Chopin Demystified: Problem Solving in 19 Nocturnes - Paperback

by Neil Stannard (Author)

Playing Chopin successfully is a lot like being both singer and accompanist- sorry, collaborative pianist. Achieve a successful collaboration between the hands with imagination and an understanding of style, and colorful scenes galore emerge along the way. In this volume we consider the technical means by which a happy collaboration between the hands becomes second nature. In my experience, if there is an impediment to a successful performance of the Nocturnes, that impediment originates in the left hand. If the fingering and its technical logic are not well understood, the right-hand fioriture have no place to take root, and more often than not die on the vine. How do we negotiate an accompaniment pattern that seems to tease the hand into awkward stretches? How do we organize a melisma of twenty-seven notes against six? And how on earth do we interpret all those grace-notes attached to appoggiaturas and other pesky symbols? With over two hundred musical examples and references to selected video demonstrations, all of these questions and more are answered here as they occur in nineteen Nocturnes.

Author Biography

Unlike life, playing the piano is easy and doesn't hurt. This mantra has carried the author through what might seem to others like several lifetimes-performing as a collaborative pianist, occasional soloist, symphony bassist and, through it all he has remained a dedicated teacher. He took part in the first Taubman Institute at Rensselaerville, New York, and he participated in many subsequent institutes at Amherst College while studying piano privately in New York with Edna Golandsky, who showed him that there are no mysteries regarding piano technique. He has performed internationally with such artists as David Shifrin, Hermann Baumann, Eugenia Zukerman, Leona Mitchell, Clamma Dale and Christiane Edinger in venues from Vancouver to Boston and London to Moscow, including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the White House, Vienna's Musikverein, Berlin's Hochschule and Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. He has played in the Great Performers at Lincoln Center series, the Berlin Festival, the Vienna Festival, Tage Neue Musik, Marlboro and the Newport Festival. His concertizing has taken him to every state in the contiguous United States. And yes, he has taught continuously. After graduating cum laude from the University of Southern California, a scholarship student of Muriel Kerr, Jacob Gimpel and John Crown, he accepted a Naumberg scholarship on double bass to the Juilliard School (M.S.), during which time he performed in the American Symphony with Leopold Stokowski (Columbia Records) and in the Marlboro Festival Orchestra with Pablo Casals (Columbia Records). It was also during this time that he made his New York recital debut at Carnegie Recital Hall as a pianist with violinist Christiane Edinger. Later, he studied piano on a German government grant with Gerhard Puchelt in Berlin, completed a doctorate in piano at the University of Arizona with Nicholas Zumbro and for thirteen years taught applied piano at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he was a tenured professor. He now teaches privately and by means of Skype in Cathedral City near Palm Springs, California, where he writes, paints and photographs the world around him.