos in Russia had a much shallower key dip even than today, that technique isn't going to be *as much* of a problem as it is on the New York Steinway of the mid-20th Century. This is probably why his piano was so modified. The other thing as you will know Denis, that in conservatoires for the longest time, technique was regarded as something that just happens in order to serve the music. I was very very lucky in that my first teacher studied with Tobias Matthay, so I had a finished technique before going to conservatoire. However, at the conservatoire, later the teachers kept misquoting Matthay at me saying "Matthay said it doesn't matter whether you play the key with your finger or a pencil". Well, in the context they were mis-using that quote it showed an alarming ignorance as to what he was actually trying to say. Looking back and watching videos of professors from the conservatories I attended (Royal College of Music and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) I do see varying versions of inefficient technique. Teachers are very scared to even touch on the subject of technique using the tag line that the study of technique can make playing too mechanical. I disagree. Look at ballet dancers for example. If Nureyev is Horowitz, Baryshnikov is Argerich
With the 5th finger curled in in particular, there are a couple of things I recall. One was likely from a biography of his and Horowitz said that nobody taught him how to do that and he learned it himself. Then there was a reproduction of an Etude magazine article on an old Horowitz fan website with photographs and Horowitz teaching the 5th finger curled in thing. He was a pretty young man then, likely around the time when that slow motion video of him was filmed.
@@SaiChooMusic In fact I do think I remember Josef Hoffman saying that curling the fifth finger back was a good thing to stabilize the hand in playing. He felt it helped maintain the bridge of the other fingers. I will have to look this up though because I could be misquoting him. I personally don't advocate for this. I think the fingers should all be rested on the keys with a relaxed arm. Hoffman and Horowitz learned before we really fully understood repetitive strain injuries. In fact, Tobias Matthay who advocated for a relaxed technique plus a rotary motion to aid finger work, was ostracized by his colleagues for suggesting what they believed to be something so ridiculous. Chopin too believed similar to Matthay but his ideas were never published, at least not until relatively recently. Now, those teachers who teach more ergonomic principles of technique quote Matthay and Chopin all the time citing them as good sources on the topic. None of what I'm saying takes away from Horowitz the artist, who still stands as one of the most incredible pianists of any generation.
If Baryshnikov were… Argerich reminds me too much of Michelangeli, fast, subtle,light-fingered and colorless. But a pianist that can produce the power, color, clean sonority? Novaes? Sudbin? And to notice that, less than two years before his death he had what “looked like” focal dystonia was a laugh. First, you can find hundreds of videos where H. Curls his right pinky when not in use, and dozens of videos where he also curls the index finger. When a pianist is 84 and been playing at a professional level for 65+ years, there is arthritis, ligament and tendon wear, and even bone reshaping. As for your guess about the “real” reason for his withdrawals from the stage, you contradict his widow, manager, confidants. This qualifies you to be a Kardashian fan.
Excellent video! I am without a teacher and so, in order to try and improve my technique, I watch recordings of professional classical concert artists. I was taught to keep my wrists and arms essentially level with the keyboard, hand and fingers in a naturally curved, relaxed position. Nothing should be rigidly held in position, but rather should have freedom and thus ease of movement - a flowing type movement. Horowitz often used flat fingers and/or very curled fingers which visually reminded me of a spider. I tried to imitate his position and technique but found I lost control of my touch. It was also fatiguing as I felt tension in my fingers and throughout my arms in order to maintain such a position - ultimately, when fatigue started to set in, I discovered that I was lifting my shoulders in order to continue in the same manner. I also noted that Horowitz did not keep his fingers & hands close to the keys. I find that by staying close to the keys, I don't have to cover as much distance from one key to the next, jumps are not as far, my playing is smoother, and legato is not as difficult. I also find that a relaxed, close to the keyboard position diminishes my anxiety over accuracy. It's a more enjoyable experience overall. Horowitz also appeared to have hunched over the keyboard at times. Such a position for me leads to a tired back and thus when I start to become uncomfortable, I have to fight myself to continue. I have concluded that Horowitz's technique does not work at all well for me. I use to believe that it was because my hands, arms and so on developed in accordance with how I was taught to use them and thus due to my limitations, I was unable to benefit from Horowitz's technique. After watching your vid I am now of the opinion that Horowitz's technique was not the best and so I now have more confidence in myself. I am glad you have decided to unban this video. Thank you so much!
Its very interesting. When you play with the low arm position you dont like, it does give you a cleaner and more exiting attack, honestly sounds better for the two pieces you demonstrated, but onviously it could sound weird with something more lyrical. Gould also sat very low but i dont see him being so static with his arms. Anyway its an interesting thing that across instruments the superstars often have unique techniques that seem inefficient or like they should not work. That is possibly because human appreciation of beauty is not a study in efficiency. The most efficienct sound is a midi keyboard playing exactly what is written, but there is nothing more boring and souless than that. The other thing is, in terms of injuries, a lot or it is to do with genetic variation in anatomy. Overuse injuries often happen not because of overuse itself but due to the nerve and arm structures inducing injury and tension that cannot heal in time for the next use. Nerves tend tend to shorten with age as structures become more rigid and kyphosis increases. But some people are lucky enough to have less genetic tendency for this and wider nerve tunnels and so can handle far more load with less injury. You see with singers for instance that many of the most famous singers of the 40s-70s were linked to Melocchi who taught basically the opposite of what all modern speech pathologists advocate. Again he advocated a static tension type technique . And indeed many of his students ruined their voices, but the ones that survived excelled and are considered best of all time. .
I studied with a pianist who did her dissertation on a blind pianist. I can look up the name if you're interested. She had the most hands on teaching style I've ever encountered - - very effective. Another teacher, who is a contemporary of Argerich in Argentina with the same teacher, once explained the legato on repeated notes by saying "it's like you get on your tippy toes" and proceeded to demonstrate by flexing up and down on her tippy toes-- at age almost 70 by the way. I liked her approach to technique best. She made very few specific suggestions but I remember all of them vividly. I'm an amateur, to be clear, but I had the good fortune to study with some very fine pianists in adulthood after a succession of mediocre teachers in childhood. My level is what I would call playing Chopin etudes and the Hammerklavier fugue in the shower, so to speak. One of my childhood teachers really emphasized sitting still, which I think was very damaging, resulting in lifelong problems with stiffness.
@@DenZhdanovPianist I have a different question for you related to piano technique. This is about posture. There are many current pianists who play in a horrible slouching posture - - - regardless of their level of play. Sokolov and Pletnev are two notable examples, but there are many others. Pianists of earlier generations didn't sit like that. Do you have any explanation, or do you disagree? Two things come to mind. First, a pianist who sits high may have to lean over a lot to get into the keys. Second, the examples I can think of have Russian conservatory training. Not all are like that of course. As you would know, Virsaladze does not slouch.
Very interesting. Glenn Gould also sat very low and with elbows below the keyboard. He was known for using hot wet towels on his forearms before performances. It would be interesting to see a comparison of his technique to that of Horowitz and Lang Lang.
@@chrysanthemumfan214 Lang Lang had to cancel a concert here because of tendinitis in his arms!!! I hate his theatrically appearance and especially his face while playing anyway - doesn't seem very relaxed!
Thank you, I love how you explain everything, and watching you demonstrating what you are talking about is so helpful! I love Horowitz, and your analysis reveals how powerful his musical instincts and mechanical gifts were, in spite of his limited understanding of physically safe playing.
Very good advice on building a technique that can be sustained even when you're out of shape. Train in such a way that even your worst self sounds good. If even the worst version of you sounds good, you are ready for the concert!
Think of SAS - or free climing - or something, where a very special, or most special high performance just takes something special, and can take something out of you, or right out of you. In order to get the 'best' performance, training for 'consistency' doesn't always equate to being able to demonstrate your absolute 'peak' (or 'best'). It can also be just up to a particular individual to pull something super special off - eg. Vlad. Corraling somebody into something - such as getting everybody to conform to one recommended style can take something away.
The great Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet advised his students to sit as low as they practically could. He also used flat fingers in lyrical music when he wanted a certain sound. My own last teacher, the late David Bradshaw, was an exponent of Lechtititsky's method. He said that sitting lower enables one to play accurately with less practice, which is otherwise difficult. He told me that I produced a much better sound when I sat lower. Bradshaw said the only thing sitting higher makes easier is playing louder, which is the easiest thing to do anyway. So, since most of us don't have 30 hours a day in which to practice, why not do what makes the difficult easier? But I have also thought about this, and I think for a huge work like the Brahms 2nd Concerto, a higher sitting position would make a lot of sense, as long as one's hands remained as close to the keys as possible. I also found that sitting lower made it easier for me to use weight, and to voice chords, and I got less fatigued. It's a difficult and controversial question, complicated by the fact that we are all physically shaped a bit differently.
Excellent video. It definitely puts an additional perspective on his long sabbaticals. I think you also give us a better understanding of his attitude to the Chopin etudes, and his reluctance to play most of them.
I recall reading in David Dubal's _Evenings with Horowitz_ the recollections of a student who had been taken to play for the maestro. He said that the piano in use that evening was a temporary replacement from Steinway, as Horowitz's piano had gone in for repairs. The replacement had a very heavy action, and the student marveled at Horowitz's ability to play it with such ease. He also commented on Horowitz's hands and what may have accounted for their strength. Dubal himself wrote about how strong Horowitz's hands were after an arm-wrestling bout that he let Horowitz win. Leschetizky himself said that he had no 'method', as each pianist was different. Horowitz did what worked for him. He never wanted to be imitated.
Few and possibly none of the people on this thread heard Horowitz in his 40's and in his prime. When he returned in the 1960's he was already in his 60's. He did not appear in public in his 50's. You'd have to be in your nineties now to have heard him in his middle age. When you listen to his live unedited concerts from the late 1940's his technique is just astounding by any measure. His Mendelssohn, his Kabalevsky, his Liszt! His evenness and finish in the classical repertoire, say Haydn or early Beethoven was unsurpassable. But the thing about Horowitz is that he liked to push the envelope. Nothing was kept in reserve. Backhaus once remarked that the seasoned professional should be able to play his pieces 10% faster and louder than he does in concert. But you can't really say that about Horowitz. He pushed musical/technical matters to the limit. The results were not always ideal.
That's the cost of selling right to his limits. My first major teacher also taught me never to perform the maximum tempo I could pull off. Nobody has the same level of control and quality and consistency at that tempo as they do two notches slower.
@@tabby7189 The real question in performance is what are your goals and what is your temperament? Every artist is different as is every listener. Personally I don't go to a live concert to hear 'control' and 'quality.' I can get that from sitting in a couch and putting on a studio recording. I travel to hear something hopefully special and never to be repeated. That's what the Horowitzes, Serkins and Giesekings gave you on the stage, along with the requisite clinkers. But that's me.
@@dorfmanjones depending on the performer, two ticks below the maximum before a precipitous drop in quality doesn't even eliminate every wrong note minus one nor the edginess that comes from playing like he's playing it for the first time. Neither of us is here to tell the other what he should be looking for in a concert, but on my end it's the aspects a recording can't offer - unfamiliarity (because if it's a recording there's a good chance it's not my first time with it), live instrument (recording and playback equipment always lose some sound quality), and the social aspect with the special environment and all. In that light, I'm 100% against any performer being so close to the edge of his/her ability to execute that it takes more than 25% of his/her attention just avoiding crashing and burning.
I totally agree with your accurate analisys. Excellent job, as usual. Thank you. It would be very nice to have some more videos like that about other famous pianists. Personally, I've always admired Argherich's tecnique.
I have always thought that he had some form of focal dystonia in the second half of his career. He clearly was not in command of his 4th and 5th fingers, which tended to curl under his hands, could only play octaves with completely flat fingers, which compromised hugely the accuracy, and clearly was extremely limited in the repertoire he actually could play, which if you observe, is very carefully chosen, and even then the technical accuracy was limited. The other person in which you can observe similar problems is Paul Badura Skoda.
I heard from my teacher in LA in the 80s that VH was missing notes because of medication, and the problem cleared up in his last few years’ concerts and recordings.
This might also explain why he tends to hunch forward as he plays. Not only does his playing technique risk injury, so does his posture. Blues players and rockers don’t worry about technicalities. He was a rock and roller at heart, who happened to play classical piano. 😀
Thank you, this is a very helpful analysis. I remember when Horowitz's Tokyo performance was a disaster and at the time I didn't know anyone who actually believed it was caused by medication. Long before that performance it was well known that his public repertoire had changed a great deal to accommodate his capabilities. The obvious tension in Horowitz's arms, wrists and fingers was a fairly common point of discussion, especially among people who taught piano. You are not the first person to scrutinize Horowitz's technique by analysing his videos but you are among the first people to deconstruct what led to his diminishing technical capabilities. Mostly, people used his videos to emulate his technique, they thought if it worked for him it would work for them. Many students experimented with playing using flat fingers like Horowitz did but what many people didn't know was just how much that technique was actually limiting Horowitz. Horowitz was born with unusually fast reflexes and in his early years that's what sustained his technique but as you point out his technique couldn't be sustained as he aged the way Martha Argerich's technique has sustained her seemingly effortless performances. Obviously, Horowitz had godlike talent and it's clear that you have the greatest respect for that aspect of his supreme musicianship.
A most provocative but interesting theory that makes a great deal of sense. However, I disagree about the premise that was the reason for the change in his repertory as his career progressed; I think that change was more of a result of the maturation of the artist, rather than due to faulty technique----for example, his staggering performances of the Scriabin 5th Sonata from 1974-1976 required no less of a technical challenge (esp. the way he played it) than the Liszt Don Juan which he performed in the 1920s. In response to one of the comments below, I find it difficult to believe that his unique sound was only due to the piano he used; when he made his U.S. debut [BEFORE his was able to have Steinway customize the keyboard action and sonority to his specifications] critics and pianists marveled at his thunderous sonority and rapidity of execution----thus the famous quote from Ignaz Friedman who was at that Jan. 12 1928 debut, "Our careers will never be the same."
It seems to my mind that his having arthritis and nerve damage would have dictated to a large degree how he used his body when playing the piano and also not forgetting to mention his various phobias and depressions necessitating drug treatment for all of the above issues. All in all I think that he compensated for these multiple limiting factors heroically and effectively against all the odds, he was a shining example of how to overcome your limitations and he continued to provide some of the best performances both live and recorded of the 20th century. He shows by example there are many ways up a mountain and it is always worth investigating alternative ways of playing a instrument to achieve new heights. Bravo Vladimir and thanks Denis for the video it is a very interesting analysis and provides some great insights into his technique.
Please make a video like this about Martha Argerich's technique. As you say at some point Argerich's technique is more natural and relaxed compared to Horowitz' I would really like to learn about the subtleties of her pianistic approach.
I heard that when Horowitz was teaching octaves to a student, he explained that the upper arm should be rigid. A different old school pianist with a very free technique was Hofmann. In one video I saw of him playing the Rachmaninoff C# minor prelude, he looked a rag doll.
Excellent well substantiated and referenced pianism analysis. I don't think his flat fingers technique was ever accepted by anybody as a model to follow," it looks bad, but sounds good" is the well accepted credo among his fanatic admirers. They would drown the argument by saying he was a genius to make his odd technique work. The funny anecdote for me is i had seen none of his video recordings when i stumbled on the Tokyo Op 25 n 10 recital while i was studying that etude. I was very surprised how badly he played and remember thinking this is so bad that some pianists would stop and walk off the stage. After this I took his fame with a lot of suspicion. It's unfortunate we don't have any video coverage of Rachmaninof playing, as before becoming a famous composer he lived from being a concert pianist. I somehow remember maybe wrongly reading that he had a flat fingers technique as well but in his case, his huge hands change a lot of parameters.
This is a very helpful explanation of the Horowitz technique and its limitations. It's also true that he reduced his repertoire as he aged, and saved his virtuosic work for the encore. But many other artists with long careers do the same thing. One thing you don't mention, which he was most famous for, was his use of flat fingers, and this was in fact his secret weapon in his later years. I heard him perform three times, and once I sat in the first row next to him on the stage. The staggering amount of tones he could get from his flat fingers was unlike anything I had heard from other concert pianists. More to the point, it was how he used these tones to shape a phrase that made him unique. The audience was entranced by these ever-shifting colors - I found his concerts had the least amount of audience noise of any pianist, because everyone was paying attention. I learned from his concerts that the highest aspect of virtuosity in piano playing is not to be found in bravura, technically demanding passages, but in the sense of touch applied to the quieter moments.
Thank you for a very well-reasoned analysis of Horowitz' technique. You made me recall two anecdotes - Horowitz himself admitted that his teacher, Blumenfeld, allowed or expected his students to figure out what worked for them on their own. The other was something Horowitz said, when asked how he felt after playing one of the Chopin etudes - I think it was the Butterfly etude. He remarked that his arm felt like it would drop off.
@@DenZhdanovPianist A minor correction - it was the Black Key etude, not the Butterfly. I always mix those two up, I think because I associate them both with the key of G-flat major.
Funny thing: I believe I read that the etude that made Volodya make that "arm falling off" observation was Op. 25 No. 11 ("Winter Wind"), but perhaps he had that experience with both studies.... 🤔😬💥🙏🎹
Thank you, that was fascinating. I was lucky enough to see Horowitz live in the early Eighties. His fingers weren't what they once were, but the sound was stunning. I have never heard anyone come close, and I have heard some of the best (Gilels, Richter, Arrau, Brendel, Kempff, Bolet, Pollini etc). As I understand it, it was his second teacher who got him to switch from a conventional technique to a flat-fingered one. Claudio Arrau, born the same year, heard Horowitz when they both starting their careers. He noted the stiffness in his forearms, and was of the opinion that it would make it difficult to play long sustained passages such as the end of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no 6. (Arrau's mother was also present at the concert and told her son she thought Horowitz was a better pianist than him.) I am inclined to agree with your assessment, but I do believe it's the flat fingers rather than the lower wrists that were the cause of the problem, as that would have placed an enormous strain on his forearm muscles. After all, it is possible to play comfortably with low wrists if one keeps the fingers slightly curved. Are you planning a discussion about Glenn Gould? He certainly ran into some serious problems late in his career.
Thanks for commenting! Horowitz has used curled fingers at times when executing fast passages but I really doubt he was able to sustain this state for long at the later stages of his career, because combined with the lower wrist position it’s exhausting. Flatter fingers is where you can rest a bit between faster curled passages using this hand posture. It’s surprising people don’t want to see the evident or try themselves.
@@DenZhdanovPianist I have tried myself, and using flat fingers caused me a lot of problems in no time. Yes, curling his fingers to the extent he did would have been very strenuous. I am merely contending that the flat fingers would have caused more damage. As I said earlier, I agree with your assessment. As happened with Glenn Gould, his unconventional approach caught up with him in later years. But then, it was both artists' unusual approach to piano playing that made them both unique.
All these things about Cziffra. Cziffra would often slow down when things got tough like Simon Barere does for the thirds in Schumann Toccata at Carnegie Hall. Argerich's technique is the great secret! Also Sokolov! Horowitz talked about feeling like his arm would fall off for Winter Wind etude(Plaskin biography). He always had a weird technique
Thank you. I learned valuable things from this video of yours that are new to me and that I will apply myself from now on. Finally, a comment on the Horowitz performance of Chopin’s Polonaise in Ab at 4:00pm on a Sunday in the Rose Garden of the White House years ago. He made many terrible mistakes during that, but I have never read or heard any commentary on the fact.
Glad it was helpful! Yes nobody is perfect and some of the worst concerts I’ve heard in my life were given by the biggest names (emerging young pianists may not be as experienced in stage presence but usually work hard to present their programs in a good quality). It’s a shame that nowadays nobody dares to give honest critics about what they think if the pianist is very famous. In my opinion, this leads to industry stagnation and idolizations.
Great video! I remember seeing somewhere garick ohlosson saying that people that try to imitate might get hurt, and I can see it better now. Maybe a bit too much to ask, but may you do a video like this on Gyorgy Cziffra? Would really be interesting and perhaps benefitial to hear your opinion and point of view on his technical approach. Thanks for the content.
Unfortunately there has never been a pianist like Horowitz - his color and nuance, excitement & sensitivity - he was ike no one else. Argerich and Yuja are extraordinary, but in person, I’d never experienced anything like Horowitz. Exceptional, exceptional ….. We need Harmonic tension and tension itself serves something far greater than only being relaxed although that is of course a necessity. Mr. Graffman studied for decades before meeting Mr. Horowitz & doesn’t blame Mr. Horowitz. You know, Horowitz was humble and brilliant however, I appreciate your thoughtful examination . It is appreciated - thank you
I would contend that numerous musicians are equally fascinating, if not more so, and have delivered renditions of Horowitz's repertoire that, in my personal view, surpass his. Pronouncing Horowitz as the definitive pianist is akin to declaring Einstein the sole crucial scientist. It involves conflating personal branding with genuine achievement. There are many scientists whose contributions rival Einstein's genius but receive less promotion for wider audiences.
Wonderful analysis, Denis! That said, I often wonder if there's more to the story. All your points about using isolated fingers and so on are well taken, but when I look at, for example, you trying it out, vs Horowitz, you can see that Horowitz's playing seems much more natural even though he's roughly using the same movements. Maybe he's found a way to remain relaxed, and it's a very subtle thing you could only observe if you could see his arms perfectly. The same thing strikes me about Cziffra -- that yes, many people played similarly and got injured, but they didn't play the same. You tend to much more easily be able to see unnaturalness, locked joints, etc. in other pianists who have got injured, vs a Horowitz or Cziffra. They seem loose and relaxed and like they're having fun, and I don't think it's just for show. Of course, there's strength involved, but it's more like the strength of a gymnast where it's invisible. My personal feeling is that they found a local optimum of sorts. If you play the same way they play, it's very hard to play more efficiently. There might be better ways, but if it's efficient enough, it can get the job done, especially at younger ages. Cziffra played the same way into his 70s; that is what fascinates me even more. I feel like there's really something special to be learned there if one can figure out what's going on there. Something I feel, and this might be a bit controversial, is that one of the reasons many pianists sound the same way nowadays is because we have discovered "biomechanically optimal" ways of playing over the past century, which are then taught en masse. Perhaps a more dangerous sound requires more dangerous playing? The sound quality, especially, depends so much on how you strike the key, that if you teach the exact same approach, they will end up with very similar sound quality. I think I can hear this happening, but I'm not sure what could be done about it.
I agree with your last point. We can hear Lang Lang’s Hungarian Rhapsody and immediately recognize it’s him. Same goes for Cziffra, Katsaris, Pogorelich to name just a few. I’ve come to realize our body is actually a part of the instrument these days.
Thanks for commenting, good points! Parrying your concern, I don’t think that efficient technique makes people sound the same: Argerich, Gilels, Sokolov, Rachmaninoff, to name a few, represent a very efficient and sustainable technique, but I wouldn’t say they lost some personality because of that. On the contrary, Trifonov, Kissin, and Lang Lang (at least before his injury) have a quite risky approach to piano playing, but I personally can’t say it always convinces me musically. But I agree that a unique physiology can allow to stay afloat with a quite weird way of playing for longer. I have no idea for example how Kissin didn’t get injured yet with an incredible amount of banging and physical force he uses. But in case of Horowitz I still see a drastic difference in brilliance and control between his earlier and later public performances (recordings don’t count because you can do a hundred of takes for any spot until you nail it) which aligns with my arguments from the video.
Fantastic video, thank you, Denis. I was told by a teacher who has similar views to you that Rubinstein had "absolutely beautiful" technique. I wonder if you could do a video on his use of forearm rotation and using the whole arm in his playing?
I think the greatest aspect of Horowitz is his enjoyment and fun. He understood the connection between the words "music" and "amuse" and the ideas of playfulness and playing. He had the passion of a child all through his life and I don't think he worried himself sick if he hit a wrong note in his performance. There is a degree of self mockery in his style. I believe that Rachmaninoff said that he did not understand the piano until he heard Horowitz performing. That means that they were both great, musically, but not necessarily so great in keyboard technique.
I remember reading that Horowitz said he had no idea how he did what he did. I guess it was all so natural for him from his very early age. Graffman said Horowitz never told him how to play, he would sit on the sofa and watch while Graffman would play. Horowitz last recorded concert was in Hamburg. He has trouble with the closing piece, Chopin Op 53 but still pulls it off. The final Moskovsky piece is dazzling. Which Scarlatti sonata is in your video? Thank you for all of your wonderful performance and advice!
Scarlatti K55 Yes that’s the problem - even the most gifted pianists often play intuitively, and don’t teach physiological aspects of piano playing because frankly speaking have no idea about them, however sustainable piano technique is not always intuitive for everyone.
After watching your presentation I am reminded of Godowsky's comment to another musician who mentioned Hofmann's wrong notes in a recital they had just attended; "why look for spots on the Sun?"
excellent video Denis ! i’ve always thought this about Horowitz, but given the skill abyss separating me from him i thought something was wrong with me lol ! Theres some sort of “sacro-saint” status that 20th century legends have which makes us afraid to “criticize” them. But an unhealthy technique is an unhealthy technique no matter the virtuosity, and the NAME of the pianist. The new technique school that you represent shall be so much better for our body and allow us to play for as long as possible :) PS : i would LOVE to see you make a similar analysis with other great 20th century/current pianists !!
Great video! The only thing I’d say is that playing with the wrists diminishes articulation which is why Horowitz has such an articulate sound.Horowitz was not looking for comfortable or ‘healthy’ playing technique but wanted to get a crisp sound that is hard to get out of the piano. Sacrifice in the name of art :)
I wish I said this earlier, but I love these types of videos from you. In terms of tutorials, only some might be applicable to certain people, but these are general and interesting for a wider audience. Great job!!
Horowitz was one of few pianists who improvise which few of today's can do,apart from Katsaris who I admire greatly.,also who has an inspiring ability to voice inner melodic lines ..
Great explanation, really makes sense. I always found it strange, the way his arms and fingers moved. But maybe it was a technique that made sense to him and fitted him perfectly. I have seen a few guitar players with such crazy technique, hand positions and the way they hold their picks, but they are such amazing virtuosos. I tried copying their techniques and it was just impossible to play. In some interviews, they were asked about this and they just said that they were self-taught and that's how they felt comfortable playing. So maybe Horowitz played that way because he was comfortable in that position, which worked 100% for him but may cause serious damage to other players.
I thought I was very comfortable with the way I played 10 years ago until it started to limit me, give pains and forced me to restructure the whole approach. Luckily, I got some advices from more experienced people who helped me to get on the right track and recover. Looking at his later recordings, and separating my admiration to him as an interpreter and his piano technique, I don’t see him being very efficient technically. On the contrary, I am quite amazed how powerful is the emotional experience he delivers despite all the inaccuracy he often had.
I don't know much about Horowitz but I can compare him to the great opera singer Maria Callas, that with a decent technique ( inmense musical knowledge) was able to make so much sense of their art leaving behind many others with great technical method of singing or playing, it wasn't just the technique but the genius to understand the music and give it life and make it something you can almost touch, very few can manage to do that, for this they will forever be present in our lives and among the greatest of all times.
I hosted the piano he used on tour at my studio. The keys were extremely light. Teachers and students were invited to come and play on the piano. The same with Van Cliburn's piano. It was displayed at the studio but the keys were normal.
Interesting. My mother disliked Horowitz and loved Rubinstein. She considered Horowitz a cold player and thought Rubinstein’s emotion sublime despite the occasional mistake. To her, feeling trumped technical perfection. She was extremely knowledgeable and musically talented so I trusted her judgment. I thought I could hear a difference in the emotion but wondered if it might have been prejudice based on my mother’s influence. This insight is extremely interesting.
Interesting theory! I grew up as a child in love with the Horowitz sound, and of course idolized him thru all the recordings, but you bring up good points. Makes sense about the lighter keyboard action. I had the privilege to play on his Steinway when it toured the US in the late 90s and remember it’s action being extremely light. I always reminded my self that Chopin himself worked on a lighter action than the modern iteration of the grand piano. Thank you for the video.
As someone who attended a recital by V H, (1978, very last row in balcony) he played his Sunday concert and seemingly made the building shake. Yet also, I feel so fortunate to have that experience And know the pitfalls of some of these old outmoded techniques. Thank you Denis!
I never thought he was one of the best. And i always thought that he had slightly bad technique but never said anything bc didnt want to get knee jerk hammered by people. So glad you exposed this THANK YOU
Yeah sometimes you have to allow people to hammer you so that they would learn something about themselves and their incapacity to tolerate differing opinions 😂
Back at the end of '90/beginning of '91, I played on Horowitz's Steinway. I, too, was a little surprised at the lightness in the action, and my tuner friends all joked about how much stuff had been done to that piano at his request.
I think the finger movement in op. 10 no. 8 is to get an articulated nonlegato sound, not to get the thumb under to the next position. Horowitz was no doubt a master of avoiding a loud thumb/getting smooth transition. Also, it's easier going down than up with the right hand.
Thank you for this fascinating video. I heard VH nine times, from 1976-1983. At the risk of repeating others' remarks, I will say that his hand position, if used by a student in an astute teacher's studio, would come in for severe crticism. Stiff wrists and fingers in contorted liftings like what you see in an untutored beginner. Yet he made it work.......uncannily. His recordings until around the age of 60, made every one else sound like they were sleepily trudging through mud. I heard about his juiced up piano with keys that you could blow down in the 70's. I had a couple of brief exchanges with the man himself, at a record signing event and after a recital. Would you consider looking at the videos of Ervin Nyiregyhazi, and commenting on his approach to the piano?
Yes, Horowitz was an amazing musician and I was always surprised by his odd technique especially the low wrists and often totally straight flat fingers. Great insight from you.
One can endlessly debate aspects of piano technique by observing various performing styles of iconic names such as Horowitz. For me, the ultimate criterion is the ultimate artistic/musical result, which in the case of Horowitz is never less than compelling. Admittedly I was somewhat alarmed when I first viewed this extraordinary individual by the unconventional posture at the keyboard which appeared to flout every teaching rule of sitting and hand position. But then when one considers his unique recorded legacy such pedantic observations pale into insignificance.
Yes, that’s a great point from the public’s perspective. For us, however, a question of how to maintain a robust technique and avoid injury that kicks many performers out of business sometimes for months sometimes forever, is a very important and legitimate question.
Great video! There's no doubt that this technique enabled him to produce some unbelievable playing such as in the Liszt Pagannini E flat etude and the Mozkowski A flat etude, but it compromised him a lot in other repertoire.
Thank you for a very insightful look into Horowitz and his technique. No assessment of piano technique of that era would be complete without reference to the technique and teachings of Cortot - I would be very interested if you could look at how Horowitz's style compared to that of Cortot given that Cortot spent so much time teaching and published numerous books on the topic, and particularly as he was regarded as the world's leading interpreter of Chopin.
Your ideas on forearm rotation and recovering from injuries/overuse remind me very much of the Taubman techniques. Are they something you've looked into or been influenced by? I found a Taubman teacher and suddenly a lot of technical difficulties went away and I became so much more conscious of what my muscles and skeleton were doing while I was playing.
Yes, sadly I came across Taubman method too late when I have already re-invented my own bicycle. But it helped me to organize things and understand them in a systematic order. Although I never studied this method officially, and some things I prefer to play and teach differently, so despite influence I am not an orthodox Taubman specialist. I also find many good aspects in flat finger type of technique Horowitz and many other people use, I just find it more risky overall…
Interesting analysis, it makes me wonder how much the spectacular range of colors, timbres, and voicings which Horowitz alone could conjure was a result of his unorthodox technique. Also, I feel this video begs the question: what is the goal of piano technique? Is it merely a mechanical process of applying correct arm and hand movements so that you may perform in the most efficient and safe manner possible? Or is the goal to create something magical and transcendent using the medium of sound?
For modern pianists, the technique is just about being simplified. The technique of the old pianists (like Lhevinne, Cortot, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Backhaus) was not comfortable, but it was all about sound colors, polyphony, etc.
In my opinion the only important thing is SOUND, only someone cares about technique: the pianist. Or even more restricted: pianist's body long term speaking. To create a good analogy, in tennis Nadal was well known as a monster player (also Alcaraz right now), Djokovic has an almost perfect technique so he barely got injuries, Nadal for more injuries, so he played less and worse the last years. But...at the end of the day would you hear the recordings of the Horowitz-es or the recordings of someone with a perfect technique but a mundane sound?? So this is the same. If you can achieve both ok, but that's rarely seen.
Can you please make a video on Wilhelm Kempff's technique! He is my piano God and would love to get insights in his technique. I really liked this video and would humbly request a similar analysis on Kempff! Thanks alot!
Are you familiar with Art Tatum? Rachmaninov said “Thank God he’s black or we’d all be out of a job.” Vladimir Horowitz said if Art Tatum decided to take classical music serious he’d quit the next day. Toscanini arrived an hour late to a concert and apologized by saying, “I’m sorry but I was in Harlem listening to Art Tatum.”
As a Non-Classical player, it is interesting to see how to get around physical damage from playing. I have managed to get some physical issues. As a Jazz player, having to alter one's playing technique and the resulting change in the performance. I had some Alexander Technique training when I was in school and would like to get back into that.
Excellent, comme toutes vos vidéos ! Pour l’étude en tierces de Chopin j’utilise volontiers les mouvements dedans/dehors qui permettent d’éviter trop d’efforts…
I played the Horowitz piano, too, once. Something did indeed feel quite funny about it, but I just couldn't tell. Was the down-weight too light? Was the up-weight too heavy? Were the hammers voiced brilliantly? In a moment of inspiration, I decided to lift the lid and, lo and behold, I saw a very elderly midget, the smallest you've ever seen, operating a complex set of levers. Caught red-handed, the diminutive gentleman admitted, not without some pride, that he alone was responsible for the legendary Horowitz sound. Later, over a glass of wine, he told me how the maestro had hired him in his youth when they were both working at a circus in Bohemia. Mr Horowitz had shown him the piano mechanism and sworn him to secrecy. They had been together ever since. When I asked him if Horowitz's famous retirement from the stage had anything to do with a hand injury, he cackled as if demented. The truth according to the midget was that the immortal virtuoso had caught him with Wanda in bed and thrown him out. But Horowitz eventually realised that he was nothing with him, his playing not unlike that of so many pianists who make RUclips videos. So, some years later he had swallowed his pride and hired him back. The sound had nothing to do with Franz Mohr either. Mohr was a straw man. It's all about them levers, he told me, the levers! And he downed his drink and swiftly disappeared into the night. A true story, I swear.
I found your presentation absolutely fascinating and have shared it with my music loving friends. I like your approach which is professional, sincere, and generous and yet not overly pedantic. I wish to watch all of your videos. I am not a musician. In the context of this video, I would like to see you make additional videos on the technique of Cziffra and Michelangeli as there is abundant visual material to go on. Visual analysis as you did with Horowitz. How do Cziffra and Michelangeli "get away with it?" I whimsically pose this question, but there is some kinesthetic magic displayed in their performances. To repeat, I celebrate your physiological and orthopedic approach. I was unaware about Lang Lang's misfortune. Can you tell me more? Thank you for your refreshing and most educational efforts. Horowtiz once commented that he found Lang Lang's performances weird. Look who is talking.
Lang Lang was born in 1982, and was therefore only seven years old when Volodya passed in '89. It seems unlikely he would have heard him at all, let alone as a "weird" artist.... 🧐😬🎹💥
Thank you for an interesting video. You didn't touch on the theory I heard as received wisdom long ago. This is that Horowitz received electroshock therapy in the 1950s, and this is what caused his evident loss of technique. For people with good enough ears, the difference in playing level before and after 1953 is enormous, unmistakable. There have been a number of famous pianists whose playing was seriously harmed by medical psychiatric treatment. There is a current performer who did not win a competition whose precipitous decline in playing level is quite hard to explain on grounds of aging alone ( his technique is quite normal). Another case of a pianist whose playing after middle age changed drastically was Arrau. I actually didn't understand what a stupendous virtuoso he had been as a young man until quite recently. From what I have read, he made a conscious decision to change his approach to the piano, rather than suffering a loss of facility at the keyboard
@@brospore7897 yeah I also don't think that his technical ability declined. His musical interpretations changes radically (and I find some of it very difficult to listen to / understand)
That was very interesting! Anyway, I am not a pianist but I play the piano and I am always stunned when I listen to Rachmaninows piano concerto No. 3 and following the partitur - how can a human being play this multitude of notes with such impossible speed? I think, to be able to do so, a pianist is, while playing those passages, in a kind of trance.
I think one of the most important factors was that he toured with his own piano. I got to play it once and it was the lightest action I’ve ever experienced, like you could breathe on the keys and they’d play. It was paired with Van Cliburn’s on a nationwide tour, and Cliburn’s was stiff as a board, almost unplayable for me. Horowitz’ long fingers give him leverage on the keys probably, and key speed as well.
Yes, the piano tremendously influences both attitude and technique. I am sure I would end up playing very differently on it also in comparison to what I try out in the video. In Horowitz's case, it becomes an argument akin to the chicken-or-egg debate. While many believe the piano caused him to develop a more peculiar playing style, I nevertheless hold a different opinion. It seems to be a manifestation of catastrophic arrogance in our cancel-culture idolized society. ha. ha.
An interesting tidbit is the piano used for that Horowitz 1967 filmed concert was actually a relatively new Steinway with a pretty sluggish action (according to the pianist who filled in for Horowitz for all the tedious camera tests). Horowitz loved that piano but eventually went back to his custom 1930’s flagship (that’s what he played in those filmed Moscow and Vienna performances).
Wow! A real eye opener. I always wondered about technique that relied mainly on finger movement instead of integration of wrist, and arm movement. Thanks so much for enlightenment!
Very interesting video. This brings to mind commentary by several of Liszt's pupils, who stated that Liszt, even in his old age, was perpetually evolving and exploring all aspects of the mechanics of piano technique and sound possibilities. Debussy, for whom Liszt played, said that he seemed to make the pedal breathe.
It would be interesting to see you do a similar analysis of Artur Rubinstein. He and Horowitz had contrasting personalities, technique, and interpretation. They both started young, knew each other, were rivals, and played concerts into old age, and were considered the Last Romantics.
@@doublevision5465 Yes, I read that in Rubinstein's book. The book tells how they were friends at one time. I was just watching Rubinstein play in concert Schumann's Carnaval, he must have been around 79, and he plays with a great deal of vigor and expression.
___ I had a teenage master lesson with Bela Siki who said my Alborada del Gracioso was "not bad" but that my Etudes were too stiff --- a few years later my next teacher made me start over with full relaxation --- at 85 I aim for 100% shoulder to finger relaxation and can play the Octave Etude accurately at speed with total relaxation, always keeping the white thumbs close to the black keys. My first teacher, an internationally acclaimed Godowsky student always talked about 'arm weight', which I never understood --- Could someone comment on MY mostly finger technique, based on finger speed , augmented occasionally by the use of the wrist as a fulcrum to transfer extra relaxed arm weight to the finger tip and move effortlessly to the next location --- e.g. the accented notes in the octave study.
What you may not know is that the pianos he played were set up to have a very gentle action which enabled Him to play rapidly with a rather flat hand position and without a lot of effort. Oh, I see you mentioned that...sorry:(
😊 a wonderful video. I am very happy you address healthy piano techniques. Pianist, all musicians in general, must learn to take good care of their hands and muscles in order to keep this high level of artistic ability. I would love to see another which maybe focuses on Glenn Gould's technique. And maybe the German pianist teacher Peter Feuchtwanger.
You have NO idea what Horowitz was feeling when he played that Etude of Chopin. The big mistake that piano students make when trying to analyze technique is to try and figure out how body parts are behaving when playing. The point of contact with the lever mechanism of the keys is all there is. All you have to do when practicing technique is to pay attention to maintaining the delicate balance between tension and relaxation in the weight and muscles of the arm and shoulder while paying great attention to the counterweight of the keys as you depress them. It is nothing more than than applying Newton's Third Law of Motion that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you look carefully at that slow-motion film of Horowitz playing the Chopin Etude, you will notice how his fingers interact with the keys. His fingers sink into the pillow-soft depression of the individual keys. His fingers and the piano are united by touch. The acrobatics of the hands are irrelevant. In the words of Arthur Rubinstein, he is making love with the keys.
As an analogy, You can love thy neighbor as thyself as a model for behavior or you can follow the ten commandments of the Old Testament. The former subsumes the latter. You can relax the muscles of your hand and arm and let the counterbalance of the key teach you how to touch it or you can torture yourself by paying attention to the multifaceted functions of your body and get nowhere. If you are honest, you have no idea how your brain and body do what it does. You just do it. You don't use the piano to make music, you are the piano's instrument to make music. The piano is making the sound, NOT your dancing fingers. @@DenZhdanovPianist
This is super insightful. I think it is really hard for students to take some advice of when it comes to technique because one sees certain pianists on RUclips and one wonders: Why does it work for them then? Well, it didn't really, we often just do not know about it.
How did he manage for so long without permanent injury?! Would love to hear your comments on Artur Rubinstein’s technique. It always looked so healthy, as did Alicia deLarrocha’s. And how about Gould!!! 😬
My personal suspicion, which unfortunately deeply offends some people here, is that he might have had some permanent injury of certain muscles which was the main reason for his peculiar technique in order to use alternative muscle groups, or maybe even dystonia.
@@DenZhdanovPianist thx for your reply. I've often wondered if his absences from concertizing were due to physical injuries as well as other issues. My overall favorite pianist from the past was Rubinstein, not Horowitz although I was always amazed at the effects Horowitz got from the piano given his physical approach to the instrument. Again thx for the response. Much appreciated.
I was very interested in your video Denis. I am a piano teacher and I had always been curious about his technique as well. I agree with your theories 100%. I studied Irina Gorin’s Pedagogy course just last year. You may know she’s one of the most respected pedagogues in the world and is from Ukraine, the same city where you received some of your training. I studied with her to learn about the healthy technique from the beginning that is taught in that part of the world and that you speak of here as well as to learn about training exceptional young students as young as age 4, a great interest of mine. Not to criticize, but I read some of the comments and I feel those that disagree do not have the knowledge that you have about what is proper and healthy technique. I’m sure you must have realized this if you read any of the comments. I don’t know that it would have made as much sense to me before I completed Irina’s course. She has spoken to many of us teachers around the world and this “new to us”way of teaching is really taking hold! I do believe poor technique may well be on it’s way out😊😊😊
Excellent analysis and comments. Bela Siki always advised, " If it hurts, you are doing it wrong. Don't do it." I had the pleasure of hearing Horowitz in person several times and loved his sound. I have heard Lang Lang in person and despise his antics and his sound. I wondered why his sound always made me uncomfortable. His wrist/arm tension and inappropriate movements gave him bad sound and tendonitis, the mark of a bad pianist.
In my comment, I had planned to add that I loved Horowitz's sound because I was young and impressed. But the older I am, with more experience and understanding, I have different ears now.
Thanks for commenting! Did you happen to hear Lang Lang after his injury in person? I wonder how different would be the perception of what he does now.
@@DenZhdanovPianist I’ve heard LL 3 times recently after he recovered from injury. The reaction from audience is either love or hate, because his individual style is so strong. His command to the orchestra was world class from his concerto performance of Beethoven 2 and Grieg. His control of dynamic and timing is exquisite, matching just right with what the orchestra is doing, which is not always the case after watching 15+ piano concerto live performance. What remains questionable is his interpretation. It’s like the orchestra suddenly became LL in the first half of the performance, and went back to their humble usual in the second half of symphony performance. It was very clear that LL must had meeting with the conductor to dictate his interpretation and put those in the rehearsal. Didn’t hear him live before his injury but I compared his 2023 live performance of the Grieg concerto with a RUclips video of his another performance from 2015, I heard the same interpretation idea and execution. So I suspect he pushes the same idea over different conductors. His live performance of Goldberg Variations in 2022 was drastically different from his album (in a good way I would say), but he still puts his in visual style over Bach. I actually think it works better in a live performance compared to listening to the recording.
I learnt from a teacher who learnt from Horowitz’s sister. Tension, co contraction at its most extreme, and very low wrists were the mandate. The outcome? A number of students developing dystonia.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Many of Leon Fleisher's students also developed dystonias.
@@alanfraser2948 that doesn't really surprise me, although it is sad. When it comes to the titans (Horowitz, Richter, Gould etc) I love them as much as the next person, but idolising them beyond first analysis is not a good idea if you, yourself are a training pianist.
No, @@santorinischnabel Romanovsky learnt from Magarius (who taught at the same school in Kharkov years ago). My teacher was Makarov. As I understand, Magarius and Makarov were pretty much enemies. Makarov in any case was an over-hyped simpleton who has spent the last 15 years in jail. He did, though, have a number of very, very good students.
@@alanfraser2948 A little knowledge? How do you know the poster has "a little knowledge"? How much of his knowledge do you expect him/her to write in a RUclips comment in order to make a single point?
I'm not talking about Dennis, whose knowledge is vast and admirable! I'm talking about the people who developed a dystonia because they didn't know what they were doing.
I played the Horowitz piano when Franz Mohr toured with it in 1990 (the piano by then was own by Steinway), the year after Horowitz's death. What Denis Zhdanov says about the action is absolutely true. I have never played a piano with an action that light (I started lessons when I was 5; I'm 81 now, so I've been doing this for a while with some wonderful teachers, including Martin Canin and Mme. Rosina Lhevinne). I have also never played a piano voiced so brightly. It sounded like the hammers were glass. That muscular sound that Horowitz made in the bass? I made the same sound. It was the piano, not him, not me.
Interestingly, I played the F-major Etude (10/8) in my session with his piano. At the time, I could not get through the piece on my own piano, a Mason and Hamlin BB, because of tension in my own technique that I have worked to eliminate over the years (I still have that same piano and at 81, I can play that Etude at a respectable tempo without tiring). But even with my deficient technique at the time, I easily got through it on the Horowitz piano.
The action was so light I described the keys to others as switches, on or off. I had a very difficult time controlling the dynamics with such an action. It is incredible to me that Horowitz was able to draw such colors from a piano set up this way.
I played the Horowitz piano again in 2003. Steinway had completely redone the action and voicing, turning it into an ordinary Model D and in the process, destroyed a historical document. I don't understand what possessed them to do this.
Interesting! What a fantastic opportunity you had! Thank you for sharing.
🥺
I’ve both played the Chopin F major Etude here and I’m a piano technician. I believe Horowitz’s piano had a 45g down-weight and 30g up-weight. Most people could not even control an action this light. Additionally, the high upweight meant the key virtually sticks to the fingers on the way up. Additionally, very bright voicing gives the feeling of an even lighter action. So yes, I’m not a fan of his technique, but his piano was conditioned to accommodate his style very well in a way that I doubt any other piano could without thorough action adjustment.
But at the end of the story it is all about the talent, the will and the immagination. Exploringn the ideas all the time in real time and not playing like a robot. Nobody can teach you that, it is internal and intimate realtaion between the piece and the performer. Techique is emerging thing but not the extrrnal tool.
The music, the sound, comes out from something and not the oposite. We can not study the mind od the performer, still all the magic comes from there.
Vladimir Horowitz was my neighbor on the Upper East Side in Manhattan back in the day. One time, a friend and I were pushing our bikes up 5th Avenue near Central Park and saw Horowitz sitting on a park bench with his wife and another woman, (Horowitz was always friendly, his wife not so much.) I can't remember how we got on the subject, but knowing we both played piano, he said the brakes on the bicycle was bad for your hands, as you had to squeeze and stretch them too much, and he held his hands up to demonstrate. I've never seen anyone's hands look like that; my whole hand would have fit in his palm. They were just so unusual, very long and thin fingers which you can't really see when they're on the keyboard. Maybe he used a different technique because his hands were so different. In this case, the ends justify the means as he certainly got the job done, one way or the other.
Great story! You had a nice neighborhood I’d say🙂
Thanks for the story. It’s nice to hear personal moments with the greats. I’ve always been jealous of his hands. Mine are very different, short fingers and a huge palm. But my grandmother was a top notch pianist with the tiniest but also strongest hands ever so who am I to complain. 😂
@@gailrodgers4434 your analogy for me is spot on. His hand size as well as his physical make up, allowed him to do things in a way other pianist could not.
He has very long fingers. Its possible he learned to play that way with no tension.
I love Horowitz above all other pianists, but I have no problem admitting that some of his interpretations are very problematic and that in some respects his technique was not the best. But what the heck! That miraculous sonority, from the most tender poetry to the most fiendishly electrifying crash chords, leaves most of his fellow pianists looking tame and bland.
Excellent video, very revealing and extremely interesting.
Actually his technique was indeed the best - you have to figure out how to understand it.
Does it bother you that sometimes those fiendishly electrifying crash chords were actually not written in the scores he played, but added by Horowitz himself? That bothers me enormously, especially when he does it not just once in a special moment, but time after time within the same piece.
You admit that some of his interpretation are very problematic, but what the heck? That to me is very bothersome, as the interpretations can sometimes distort the music considerably away from what is written in the score.
I think I prefer tame, bland pianists who can give an expressive performance of a piece while staying true to what the composer actually wrote.
I remember having a debate of sorts on such matters with someone in RUclips comments somewhere, and I happened to comment that I liked Ruth Laredo's performance of Scriabin's piano sonatas above all others, and the response was that it was too tame and bland (words to that effect, anyway - I forget the exact way it was worded). But to me, an accurate performance that still manages to be expressive is to me far more exciting than a self-indulgent performance that willfully makes alterations whenever the performer feels like it, often in the form of adding crashing chords that the composer did not write as chords, and in general makes the performance about the peformer himself rather than the composer and his music.
@@alanfraser2948
Nonsense. Playing with tension is bad technique.
of course playing with tension is bad technique, but playing with a certain elasticity is good technique, and you need to be able to tell the difference!
@@MJE112358132134As Mahler is supposed to have said: ”Das Beste in der Musik steht nicht in den Noten.” Horowitz had a keen eye and ear for what was not written in the score, and if he (like so many renowned pianists) reversed the dynamics on occasions it was because he thought what was written didn’t work with the overall conception of the phrase or work.
Thank you for your explanation Denis! I read three biographies about Horowitz. In the Plaskin biography Horowitz explains he could not play some of the Chopin etudes on modern pianos, as their touch was too heavy. Besides that Horowitz had large hands with long thin fingers.
Indeed he had long periodes he did not perform in public, and used drugs on doctors advice. However I was very surprised to watch him playing pieces like Etincelles by Moszkofski very fluently, as well as soirees the Vienna by Liszt. So on his old age he still had this wonderful technique. Indeed his piano keys were modified to 44 grams. And that helps a lot too. After Horowitz' death his wife Wanda did send his piano around the world and it landed in a piano shop in Amsterdam, and I was able to play on it. Indeed the touch was very light but I had to get accustomed to it...But he still remains one of my favourite pianists, along with Cherkassky and De Larrocha.
It’s interesting to see how bench position affects how one perceives the piano keys. Once I went to a friend’s house to play his piano, and we both thought that piano was heavy. A few weeks after and I visited again. I found myself playing effortlessly on that piano. We spent a long time thinking about what has been changed. I asked if he had regulated his piano. The truth was that he just heightened his bench a bit, and that made a world of difference.
Yeah! Same thing for me!
I felt like the Scarlatti sounded better in your first run-through using 'Horowitz' technique than when you did it with your usual technique. There's something to be said about inefficient technique leading to more interesting sounds, because once everything is 'perfect' it quickly becomes boring. Great video, I did agree with just about everything else you said.
That’s an interesting point. Similarly, I like watching older fancy cars, however prefer to drive Tesla lol
I had similar impression that the finger-only Scarlatti sounded better. Generally, I find playing with fingers-only on a modern piano produces a smaller tonal range, and using more of the body produces bigger range of tonal color. For Scalatti I'm used to hearing a small and even tonal range without huge dynamic changes, and has the impression of sound & tonal range of early pianofortes/keyboards. That said, of course, it's not worth injury. (But personally, even as an amateur, I stay away from Scarlatti.)
@DenZhdanovPianist This is exactly the difference in mindset between old-style men and modern men. Old and "romantic" people prioritise aesthetics over everything. To these people it doesn't matter that the old cars may be way more dangerous, because the aesthetic of how it looks and feels is more important. Same thing with Horowitz's piano playing. Same thing with Michelangeli, he always looks clean and professional and his clarity in piano playing is the most imprtant aesthetic to him.
Same. :)
Yes I agree, the Scarlatti of Mr. Horowitz is much better, than both examples of Mr. Zhdanov … no strong evidence of his theories… I want to add that I could imagine Horowitz would be very unlucky use his Tokyo 83 Concert for such a Video
The most insightful comments on Horovitz I have seen so far! I always wondered about Horovitz‘ peculiar style of playing. Now I begin to understand what he was doing and why it is not a good idea at all to try to copy him. Thank you for your explanations and demonstrations!
Glad you enjoyed it!
As far as technique, probably not a great idea to try to copy Horowitz, but as far as his musical conceptions, what I wouldn't give to be able to render as Horowitz did any number of pieces that I love. The range of sound, the tonal beauty, the vocal quality. And an overall piano sound that, in my listening experience of 50-some years, was utterly unique. I was only able to attend one recital of Horowitz's, and that was at Orchestra Hall in Chicago in either the late 1970s or very early 1980s--I forget the exact year. It was in a sense a bad recital for Horowitz since there were lots of missed notes and big memory lapses. But I've never heard a piano sound like that in my life--his sonority was staggering and so orchestral. John Browning once said in an interview that he felt that Horowitz had gone beyond the piano. In any case, although I agree with Mr. Zhdanov that Horowitz's physical approach to the piano was not a healthy one that we should try to emulate, when it comes to the musical results that Horowitz achieved, I'm all for trying to emulate him. If only that were so easy!
You perhaps don't realize that Horowitz's piano was voiced in a manner that imitates fortepianos from around 1830. He had the hammers replaced every year during which the hammer heads were ground down to the smallest size possible consistent with a reliable repetition. You will notice when watching videos of him playing his piano in concert that the keys bobble when suddenly released. This indicates that the weight of the hammer heads are barely able to guarantee a snappy return of the key. Under this set up in the action, he never had to fight the weight of the keys to depress them. The slightest touch of the fingers on the key will produce a mezzoforte so when playing softly the hands, fingers, and arm had to function reliably when totally relaxed. This is how the Fortepianos have to be played. Any forcing of the muscles will cause them to misfire by being too loud. His technique was predicated on playing a softly as possible consistent with his interpretation, You will also notice that he rarely plays FFF and when he does that FFF only appears to sound FFF because the light hammers are also very bright sounding, which means he hardly has to work at all to generate strong differences in volume because he relys on how the human ear adapts to whatever volume is first heard and everything heard thereafter sounds either louder or softer by comparison. He was supposed to quantify a minimum of 29 levels of touch. His interpretations are best understood by reading The Craft of. Musical Communication at themusiciansstudio.com to understand the cantabile style of playing prevalent throughout Europe and the US before 1940.
Yes I do realize that, and this doesn’t contradict to anything I’ve said.
I have not criticized his cantabile or any other interpretational choices, by accentuating a few times throughout the video that I admire him as an artist, having concerns solely about technical approach from the positions of a life-long sustainability, but people apparently are not able to comprehend that there are more options to attitude and research on people then a 100% worshipping or 100% hatred😂
@@DenZhdanovPianist What you don't get is that it is posible to play with low wrists and without tension. I mean, I play like that and don't feel any stress on my fingers after finishing playing. So, you just sit there, try to play the etude and, as you haven't practiced it in that position or whatever, you come to the rash conclusion that that position creates tension. But I say, if you weren't so suggestible, you could sit there and play it without tension. Tension is more a matter of internally feeling free. You can play without tension even with flat fingers and low wrists. Tension is a thing of starting playing and you don't realize that your wrist hurts. The moment you realize it, you can just release that tension and that's about it.
My violin teacher in university was a completely natural player, he just intuitively understood how to move. But he didn't really understand how to explain how to move. It was tough learning from him lolol. I was the same way a bit. I grew up just understanding how to play freely, but for me, later in life when I started hitting the limits of when my intuition just wasn't enough, I started having to have a more intentional approach to movement. I think intuitive players who are really really talented can completely master the instrument without hitting those walls. But when something changes internally, like physical or mental health, and you start thinking about the instrument differently, sometimes those people have to go through a relearning process where everything they did intuitively has to start happening intentionally. I think that's why teaching can help your playing a lot, it forces you into that thought process early. To me, that tense recording where he was struggling was just him having a learning moment that most of us mortals encounter a whole lot earlier haha, and he had to go "why the heck isn't this easy."
I agree . I remember his concert in 1986 in Leningrad when I was shocked by his hand position, by his maybe pianistically imperfections, pedaling in Mozart. My reaction was that I spent my life for nothing by studying in the most respected music schools. It was the greatest experience in my life( Im visiting Carnegie quite often). It takes a genius to overstep boundaries , rules, physical laws and to achieve such an effect on audience
Yes, his charisma is astounding
If you watch the video of his Mozart A major concerto in Milan, 1987, you can see that he has what looks to me like dystonia by then. His fourth and fifth finger are curled in and he has to really push to throw them out in order to use them. Regarding his breaks from playing, I've always suspected repetitive strain injury was a factor in this, and was probably a factor in his need for pain killers.
His technique was very much based on an old-fashioned school of playing as described by Czerny for example. There are bits of that school which are good and bits that are not so good as you highlight here. The light action of the pianos could just be that he preferred that, and if you consider that old Blüthners and Bechsteins, and possibly old Berdux pianos in Russia had a much shallower key dip even than today, that technique isn't going to be *as much* of a problem as it is on the New York Steinway of the mid-20th Century. This is probably why his piano was so modified.
The other thing as you will know Denis, that in conservatoires for the longest time, technique was regarded as something that just happens in order to serve the music. I was very very lucky in that my first teacher studied with Tobias Matthay, so I had a finished technique before going to conservatoire. However, at the conservatoire, later the teachers kept misquoting Matthay at me saying "Matthay said it doesn't matter whether you play the key with your finger or a pencil". Well, in the context they were mis-using that quote it showed an alarming ignorance as to what he was actually trying to say. Looking back and watching videos of professors from the conservatories I attended (Royal College of Music and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) I do see varying versions of inefficient technique. Teachers are very scared to even touch on the subject of technique using the tag line that the study of technique can make playing too mechanical. I disagree. Look at ballet dancers for example. If Nureyev is Horowitz, Baryshnikov is Argerich
Thanks for a profound comment, I do value Matthay’s books much
With the 5th finger curled in in particular, there are a couple of things I recall. One was likely from a biography of his and Horowitz said that nobody taught him how to do that and he learned it himself. Then there was a reproduction of an Etude magazine article on an old Horowitz fan website with photographs and Horowitz teaching the 5th finger curled in thing. He was a pretty young man then, likely around the time when that slow motion video of him was filmed.
@@SaiChooMusic In fact I do think I remember Josef Hoffman saying that curling the fifth finger back was a good thing to stabilize the hand in playing. He felt it helped maintain the bridge of the other fingers. I will have to look this up though because I could be misquoting him. I personally don't advocate for this. I think the fingers should all be rested on the keys with a relaxed arm. Hoffman and Horowitz learned before we really fully understood repetitive strain injuries. In fact, Tobias Matthay who advocated for a relaxed technique plus a rotary motion to aid finger work, was ostracized by his colleagues for suggesting what they believed to be something so ridiculous. Chopin too believed similar to Matthay but his ideas were never published, at least not until relatively recently. Now, those teachers who teach more ergonomic principles of technique quote Matthay and Chopin all the time citing them as good sources on the topic.
None of what I'm saying takes away from Horowitz the artist, who still stands as one of the most incredible pianists of any generation.
@@josephfleetwood3882 Yeah I couldn't recall if it was Lhevinne or Hoffman who spoke about the curled 5th finger, I suspect it was Hoffman.
If Baryshnikov were… Argerich reminds me too much of Michelangeli, fast, subtle,light-fingered and colorless. But a pianist that can produce the power, color, clean sonority? Novaes? Sudbin? And to notice that, less than two years before his death he had what “looked like” focal dystonia was a laugh. First, you can find hundreds of videos where H. Curls his right pinky when not in use, and dozens of videos where he also curls the index finger.
When a pianist is 84 and been playing at a professional level for 65+ years, there is arthritis, ligament and tendon wear, and even bone reshaping.
As for your guess about the “real” reason for his withdrawals from the stage, you contradict his widow, manager, confidants. This qualifies you to be a Kardashian fan.
Excellent video! I am without a teacher and so, in order to try and improve my technique, I watch recordings of professional classical concert artists. I was taught to keep my wrists and arms essentially level with the keyboard, hand and fingers in a naturally curved, relaxed position. Nothing should be rigidly held in position, but rather should have freedom and thus ease of movement - a flowing type movement.
Horowitz often used flat fingers and/or very curled fingers which visually reminded me of a spider. I tried to imitate his position and technique but found I lost control of my touch. It was also fatiguing as I felt tension in my fingers and throughout my arms in order to maintain such a position - ultimately, when fatigue started to set in, I discovered that I was lifting my shoulders in order to continue in the same manner.
I also noted that Horowitz did not keep his fingers & hands close to the keys. I find that by staying close to the keys, I don't have to cover as much distance from one key to the next, jumps are not as far, my playing is smoother, and legato is not as difficult. I also find that a relaxed, close to the keyboard position diminishes my anxiety over accuracy. It's a more enjoyable experience overall.
Horowitz also appeared to have hunched over the keyboard at times. Such a position for me leads to a tired back and thus when I start to become uncomfortable, I have to fight myself to continue.
I have concluded that Horowitz's technique does not work at all well for me. I use to believe that it was because my hands, arms and so on developed in accordance with how I was taught to use them and thus due to my limitations, I was unable to benefit from Horowitz's technique. After watching your vid I am now of the opinion that Horowitz's technique was not the best and so I now have more confidence in myself.
I am glad you have decided to unban this video. Thank you so much!
Its very interesting. When you play with the low arm position you dont like, it does give you a cleaner and more exiting attack, honestly sounds better for the two pieces you demonstrated, but onviously it could sound weird with something more lyrical. Gould also sat very low but i dont see him being so static with his arms.
Anyway its an interesting thing that across instruments the superstars often have unique techniques that seem inefficient or like they should not work. That is possibly because human appreciation of beauty is not a study in efficiency. The most efficienct sound is a midi keyboard playing exactly what is written, but there is nothing more boring and souless than that.
The other thing is, in terms of injuries, a lot or it is to do with genetic variation in anatomy. Overuse injuries often happen not because of overuse itself but due to the nerve and arm structures inducing injury and tension that cannot heal in time for the next use.
Nerves tend tend to shorten with age as structures become more rigid and kyphosis increases. But some people are lucky enough to have less genetic tendency for this and wider nerve tunnels and so can handle far more load with less injury.
You see with singers for instance that many of the most famous singers of the 40s-70s were linked to Melocchi who taught basically the opposite of what all modern speech pathologists advocate. Again he advocated a static tension type technique .
And indeed many of his students ruined their voices, but the ones that survived excelled and are considered best of all time. .
I studied with a pianist who did her dissertation on a blind pianist. I can look up the name if you're interested. She had the most hands on teaching style I've ever encountered - - very effective. Another teacher, who is a contemporary of Argerich in Argentina with the same teacher, once explained the legato on repeated notes by saying "it's like you get on your tippy toes" and proceeded to demonstrate by flexing up and down on her tippy toes-- at age almost 70 by the way. I liked her approach to technique best. She made very few specific suggestions but I remember all of them vividly.
I'm an amateur, to be clear, but I had the good fortune to study with some very fine pianists in adulthood after a succession of mediocre teachers in childhood. My level is what I would call playing Chopin etudes and the Hammerklavier fugue in the shower, so to speak.
One of my childhood teachers really emphasized sitting still, which I think was very damaging, resulting in lifelong problems with stiffness.
Interesting story, thanks for sharing!
@@DenZhdanovPianist I have a different question for you related to piano technique. This is about posture. There are many current pianists who play in a horrible slouching posture - - - regardless of their level of play. Sokolov and Pletnev are two notable examples, but there are many others. Pianists of earlier generations didn't sit like that. Do you have any explanation, or do you disagree? Two things come to mind. First, a pianist who sits high may have to lean over a lot to get into the keys. Second, the examples I can think of have Russian conservatory training. Not all are like that of course. As you would know, Virsaladze does not slouch.
Very interesting. Glenn Gould also sat very low and with elbows below the keyboard. He was known for using hot wet towels on his forearms before performances. It would be interesting to see a comparison of his technique to that of Horowitz and Lang Lang.
I'd love to see an analysis of Lang Lang's "before and after" the break he took. To see what he did. His Goldberg Variations are incredible.
Jose Iturbi also sat low.
@@chrysanthemumfan214
Lang Lang had to cancel a concert here because of tendinitis in his arms!!!
I hate his theatrically appearance and especially his face while playing anyway - doesn't seem very relaxed!
Thank you, I love how you explain everything, and watching you demonstrating what you are talking about is so helpful! I love Horowitz, and your analysis reveals how powerful his musical instincts and mechanical gifts were, in spite of his limited understanding of physically safe playing.
Very good advice on building a technique that can be sustained even when you're out of shape. Train in such a way that even your worst self sounds good. If even the worst version of you sounds good, you are ready for the concert!
Well said!
Think of SAS - or free climing - or something, where a very special, or most special high performance just takes something special, and can take something out of you, or right out of you. In order to get the 'best' performance, training for 'consistency' doesn't always equate to being able to demonstrate your absolute 'peak' (or 'best'). It can also be just up to a particular individual to pull something super special off - eg. Vlad. Corraling somebody into something - such as getting everybody to conform to one recommended style can take something away.
The great Cuban pianist Jorge Bolet advised his students to sit as low as they practically could. He also used flat fingers in lyrical music when he wanted a certain sound. My own last teacher, the late David Bradshaw, was an exponent of Lechtititsky's method. He said that sitting lower enables one to play accurately with less practice, which is otherwise difficult. He told me that I produced a much better sound when I sat lower. Bradshaw said the only thing sitting higher makes easier is playing louder, which is the easiest thing to do anyway. So, since most of us don't have 30 hours a day in which to practice, why not do what makes the difficult easier? But I have also thought about this, and I think for a huge work like the Brahms 2nd Concerto, a higher sitting position would make a lot of sense, as long as one's hands remained as close to the keys as possible. I also found that sitting lower made it easier for me to use weight, and to voice chords, and I got less fatigued. It's a difficult and controversial question, complicated by the fact that we are all physically shaped a bit differently.
For piano mechanics, I look to Marc Andre Hamelin. Easily one of the very best players ever from a mechanical perspective.
Listen to Josef Hofmann in his prime, and to Rachmaninoff.
@@johnschlesinger2009 not much video of theirs to watch. I’ve heard all the recordings.
@@johnschlesinger2009 "In his prime"? Just like Horowitz in his prime? Why the loss of the heights of playing when Hofmann was older?
I studied with Marc-Andre's teacher, who had intriguing insights into Horowitz's technique
@@alanfraser2948 elaborate please!
Excellent video. It definitely puts an additional perspective on his long sabbaticals. I think you also give us a better understanding of his attitude to the Chopin etudes, and his reluctance to play most of them.
I recall reading in David Dubal's _Evenings with Horowitz_ the recollections of a student who had been taken to play for the maestro. He said that the piano in use that evening was a temporary replacement from Steinway, as Horowitz's piano had gone in for repairs. The replacement had a very heavy action, and the student marveled at Horowitz's ability to play it with such ease. He also commented on Horowitz's hands and what may have accounted for their strength. Dubal himself wrote about how strong Horowitz's hands were after an arm-wrestling bout that he let Horowitz win. Leschetizky himself said that he had no 'method', as each pianist was different. Horowitz did what worked for him. He never wanted to be imitated.
Cziffra honestly is the best of all time without controverse for his surhuman technique. The rest is at the appreciation of eachone
Few and possibly none of the people on this thread heard Horowitz in his 40's and in his prime. When he returned in the 1960's he was already in his 60's. He did not appear in public in his 50's. You'd have to be in your nineties now to have heard him in his middle age. When you listen to his live unedited concerts from the late 1940's his technique is just astounding by any measure. His Mendelssohn, his Kabalevsky, his Liszt! His evenness and finish in the classical repertoire, say Haydn or early Beethoven was unsurpassable. But the thing about Horowitz is that he liked to push the envelope. Nothing was kept in reserve. Backhaus once remarked that the seasoned professional should be able to play his pieces 10% faster and louder than he does in concert. But you can't really say that about Horowitz. He pushed musical/technical matters to the limit. The results were not always ideal.
That's the cost of selling right to his limits. My first major teacher also taught me never to perform the maximum tempo I could pull off. Nobody has the same level of control and quality and consistency at that tempo as they do two notches slower.
@@tabby7189 The real question in performance is what are your goals and what is your temperament? Every artist is different as is every listener. Personally I don't go to a live concert to hear 'control' and 'quality.' I can get that from sitting in a couch and putting on a studio recording. I travel to hear something hopefully special and never to be repeated. That's what the Horowitzes, Serkins and Giesekings gave you on the stage, along with the requisite clinkers. But that's me.
@@dorfmanjones depending on the performer, two ticks below the maximum before a precipitous drop in quality doesn't even eliminate every wrong note minus one nor the edginess that comes from playing like he's playing it for the first time.
Neither of us is here to tell the other what he should be looking for in a concert, but on my end it's the aspects a recording can't offer - unfamiliarity (because if it's a recording there's a good chance it's not my first time with it), live instrument (recording and playback equipment always lose some sound quality), and the social aspect with the special environment and all.
In that light, I'm 100% against any performer being so close to the edge of his/her ability to execute that it takes more than 25% of his/her attention just avoiding crashing and burning.
This is a really important video. Thank you for making it!
Thank you for taking your time to produce the video. Your research and your assessment is indeed important for many piano students
Thank you for your kind feedback!
I totally agree with your accurate analisys. Excellent job, as usual. Thank you. It would be very nice to have some more videos like that about other famous pianists. Personally, I've always admired Argherich's tecnique.
I have always thought that he had some form of focal dystonia in the second half of his career. He clearly was not in command of his 4th and 5th fingers, which tended to curl under his hands, could only play octaves with completely flat fingers, which compromised hugely the accuracy, and clearly was extremely limited in the repertoire he actually could play, which if you observe, is very carefully chosen, and even then the technical accuracy was limited. The other person in which you can observe similar problems is Paul Badura Skoda.
I heard from my teacher in LA in the 80s that VH was missing notes because of medication, and the problem cleared up in his last few years’ concerts and recordings.
As for sitting low: he said he learned that from his sister, who told him that you see the keys better when you are closer.
This might also explain why he tends to hunch forward as he plays. Not only does his playing technique risk injury, so does his posture.
Blues players and rockers don’t worry about technicalities. He was a rock and roller at heart, who happened to play classical piano. 😀
Great video!! Thank you for all the excellent observation and crystal clear points. And love those slow-downed motion of Horowitz's fingers motion.
Thanks for commenting!
Thank you, this is a very helpful analysis. I remember when Horowitz's Tokyo performance was a disaster and at the time I didn't know anyone who actually believed it was caused by medication. Long before that performance it was well known that his public repertoire had changed a great deal to accommodate his capabilities. The obvious tension in Horowitz's arms, wrists and fingers was a fairly common point of discussion, especially among people who taught piano. You are not the first person to scrutinize Horowitz's technique by analysing his videos but you are among the first people to deconstruct what led to his diminishing technical capabilities. Mostly, people used his videos to emulate his technique, they thought if it worked for him it would work for them. Many students experimented with playing using flat fingers like Horowitz did but what many people didn't know was just how much that technique was actually limiting Horowitz. Horowitz was born with unusually fast reflexes and in his early years that's what sustained his technique but as you point out his technique couldn't be sustained as he aged the way Martha Argerich's technique has sustained her seemingly effortless performances. Obviously, Horowitz had godlike talent and it's clear that you have the greatest respect for that aspect of his supreme musicianship.
Thank for the thorough sum up, I am glad you’re agree with my perspective.
A most provocative but interesting theory that makes a great deal of sense. However, I disagree about the premise that was the reason for the change in his repertory as his career progressed; I think that change was more of a result of the maturation of the artist, rather than due to faulty technique----for example, his staggering performances of the Scriabin 5th Sonata from 1974-1976 required no less of a technical challenge (esp. the way he played it) than the Liszt Don Juan which he performed in the 1920s.
In response to one of the comments below, I find it difficult to believe that his unique sound was only due to the piano he used; when he made his U.S. debut [BEFORE his was able to have Steinway customize the keyboard action and sonority to his specifications] critics and pianists marveled at his thunderous sonority and rapidity of execution----thus the famous quote from Ignaz Friedman who was at that Jan. 12 1928 debut, "Our careers will never be the same."
It seems to my mind that his having arthritis and nerve damage would have dictated to a large degree how he used his body when playing the piano and also not forgetting to mention his various phobias and depressions necessitating drug treatment for all of the above issues. All in all I think that he compensated for these multiple limiting factors heroically and effectively against all the odds, he was a shining example of how to overcome your limitations and he continued to provide some of the best performances both live and recorded of the 20th century. He shows by example there are many ways up a mountain and it is always worth investigating alternative ways of playing a instrument to achieve new heights. Bravo Vladimir and thanks Denis for the video it is a very interesting analysis and provides some great insights into his technique.
Please make a video like this about Martha Argerich's technique. As you say at some point Argerich's technique is more natural and relaxed compared to Horowitz' I would really like to learn about the subtleties of her pianistic approach.
Thanks I will try!
I heard that when Horowitz was teaching octaves to a student, he explained that the upper arm should be rigid. A different old school pianist with a very free technique was Hofmann. In one video I saw of him playing the Rachmaninoff C# minor prelude, he looked a rag doll.
That’s interesting gotta find this recording
@@DenZhdanovPianist You may have found it by now, Hofmann was noticably sloshed in the film.
Excellent well substantiated and referenced pianism analysis. I don't think his flat fingers technique was ever accepted by anybody as a model to follow," it looks bad, but sounds good" is the well accepted credo among his fanatic admirers. They would drown the argument by saying he was a genius to make his odd technique work. The funny anecdote for me is i had seen none of his video recordings when i stumbled on the Tokyo Op 25 n 10 recital while i was studying that etude. I was very surprised how badly he played and remember thinking this is so bad that some pianists would stop and walk off the stage. After this I took his fame with a lot of suspicion.
It's unfortunate we don't have any video coverage of Rachmaninof playing, as before becoming a famous composer he lived from being a concert pianist. I somehow remember maybe wrongly reading that he had a flat fingers technique as well but in his case, his huge hands change a lot of parameters.
This is a very helpful explanation of the Horowitz technique and its limitations. It's also true that he reduced his repertoire as he aged, and saved his virtuosic work for the encore. But many other artists with long careers do the same thing. One thing you don't mention, which he was most famous for, was his use of flat fingers, and this was in fact his secret weapon in his later years. I heard him perform three times, and once I sat in the first row next to him on the stage. The staggering amount of tones he could get from his flat fingers was unlike anything I had heard from other concert pianists. More to the point, it was how he used these tones to shape a phrase that made him unique. The audience was entranced by these ever-shifting colors - I found his concerts had the least amount of audience noise of any pianist, because everyone was paying attention. I learned from his concerts that the highest aspect of virtuosity in piano playing is not to be found in bravura, technically demanding passages, but in the sense of touch applied to the quieter moments.
Absolutely agree
Thank you for a very well-reasoned analysis of Horowitz' technique. You made me recall two anecdotes - Horowitz himself admitted that his teacher, Blumenfeld, allowed or expected his students to figure out what worked for them on their own. The other was something Horowitz said, when asked how he felt after playing one of the Chopin etudes - I think it was the Butterfly etude. He remarked that his arm felt like it would drop off.
Interesting, thank you!
@@DenZhdanovPianist A minor correction - it was the Black Key etude, not the Butterfly. I always mix those two up, I think because I associate them both with the key of G-flat major.
Funny thing: I believe I read that the etude that made Volodya make that "arm falling off" observation was Op. 25 No. 11 ("Winter Wind"), but perhaps he had that experience with both studies.... 🤔😬💥🙏🎹
This is so great. Love this. Thank you for ALL of your amazing videos.
Thank you, that was fascinating.
I was lucky enough to see Horowitz live in the early Eighties.
His fingers weren't what they once were, but the sound was stunning.
I have never heard anyone come close, and I have heard some of the best (Gilels, Richter, Arrau, Brendel, Kempff, Bolet, Pollini etc).
As I understand it, it was his second teacher who got him to switch from a conventional technique to a flat-fingered one.
Claudio Arrau, born the same year, heard Horowitz when they both starting their careers. He noted the stiffness in his forearms, and was of the opinion that it would make it difficult to play long sustained passages such as the end of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no 6. (Arrau's mother was also present at the concert and told her son she thought Horowitz was a better pianist than him.)
I am inclined to agree with your assessment, but I do believe it's the flat fingers rather than the lower wrists that were the cause of the problem, as that would have placed an enormous strain on his forearm muscles. After all, it is possible to play comfortably with low wrists if one keeps the fingers slightly curved.
Are you planning a discussion about Glenn Gould? He certainly ran into some serious problems late in his career.
Thanks for commenting! Horowitz has used curled fingers at times when executing fast passages but I really doubt he was able to sustain this state for long at the later stages of his career, because combined with the lower wrist position it’s exhausting. Flatter fingers is where you can rest a bit between faster curled passages using this hand posture.
It’s surprising people don’t want to see the evident or try themselves.
@@DenZhdanovPianist
I have tried myself, and using flat fingers caused me a lot of problems in no time. Yes, curling his fingers to the extent he did would have been very strenuous. I am merely contending that the flat fingers would have caused more damage.
As I said earlier, I agree with your assessment. As happened with Glenn Gould, his unconventional approach caught up with him in later years. But then, it was both artists' unusual approach to piano playing that made them both unique.
All these things about Cziffra. Cziffra would often slow down when things got tough like Simon Barere does for the thirds in Schumann Toccata at Carnegie Hall. Argerich's technique is the great secret! Also Sokolov! Horowitz talked about feeling like his arm would fall off for Winter Wind etude(Plaskin biography). He always had a weird technique
Thank you. I learned valuable things from this video of yours that are new to me and that I will apply myself from now on. Finally, a comment on the Horowitz performance of Chopin’s Polonaise in Ab at 4:00pm on a Sunday in the Rose Garden of the White House years ago. He made many terrible mistakes during that, but I have never read or heard any commentary on the fact.
Glad it was helpful!
Yes nobody is perfect and some of the worst concerts I’ve heard in my life were given by the biggest names (emerging young pianists may not be as experienced in stage presence but usually work hard to present their programs in a good quality). It’s a shame that nowadays nobody dares to give honest critics about what they think if the pianist is very famous. In my opinion, this leads to industry stagnation and idolizations.
Great video! I remember seeing somewhere garick ohlosson saying that people that try to imitate might get hurt, and I can see it better now.
Maybe a bit too much to ask, but may you do a video like this on Gyorgy Cziffra? Would really be interesting and perhaps benefitial to hear your opinion and point of view on his technical approach.
Thanks for the content.
Yeah that’s a peculiar topic thanks for suggestion
Unfortunately there has never been a pianist like Horowitz - his color and nuance, excitement & sensitivity - he was ike no one else. Argerich and Yuja are extraordinary, but in person, I’d never experienced anything like Horowitz. Exceptional, exceptional …..
We need Harmonic tension and tension itself serves something far greater than only being relaxed although that is of course a necessity. Mr. Graffman studied for decades before meeting Mr. Horowitz & doesn’t blame Mr. Horowitz.
You know, Horowitz was humble and brilliant however, I appreciate your thoughtful examination . It is appreciated - thank you
I would contend that numerous musicians are equally fascinating, if not more so, and have delivered renditions of Horowitz's repertoire that, in my personal view, surpass his.
Pronouncing Horowitz as the definitive pianist is akin to declaring Einstein the sole crucial scientist. It involves conflating personal branding with genuine achievement. There are many scientists whose contributions rival Einstein's genius but receive less promotion for wider audiences.
Wonderful analysis, Denis! That said, I often wonder if there's more to the story. All your points about using isolated fingers and so on are well taken, but when I look at, for example, you trying it out, vs Horowitz, you can see that Horowitz's playing seems much more natural even though he's roughly using the same movements. Maybe he's found a way to remain relaxed, and it's a very subtle thing you could only observe if you could see his arms perfectly. The same thing strikes me about Cziffra -- that yes, many people played similarly and got injured, but they didn't play the same. You tend to much more easily be able to see unnaturalness, locked joints, etc. in other pianists who have got injured, vs a Horowitz or Cziffra. They seem loose and relaxed and like they're having fun, and I don't think it's just for show. Of course, there's strength involved, but it's more like the strength of a gymnast where it's invisible.
My personal feeling is that they found a local optimum of sorts. If you play the same way they play, it's very hard to play more efficiently. There might be better ways, but if it's efficient enough, it can get the job done, especially at younger ages. Cziffra played the same way into his 70s; that is what fascinates me even more. I feel like there's really something special to be learned there if one can figure out what's going on there.
Something I feel, and this might be a bit controversial, is that one of the reasons many pianists sound the same way nowadays is because we have discovered "biomechanically optimal" ways of playing over the past century, which are then taught en masse. Perhaps a more dangerous sound requires more dangerous playing? The sound quality, especially, depends so much on how you strike the key, that if you teach the exact same approach, they will end up with very similar sound quality. I think I can hear this happening, but I'm not sure what could be done about it.
I agree with your last point. We can hear Lang Lang’s Hungarian Rhapsody and immediately recognize it’s him. Same goes for Cziffra, Katsaris, Pogorelich to name just a few. I’ve come to realize our body is actually a part of the instrument these days.
Thanks for commenting, good points! Parrying your concern, I don’t think that efficient technique makes people sound the same: Argerich, Gilels, Sokolov, Rachmaninoff, to name a few, represent a very efficient and sustainable technique, but I wouldn’t say they lost some personality because of that.
On the contrary, Trifonov, Kissin, and Lang Lang (at least before his injury) have a quite risky approach to piano playing, but I personally can’t say it always convinces me musically.
But I agree that a unique physiology can allow to stay afloat with a quite weird way of playing for longer. I have no idea for example how Kissin didn’t get injured yet with an incredible amount of banging and physical force he uses. But in case of Horowitz I still see a drastic difference in brilliance and control between his earlier and later public performances (recordings don’t count because you can do a hundred of takes for any spot until you nail it) which aligns with my arguments from the video.
Fantastic video, thank you, Denis. I was told by a teacher who has similar views to you that Rubinstein had "absolutely beautiful" technique. I wonder if you could do a video on his use of forearm rotation and using the whole arm in his playing?
Thanks for the suggestion, that’s a great topic of course!
That would be fascinating indeed!
I think the greatest aspect of Horowitz is his enjoyment and fun. He understood the connection between the words "music" and "amuse" and the ideas of playfulness and playing. He had the passion of a child all through his life and I don't think he worried himself sick if he hit a wrong note in his performance. There is a degree of self mockery in his style.
I believe that Rachmaninoff said that he did not understand the piano until he heard Horowitz performing. That means that they were both great, musically, but not necessarily so great in keyboard technique.
I remember reading that Horowitz said he had no idea how he did what he did. I guess it was all so natural for him from his very early age. Graffman said Horowitz never told him how to play, he would sit on the sofa and watch while Graffman would play.
Horowitz last recorded concert was in Hamburg. He has trouble with the closing piece, Chopin Op 53 but still pulls it off. The final Moskovsky piece is dazzling.
Which Scarlatti sonata is in your video? Thank you for all of your wonderful performance and advice!
Scarlatti K55
Yes that’s the problem - even the most gifted pianists often play intuitively, and don’t teach physiological aspects of piano playing because frankly speaking have no idea about them, however sustainable piano technique is not always intuitive for everyone.
After watching your presentation I am reminded of Godowsky's comment to another musician who mentioned Hofmann's wrong notes in a recital they had just attended; "why look for spots on the Sun?"
Because it’s not about wrong notes but about reasons to incorporate (or not) experience of others.
Of course it's not about wrong notes, that's not the point I was making by quoting Godowsky's response.
Would love to see you do a similar analysis of Glenn Gould’s unusual technique.
gould was a great artist but his hand position in relation to his entire arm meant he must have had some tendonitis
excellent video Denis ! i’ve always thought this about Horowitz, but given the skill abyss separating me from him i thought something was wrong with me lol ! Theres some sort of “sacro-saint” status that 20th century legends have which makes us afraid to “criticize” them. But an unhealthy technique is an unhealthy technique no matter the virtuosity, and the NAME of the pianist. The new technique school that you represent shall be so much better for our body and allow us to play for as long as possible :)
PS : i would LOVE to see you make a similar analysis with other great 20th century/current pianists !!
Great video! The only thing I’d say is that playing with the wrists diminishes articulation which is why Horowitz has such an articulate sound.Horowitz was not looking for comfortable or ‘healthy’ playing technique but wanted to get a crisp sound that is hard to get out of the piano. Sacrifice in the name of art :)
Good point!
Extremely accurate and comprehensive analysis!
Thank you for the great work.
Thanks for your feedback Dyma!
I'm starting to learn piano, so your advice on keeping elbows higher than keys and using whole arm will undoubtedly be helpful to me as I practice
That’s a good idea for beginners! Just avoid another extreme as well!)
I wish I said this earlier, but I love these types of videos from you. In terms of tutorials, only some might be applicable to certain people, but these are general and interesting for a wider audience. Great job!!
Glad you like it! Thanks for your feedback! More videos like this to come…
Horowitz was one of few pianists who improvise which few of today's can do,apart from Katsaris who I admire greatly.,also who has an inspiring ability to voice inner melodic lines ..
Great explanation, really makes sense. I always found it strange, the way his arms and fingers moved. But maybe it was a technique that made sense to him and fitted him perfectly.
I have seen a few guitar players with such crazy technique, hand positions and the way they hold their picks, but they are such amazing virtuosos. I tried copying their techniques and it was just impossible to play. In some interviews, they were asked about this and they just said that they were self-taught and that's how they felt comfortable playing.
So maybe Horowitz played that way because he was comfortable in that position, which worked 100% for him but may cause serious damage to other players.
I thought I was very comfortable with the way I played 10 years ago until it started to limit me, give pains and forced me to restructure the whole approach. Luckily, I got some advices from more experienced people who helped me to get on the right track and recover. Looking at his later recordings, and separating my admiration to him as an interpreter and his piano technique, I don’t see him being very efficient technically. On the contrary, I am quite amazed how powerful is the emotional experience he delivers despite all the inaccuracy he often had.
This is really interesting to me. I would like to see more videos on the topic of Horowitz technique.
I don't know much about Horowitz but I can compare him to the great opera singer Maria Callas, that with a decent technique ( inmense musical knowledge) was able to make so much sense of their art leaving behind many others with great technical method of singing or playing, it wasn't just the technique but the genius to understand the music and give it life and make it something you can almost touch, very few can manage to do that, for this they will forever be present in our lives and among the greatest of all times.
Horowitz only "decent" technique? Wtf?
@alchemistofmusic8265 I should have used unorthodox technique adjective instead of decent. My bad 😂
I hosted the piano he used on tour at my studio. The keys were extremely light. Teachers and students were invited to come and play on the piano. The same with Van Cliburn's piano. It was displayed at the studio but the keys were normal.
Thank you very much for this excellent and enlightening analysis
Interesting. My mother disliked Horowitz and loved Rubinstein. She considered Horowitz a cold player and thought Rubinstein’s emotion sublime despite the occasional mistake. To her, feeling trumped technical perfection. She was extremely knowledgeable and musically talented so I trusted her judgment. I thought I could hear a difference in the emotion but wondered if it might have been prejudice based on my mother’s influence. This insight is extremely interesting.
Interesting theory! I grew up as a child in love with the Horowitz sound, and of course idolized him thru all the recordings, but you bring up good points. Makes sense about the lighter keyboard action. I had the privilege to play on his Steinway when it toured the US in the late 90s and remember it’s action being extremely light. I always reminded my self that Chopin himself worked on a lighter action than the modern iteration of the grand piano. Thank you for the video.
So cool, I’d love to try his piano, such pianos urge a player to adapt and use a different approach.
12 years ago, the Horowitz Steinway was 50 km from my hometown, ready to be played, and I didnt know it and missed it... :-(
@@axsup7g140 Same! It was in NYC and I live an hour from the city. Found out soon after it left the city. Sigh...I share your sorrow!
As someone who attended a recital by V H, (1978, very last row in balcony) he played his Sunday concert and seemingly made the building shake. Yet also, I feel so fortunate to have that experience And know the pitfalls of some of these old outmoded techniques. Thank you Denis!
I never thought he was one of the best. And i always thought that he had slightly bad technique but never said anything bc didnt want to get knee jerk hammered by people. So glad you exposed this THANK YOU
Yeah sometimes you have to allow people to hammer you so that they would learn something about themselves and their incapacity to tolerate differing opinions 😂
Back at the end of '90/beginning of '91, I played on Horowitz's Steinway. I, too, was a little surprised at the lightness in the action, and my tuner friends all joked about how much stuff had been done to that piano at his request.
I think the finger movement in op. 10 no. 8 is to get an articulated nonlegato sound, not to get the thumb under to the next position. Horowitz was no doubt a master of avoiding a loud thumb/getting smooth transition. Also, it's easier going down than up with the right hand.
Thank you for this fascinating video. I heard VH nine times, from 1976-1983. At the risk of repeating others' remarks, I will say that his hand position, if used by a student in an astute teacher's studio, would come in for severe crticism. Stiff wrists and fingers in contorted liftings like what you see in an untutored beginner. Yet he made it work.......uncannily. His recordings until around the age of 60, made every one else sound like they were sleepily trudging through mud. I heard about his juiced up piano with keys that you could blow down in the 70's.
I had a couple of brief exchanges with the man himself, at a record signing event and after a recital.
Would you consider looking at the videos of Ervin Nyiregyhazi, and commenting on his approach to the piano?
Yes, Horowitz was an amazing musician and I was always surprised by his odd technique especially the low wrists and often totally straight flat fingers. Great insight from you.
One can endlessly debate aspects of piano technique by observing various performing styles of iconic names such as Horowitz. For me, the ultimate criterion is the ultimate artistic/musical result, which in the case of Horowitz is never less than compelling.
Admittedly I was somewhat alarmed when I first viewed this extraordinary individual by the unconventional posture at the keyboard which appeared to flout every teaching rule of sitting and hand position. But then when one considers his unique recorded legacy such pedantic observations pale into insignificance.
Yes, that’s a great point from the public’s perspective.
For us, however, a question of how to maintain a robust technique and avoid injury that kicks many performers out of business sometimes for months sometimes forever, is a very important and legitimate question.
Great video! There's no doubt that this technique enabled him to produce some unbelievable playing such as in the Liszt Pagannini E flat etude and the Mozkowski A flat etude, but it compromised him a lot in other repertoire.
It was his ear that compromised him, not his physical mechanics...
Very interesting video and channel. I would like to know what you think about the piano technique of Sokolov or Volodos.
I would say Vladamirs tecnique worked for him. I have seen different techniques used by various pianists.
Thank you for a very insightful look into Horowitz and his technique. No assessment of piano technique of that era would be complete without reference to the technique and teachings of Cortot - I would be very interested if you could look at how Horowitz's style compared to that of Cortot given that Cortot spent so much time teaching and published numerous books on the topic, and particularly as he was regarded as the world's leading interpreter of Chopin.
Your ideas on forearm rotation and recovering from injuries/overuse remind me very much of the Taubman techniques. Are they something you've looked into or been influenced by? I found a Taubman teacher and suddenly a lot of technical difficulties went away and I became so much more conscious of what my muscles and skeleton were doing while I was playing.
Yes, sadly I came across Taubman method too late when I have already re-invented my own bicycle. But it helped me to organize things and understand them in a systematic order. Although I never studied this method officially, and some things I prefer to play and teach differently, so despite influence I am not an orthodox Taubman specialist. I also find many good aspects in flat finger type of technique Horowitz and many other people use, I just find it more risky overall…
Great fine study and analysis of Horowitz's styles.
Дуже цікавий розбір. Браво за сміливість!
Interesting analysis, it makes me wonder how much the spectacular range of colors, timbres, and voicings which Horowitz alone could conjure was a result of his unorthodox technique. Also, I feel this video begs the question: what is the goal of piano technique? Is it merely a mechanical process of applying correct arm and hand movements so that you may perform in the most efficient and safe manner possible? Or is the goal to create something magical and transcendent using the medium of sound?
For modern pianists, the technique is just about being simplified. The technique of the old pianists (like Lhevinne, Cortot, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Backhaus) was not comfortable, but it was all about sound colors, polyphony, etc.
In my opinion the only important thing is SOUND, only someone cares about technique: the pianist. Or even more restricted: pianist's body long term speaking. To create a good analogy, in tennis Nadal was well known as a monster player (also Alcaraz right now), Djokovic has an almost perfect technique so he barely got injuries, Nadal for more injuries, so he played less and worse the last years. But...at the end of the day would you hear the recordings of the Horowitz-es or the recordings of someone with a perfect technique but a mundane sound?? So this is the same. If you can achieve both ok, but that's rarely seen.
Can you please make a video on Wilhelm Kempff's technique! He is my piano God and would love to get insights in his technique. I really liked this video and would humbly request a similar analysis on Kempff! Thanks alot!
Are you familiar with Art Tatum? Rachmaninov said “Thank God he’s black or we’d all be out of a job.” Vladimir Horowitz said if Art Tatum decided to take classical music serious he’d quit the next day. Toscanini arrived an hour late to a concert and apologized by saying, “I’m sorry but I was in Harlem listening to Art Tatum.”
As a Non-Classical player, it is interesting to see how to get around physical damage from playing.
I have managed to get some physical issues.
As a Jazz player, having to alter one's playing technique and the resulting change in the performance.
I had some Alexander Technique training when I was in school and would like to get back into that.
Excellent, comme toutes vos vidéos !
Pour l’étude en tierces de Chopin j’utilise volontiers les mouvements dedans/dehors qui permettent d’éviter trop d’efforts…
I played the Horowitz piano, too, once. Something did indeed feel quite funny about it, but I just couldn't tell. Was the down-weight too light? Was the up-weight too heavy? Were the hammers voiced brilliantly? In a moment of inspiration, I decided to lift the lid and, lo and behold, I saw a very elderly midget, the smallest you've ever seen, operating a complex set of levers. Caught red-handed, the diminutive gentleman admitted, not without some pride, that he alone was responsible for the legendary Horowitz sound. Later, over a glass of wine, he told me how the maestro had hired him in his youth when they were both working at a circus in Bohemia. Mr Horowitz had shown him the piano mechanism and sworn him to secrecy. They had been together ever since. When I asked him if Horowitz's famous retirement from the stage had anything to do with a hand injury, he cackled as if demented. The truth according to the midget was that the immortal virtuoso had caught him with Wanda in bed and thrown him out. But Horowitz eventually realised that he was nothing with him, his playing not unlike that of so many pianists who make RUclips videos. So, some years later he had swallowed his pride and hired him back. The sound had nothing to do with Franz Mohr either. Mohr was a straw man. It's all about them levers, he told me, the levers! And he downed his drink and swiftly disappeared into the night. A true story, I swear.
Gosh I hope you write some books
I found your presentation absolutely fascinating and have shared it with my music loving friends. I like your approach which is professional, sincere, and generous and yet not overly pedantic. I wish to watch all of your videos. I am not a musician. In the context of this video, I would like to see you make additional videos on the technique of Cziffra and Michelangeli as there is abundant visual material to go on. Visual analysis as you did with Horowitz. How do Cziffra and Michelangeli "get away with it?" I whimsically pose this question, but there is some kinesthetic magic displayed in their performances. To repeat, I celebrate your physiological and orthopedic approach. I was unaware about Lang Lang's misfortune. Can you tell me more?
Thank you for your refreshing and most educational efforts. Horowtiz once commented that he found Lang Lang's performances weird. Look who is talking.
+1 for Cziffra please
Lang Lang was born in 1982, and was therefore only seven years old when Volodya passed in '89. It seems unlikely he would have heard him at all, let alone as a "weird" artist.... 🧐😬🎹💥
@@arpeggiomikeyQuite!
Thank you for an interesting video. You didn't touch on the theory I heard as received wisdom long ago. This is that Horowitz received electroshock therapy in the 1950s, and this is what caused his evident loss of technique. For people with good enough ears, the difference in playing level before and after 1953 is enormous, unmistakable.
There have been a number of famous pianists whose playing was seriously harmed by medical psychiatric treatment. There is a current performer who did not win a competition whose precipitous decline in playing level is quite hard to explain on grounds of aging alone ( his technique is quite normal).
Another case of a pianist whose playing after middle age changed drastically was Arrau. I actually didn't understand what a stupendous virtuoso he had been as a young man until quite recently. From what I have read, he made a conscious decision to change his approach to the piano, rather than suffering a loss of facility at the keyboard
Pogorelic? At what point or year is it generally considered that his technique declined?
@@brospore7897 yeah I also don't think that his technical ability declined. His musical interpretations changes radically (and I find some of it very difficult to listen to / understand)
That was very interesting! Anyway, I am not a pianist but I play the piano and I am always stunned when I listen to Rachmaninows piano concerto No. 3 and following the partitur - how can a human being play this multitude of notes with such impossible speed? I think, to be able to do so, a pianist is, while playing those passages, in a kind of trance.
I think one of the most important factors was that he toured with his own piano. I got to play it once and it was the lightest action I’ve ever experienced, like you could breathe on the keys and they’d play. It was paired with Van Cliburn’s on a nationwide tour, and Cliburn’s was stiff as a board, almost unplayable for me. Horowitz’ long fingers give him leverage on the keys probably, and key speed as well.
Yes, the piano tremendously influences both attitude and technique. I am sure I would end up playing very differently on it also in comparison to what I try out in the video.
In Horowitz's case, it becomes an argument akin to the chicken-or-egg debate. While many believe the piano caused him to develop a more peculiar playing style, I nevertheless hold a different opinion. It seems to be a manifestation of catastrophic arrogance in our cancel-culture idolized society. ha. ha.
An interesting tidbit is the piano used for that Horowitz 1967 filmed concert was actually a relatively new Steinway with a pretty sluggish action (according to the pianist who filled in for Horowitz for all the tedious camera tests).
Horowitz loved that piano but eventually went back to his custom 1930’s flagship (that’s what he played in those filmed Moscow and Vienna performances).
Wow! A real eye opener. I always wondered about technique that relied mainly on finger movement instead of integration of wrist, and arm movement. Thanks so much for enlightenment!
Very interesting video. This brings to mind commentary by several of Liszt's pupils, who stated that Liszt, even in his old age, was perpetually evolving and exploring all aspects of the mechanics of piano technique and sound possibilities. Debussy, for whom Liszt played, said that he seemed to make the pedal breathe.
It would be interesting to see you do a similar analysis of Artur Rubinstein. He and Horowitz had contrasting personalities, technique, and interpretation. They both started young, knew each other, were rivals, and played concerts into old age, and were considered the Last Romantics.
Yes it’s fascinating how different they were despite that common marketing label you mentioned😅 thanks for your suggestion!
Artur Rubinstein said Horowitz was a better pianist but that he (Artur) was a better musician.
@@doublevision5465 Yes, I read that in Rubinstein's book. The book tells how they were friends at one time. I was just watching Rubinstein play in concert Schumann's Carnaval, he must have been around 79, and he plays with a great deal of vigor and expression.
Yes, your video resonates with me. This is the first video of yours I have seen. Very good and informative.
Thanks and welcome
___ I had a teenage master lesson with Bela Siki who said my Alborada del Gracioso was "not bad" but that my Etudes were too stiff --- a few years later my next teacher made me start over with full relaxation --- at 85 I aim for 100% shoulder to finger relaxation and can play the Octave Etude accurately at speed with total relaxation, always keeping the white thumbs close to the black keys.
My first teacher, an internationally acclaimed Godowsky student always talked about 'arm weight', which I never understood --- Could someone comment on MY mostly finger technique, based on finger speed , augmented occasionally by the use of the wrist as a fulcrum to transfer extra relaxed arm weight to the finger tip and move effortlessly to the next location --- e.g. the accented notes in the octave study.
What you may not know is that the pianos he played were set up to have a very gentle action which
enabled Him to play rapidly with a rather flat hand position and without
a lot of effort. Oh, I see you mentioned that...sorry:(
😊 a wonderful video. I am very happy you address healthy piano techniques. Pianist, all musicians in general, must learn to take good care of their hands and muscles in order to keep this high level of artistic ability. I would love to see another which maybe focuses on Glenn Gould's technique. And maybe the German pianist teacher Peter Feuchtwanger.
You have NO idea what Horowitz was feeling when he played that Etude of Chopin. The big mistake that piano students make when trying to analyze technique is to try and figure out how body parts are behaving when playing. The point of contact with the lever mechanism of the keys is all there is. All you have to do when practicing technique is to pay attention to maintaining the delicate balance between tension and relaxation in the weight and muscles of the arm and shoulder while paying great attention to the counterweight of the keys as you depress them. It is nothing more than than applying Newton's Third Law of Motion that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
If you look carefully at that slow-motion film of Horowitz playing the Chopin Etude, you will notice how his fingers interact with the keys. His fingers sink into the pillow-soft depression of the individual keys. His fingers and the piano are united by touch. The acrobatics of the hands are irrelevant. In the words of Arthur Rubinstein, he is making love with the keys.
I am not convinced, and I do think there are much more things to think about when practicing piano, but thanks for the opposing opinion!
As an analogy, You can love thy neighbor as thyself as a model for behavior or you can follow the ten commandments of the Old Testament. The former subsumes the latter. You can relax the muscles of your hand and arm and let the counterbalance of the key teach you how to touch it or you can torture yourself by paying attention to the multifaceted functions of your body and get nowhere. If you are honest, you have no idea how your brain and body do what it does. You just do it. You don't use the piano to make music, you are the piano's instrument to make music. The piano is making the sound, NOT your dancing fingers. @@DenZhdanovPianist
This is super insightful. I think it is really hard for students to take some advice of when it comes to technique because one sees certain pianists on RUclips and one wonders: Why does it work for them then? Well, it didn't really, we often just do not know about it.
Very interesting and thought provoking. Thank you for your keen observations and thoughts.
How did he manage for so long without permanent injury?! Would love to hear your comments on Artur Rubinstein’s technique. It always looked so healthy, as did Alicia deLarrocha’s. And how about Gould!!! 😬
My personal suspicion, which unfortunately deeply offends some people here, is that he might have had some permanent injury of certain muscles which was the main reason for his peculiar technique in order to use alternative muscle groups, or maybe even dystonia.
@@DenZhdanovPianist thx for your reply. I've often wondered if his absences from concertizing were due to physical injuries as well as other issues. My overall favorite pianist from the past was Rubinstein, not Horowitz although I was always amazed at the effects Horowitz got from the piano given his physical approach to the instrument. Again thx for the response. Much appreciated.
I was very interested in your video Denis. I am a piano teacher and I had always been curious about his technique as well. I agree with your theories 100%. I studied Irina Gorin’s Pedagogy course just last year. You may know she’s one of the most respected pedagogues in the world and is from Ukraine, the same city where you received some of your training. I studied with her to learn about the healthy technique from the beginning that is taught in that part of the world and that you speak of here as well as to learn about training exceptional young students as young as age 4, a great interest of mine.
Not to criticize, but I read some of the comments and I feel those that disagree do not have the knowledge that you have about what is proper and healthy technique. I’m sure you must have realized this if you read any of the comments. I don’t know that it would have made as much sense to me before I completed Irina’s course. She has spoken to many of us teachers around the world and this “new to us”way of teaching is really taking hold! I do believe poor technique may well be on it’s way out😊😊😊
Thanks for your feedback! I am not familiar with Irina, where is she teaching/residing?
Excellent analysis and comments. Bela Siki always advised, " If it hurts, you are doing it wrong. Don't do it." I had the pleasure of hearing Horowitz in person several times and loved his sound. I have heard Lang Lang in person and despise his antics and his sound. I wondered why his sound always made me uncomfortable. His wrist/arm tension and inappropriate movements gave him bad sound and tendonitis, the mark of a bad pianist.
In my comment, I had planned to add that I loved Horowitz's sound because I was young and impressed. But the older I am, with more experience and understanding, I have different ears now.
Thanks for commenting! Did you happen to hear Lang Lang after his injury in person? I wonder how different would be the perception of what he does now.
@@DenZhdanovPianist I’ve heard LL 3 times recently after he recovered from injury. The reaction from audience is either love or hate, because his individual style is so strong. His command to the orchestra was world class from his concerto performance of Beethoven 2 and Grieg. His control of dynamic and timing is exquisite, matching just right with what the orchestra is doing, which is not always the case after watching 15+ piano concerto live performance. What remains questionable is his interpretation. It’s like the orchestra suddenly became LL in the first half of the performance, and went back to their humble usual in the second half of symphony performance. It was very clear that LL must had meeting with the conductor to dictate his interpretation and put those in the rehearsal.
Didn’t hear him live before his injury but I compared his 2023 live performance of the Grieg concerto with a RUclips video of his another performance from 2015, I heard the same interpretation idea and execution. So I suspect he pushes the same idea over different conductors. His live performance of Goldberg Variations in 2022 was drastically different from his album (in a good way I would say), but he still puts his in visual style over Bach. I actually think it works better in a live performance compared to listening to the recording.
Thank your for your good work!~ Smart and keen observations.~
Thanks for commenting!