I bought the tutorial of this particular piece and others in the collection. I am an amateur and have had several teachers over the years. I also attended master classes with friends who were studying for a concert career. I have seen some pretty good teachers, but in my opinion, few have the gift of this concert artist and teacher. He has obviously studied the movement of the body, shoulders, arms, wrist and hand as it applies to playing the piano. Denis breaks down The Storm, he explains how to move the hands effectively and shows us how to interpret this piece. There are many artists who can take our breath away playing the Campanella, I am sure Denis could as well, but they could not show us how to play the scale of C. Denis breaks the piece down for us, bar by bar. Perhaps one day he will do a video for us and tell us how he arrived at his extraordinary teaching method.
I'm so glad you're drawing attention to these. I was given Burgmuller Op 100 when I was young, but I had no idea he had several other sets of Etudes that are great once you've advanced past the Op 100.
Sounds like this will be a very useful and comprehensive tutorial, even just these three or so minutes helped me out a lot. I'm looking for new pieces to play that are fun and energetic and crowd pleasing, and I think this one fits all those. But I'm not sure if it's a good choice for me to learn right now. I can play most grade 8 (RCM) level pieces without too much trouble, especially the Baroque or Classical period selections. But music from the Romantic period that is fast and full of dramatic flair, like this piece, I find much more difficult. I was having so much trouble getting the feel and articulation right for the three note slurs in the right hand. Your advice about playing the last note shorter and quieter, and with one wrist movement for all three notes, was very helpful. I feel like I'm at least on the right path and making progress now. But I still have to play very slowly to get it right, similar to your tempo do at around 1:00 in the video. Do you think it will be useful for me to begin practicing this piece very slowly? I never know how helpful slow practice is with faster pieces like this. I know most things you can speed up gradually, and I like learning that way. But sometimes I wonder if it would be better to work on pieces that I can play closer to the indicated tempo, and come back to the faster stuff when I've improved. With this piece for example, I can play it at 80 bpm but it sounds totally wrong. To get the correct articulation every time without error I had to go all the way to 50 bpm, a full 1/3 of the tempo marking. So should I keep practicing at that tempo and slowly bring it up? Is that a good way to approach this piece? Thanks for all your very helpful videos. If I do decide to stick with this etude I will go check out your full tutorial, it's on my wish list for Christmas for sure.
Hi, thanks for a comment. It’s difficult to suggest without working with you. But I would say you’d better start slowly and first coordinate the movements in an efficient way, and then gradually raise the tempo by playing very short fragments like a bar or two (not running fast the whole piece through), constantly returning to a slower tempo for a “maintenance” work. Slow tempo has a primary purpose: consciously coordinating motions giving you enough time to think while playing. There is no much point in a slow tempo practicing without a clear goal, but if you’re not sure about your technical capacities you must start slower in order to coordinate movements properly. But if after a week or two you still feel it doesn’t improve much then probably the piece is just too advanced for now, and it would be reasonable to put it aside for a while and return to it after a few different slightly easier etudes.
I bought the tutorial of this particular piece and others in the collection. I am an amateur and have had several teachers over the years. I also attended master classes with friends who were studying for a concert career. I have seen some pretty good teachers, but in my opinion, few have the gift of this concert artist and teacher. He has obviously studied the movement of the body, shoulders, arms, wrist and hand as it applies to playing the piano. Denis breaks down The Storm, he explains how to move the hands effectively and shows us how to interpret this piece. There are many artists who can take our breath away playing the Campanella, I am sure Denis could as well, but they could not show us how to play the scale of C. Denis breaks the piece down for us, bar by bar. Perhaps one day he will do a video for us and tell us how he arrived at his extraordinary teaching method.
I'm so glad you're drawing attention to these. I was given Burgmuller Op 100 when I was young, but I had no idea he had several other sets of Etudes that are great once you've advanced past the Op 100.
Fantastic my dear Denis, and very interesting, thanks for sharing !
Sounds like this will be a very useful and comprehensive tutorial, even just these three or so minutes helped me out a lot. I'm looking for new pieces to play that are fun and energetic and crowd pleasing, and I think this one fits all those. But I'm not sure if it's a good choice for me to learn right now. I can play most grade 8 (RCM) level pieces without too much trouble, especially the Baroque or Classical period selections. But music from the Romantic period that is fast and full of dramatic flair, like this piece, I find much more difficult. I was having so much trouble getting the feel and articulation right for the three note slurs in the right hand. Your advice about playing the last note shorter and quieter, and with one wrist movement for all three notes, was very helpful. I feel like I'm at least on the right path and making progress now.
But I still have to play very slowly to get it right, similar to your tempo do at around 1:00 in the video. Do you think it will be useful for me to begin practicing this piece very slowly? I never know how helpful slow practice is with faster pieces like this. I know most things you can speed up gradually, and I like learning that way. But sometimes I wonder if it would be better to work on pieces that I can play closer to the indicated tempo, and come back to the faster stuff when I've improved. With this piece for example, I can play it at 80 bpm but it sounds totally wrong. To get the correct articulation every time without error I had to go all the way to 50 bpm, a full 1/3 of the tempo marking. So should I keep practicing at that tempo and slowly bring it up? Is that a good way to approach this piece?
Thanks for all your very helpful videos. If I do decide to stick with this etude I will go check out your full tutorial, it's on my wish list for Christmas for sure.
Hi, thanks for a comment.
It’s difficult to suggest without working with you. But I would say you’d better start slowly and first coordinate the movements in an efficient way, and then gradually raise the tempo by playing very short fragments like a bar or two (not running fast the whole piece through), constantly returning to a slower tempo for a “maintenance” work. Slow tempo has a primary purpose: consciously coordinating motions giving you enough time to think while playing. There is no much point in a slow tempo practicing without a clear goal, but if you’re not sure about your technical capacities you must start slower in order to coordinate movements properly. But if after a week or two you still feel it doesn’t improve much then probably the piece is just too advanced for now, and it would be reasonable to put it aside for a while and return to it after a few different slightly easier etudes.