Great Pianists on Piano Playing

Excerpt: ...the piece. It is one thing for a Sir Christopher Wren to make the plans of a great cathedral like St. Paul's and quite another thing for him to get master builders to carry out those plans. By studying the composer's architectural plan carefully the student will find that he is saving an immense amount of time. For example, let us consider the Chopin F Minor Fantasie. In this composition the main theme comes three times, each time in a different key. Once learned in one key, it should be very familiar in the next key. "The student should also know something of the history of the dance, and he should be familiar with the characteristics of the different national dances. Each national dance form has something more than a rhythm-it has an atmosphere. The word atmosphere may be a little loose in its application here, but there seems to be no other word to describe what I mean. The flavor of the Spanish bolero is very different from the Hungarian czardas, and who could confound the intoxicating swirl of the Italian tarantella with the stately air of cluny lace and silver rapiers which seems to surround the minuet? The minuet, by the way, is frequently played too fast. The minuet from Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is a 147 notable example. Many conductors have made the error of rushing through it. Dr. Hans Richter conducts it with the proper tempo. This subject in itself takes a tremendous amount of consideration and the student should never postpone this first step in the analysis of the works he is to perform. The Poetic Idea of the Piece "Despite the popular impression that music is imitative in the sense of being able to reproduce different pictures and different emotions, it is really very far from it. The subject of program music and illustrative music is one of the widest in the art, and at the same time one of the least definite. Except in cases like the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony, where the composer has made obvious attempts to suggest...