Sunday, 20 October 2019

How to Execute Ornaments for Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor, Op 37 No 1

2019-2020 ABRSM Grade 8 Piano Exam Pieces List C



By Siwen Wong





I write this article to commemorate my piano professor Dr. Jan Drath, who passed away since two October ago. His whole life's  dedication in researching how to perform authentic Chopin music had earned all his students' admiration and respect. Dr. Drath could speak nine languages, including Latin (his sister was a Latin professor), this helped him in research, especially into Chopin's life and teaching notes, he compared Chopin's teaching notes between his students and with dates to verify his last teaching notes to source a final conclusion.

During Dr. Drath's life time, for years when he did his Chopin research, according to the janitor, he told me Dr. Drath was actually staying and sleeping in his studio in the music department. The time I studied under him, he was already over sixty years old. Actually, I was one of his very few last students to learn Chopin so differently from stereo-type Chopin that you could hear from YouTube. 

When I freshly graduated, I played for a Poland's trained pianist friend, he shrugged his shoulders said that even Kristian Zimmerman played with the "stereo-type" ornaments, he said he didn't understand why I played Chopin ornaments in such an odd way. 

Concert pianists who studied before millennium under the elite Chopin specialists like Professors Regina Smenzianka, Jan Ekier, and in the States Jan Drath were like initiated into a special Greek fraternity, they know what they were playing but other pianists would say exactly like what my Polish pianist friend did, "I don't understand why you executed Chopin's ornaments in such an odd way!" Actually, Dr. Drath started as a "Chopin analyst" since he was a student. He revealed to me how one of his  classmates borrowed his music, copied his interpretation, and after performed for the radio with his interpretation, then only returned the music to him.  Of course I know who is the famous pianist who did this to him, anyway, Dr. Drath's languages prowess was a bless, he could do some research that many pianists couldn't attain, thus, some pianists ended up had to find a way to "borrow" other classmates' music scores in hope to find some "eureka!"

I attended annual Chopin workshops every yearly when I studied in Texas organized by Chopin Society under Dr. Jan Drath and Nina Drath (i first met Nina before her papa, then Nina took me to study Chopin under her piano professor Regina Smenzianka in Poland). 

The following were Chopin workshop's notes that I kept since late 80's, in order to verify the Chopin ornaments for my ABRSM grade 8 student's exam, I made a special call to Texas to Nina at 1:30am to confirm that my ornaments were correctly taught to my students, it was due to my student got doubts why all the ornaments she heard fro  YouTubes were so different from the way I taught her! 

The following are the explanation for Chopin 's Nocturne G Minor, Op.37 No. 1 ornaments' execution:






































This was the notes written by my professor Dr. Jan Drath









































Chopin's Ornaments teaching notes by my professor, Dr. Jan Drath





Note that bar 5's first ornament with the acciaccatura D followed by D F Bb. The acciaccatura D preceded actually indicated that it should play together with the beat (beat 2) 











































Bar 15's grace notes should enter earlier than beat 4, it is due to the semiquaver notes followed are too short.

Bar 19's grace notes should enter before the beat 4 (two C notes but not the acciaccutura, thus not enter on the main beat)











































Again, bar 30's first acciaccatura D should play with LH beat 2 together (not as the drawn line indicated).

Bar 37, as there is no acciaccatura note, grace notes thus enter before beat 2. The next ornament on beat 3, the first small note should fall right on the beat as indicated.






























Wednesday, 13 February 2019

A Letter to Piano Students' Parents





























Dear Parents and Students,

There are so many piano teachers, but I was often questioned why my piano teaching is different from other piano teachers. Let me explain to you what I have seemed, or what I have tolerated transferred students’ bad discipline, unruly pianism and even some rude remarks that my Spartan piano dexterity training is boring, stringent and overwhelming. 

Beethoven said that you have to learn all the fundamental before breaking its rules, or creation and innovation simply only happens when you have mastered all the fundamental skills and knowledge. 

I taught my students how to show that they are different from a monkey, “When you step in my piano suite, you have to act like a human being, not a monkey which can’t identify learning time and playtime!” This denotes that they have to identify the differences between work and play to challenge our education system that emphasized on learning through playing.

Piano learning is a feat that involved both, eyes, mind and hands (fingers) coordination and dexterity. My instructional program works in such a way to train dexterity in advance so that a student can use his mind and eyes to control his dexterity, if a student is not trained in this manner, his progress will be hindered by bad coordination between his mind, eyes and dexterity.

Siwen Wong’s Piano Instructional Design was under a phase of experiment when I first taught in Brunei on 1991 to a range of international expatriates and local students. It proved the system worked, within 15 years staying in Northern side of Borneo, I had fostered the most diploma-students and diploma-teachers in its record. 

ABRSM and TGH exams were not so easy to achieve during early the 90s, e.g. I witnessed how an examiner failed the whole Sarawak state diploma students except our 2 candidates who luckily survived, and the examiner was very please, he told me I was the only piano teacher who he seemed know how to teach Mozart properly.  I kept this secret to reveal today as I am no more teaching in such vicinity. 

I also witnessed the drop of ABRSM and TGH requirement and standard during two decades time in order to please the “modern days” students who rather spend more time on computer keyboard than a piano keyboard. However, I respected some ABRSM and TGH examiners who hold their high standard individually.

A successful music school must have its own instructional system, a piano teacher shouldn’t teach his students based on what his ex-teachers taught him without a research, analysis and written record, piano teaching shouldn't base on memory entirely through aural or folklore-kind inheritance from one generation to another! If his ex-teachers never gave him ear training, the piano teacher also wouldn’t give his new generation of students’ ear training as well. And he would send his own son for Suzuki method because he thinks it is a better system to train his son’s ears. As a piano teacher, he never knows what is called instructional design and he won’t spend time to analyze the loophole of another teaching system, when his son acquires something new, something old was omitted at the same time! He simply doesn’t understand how feasible music education works.

In my instructional design framework, I integrated professional pianist’s dexterity and aesthetic performing training, It evolved the old school instructional method by adding what it often ostracizes or ignores by most music professionals, as dexterity training is never (or hardly) designed as a unit standard/course in any tertiary music institution, also, if you have all the piano professors who are prodigies, they wouldn’t realize the importance of dexterity training, they simply kicked out those audition candidates who were not good out of their sights, but if you are like me who taught student from age 4 to 70 with no authority to refuse anyone in order to survive, I had to come out with a feasible instructional design to make sure during the phase of teaching and learning, these students could progress fast enough, safe enough not to develop any occupation injury,  to make them achieve and realize the differences of what they were trained. Of course I also noticed a group of students who didn't like to share their secret feats to their "enemies" or their own peers, but in contrast, I witnessed how those generous hearts who were willing to share with their friends and classmates, they ended up graduating their PhD in the highest world class institutions like Cambridge, Oxford, Yale or John Hopkins, they are successful CEOs, top-notch medical specialists or professionals.

At the moment, the dexterity training is greatly lacked even in our worldwide universities’ piano department, although the French masters like Isidor and Long talked about the techniques so often but most piano graduates actually never heard of these two French school techniques masters’ name! 

There are also some piano professors who know that dexterity training is very important, but they simply don’t know how to teach them effectively within a short frame three months period, or they simply don't have enough experience to teach enough stereo-type kids (most music prodigies look out for professors to teach them) to write out what the general "poor kids" need.  

There were/are only two known American piano professor Adele Marcus and Nelita True who trained freshmen college piano students’ dexterity, while the rest would be rejected by Julliard or Eastman School of Music if your precollege piano teachers didn’t do a good job on your dexterity and techniques. Dexterity training is a dangerous job to impart on a student if you are not sure of physical and science side of human body, you may hurt your piano students instead of helping them,  a feasible dexterity training should not let your students suffered any occupational ailment like joints pain, back ache or arthritis.

On year 2000, my first dozen of ABRSM piano students that I taught since they were young, more than half of them had won more Distinctions than Merits, the youngest student at that time who won the Gr. 8 distinction was merely 10. On 2006, another underage exam student proven our standard has reached international recognition, when our 16-year-old student was chosen blindly by ABRSM examiners, she was chosen among thousands of exam candidates worldwide to win ABRSM international scholarship. 

Siwen Wong’s piano instructional designed program is a well-rounded and balance program, it is not known internationally due to it was hidden in a small town in a remote Borneo.  Under this instructional designed program training, the end of the day, a student can play all genre of music, their ears are trained to control the timbre within a phrase through their fingertips, their rhythmic feel is immaculately accurate, they all can follow metronome due to they were trained to listen (many music major can’t even follow metronome), their ears are trained to listen, if they don’t have the perfect ears at least they were trained to detect relative pitches.  

Some students are born can sight-read like the perfect-ear gifted students, but if a student was trained by his piano teachers on the first day by looking up and down from the music scores to the piano, back and forth only made him a bad sight-reader, I have come across so many transferred students with this problem as well.


While some international known piano instructional methods are emphasizing on playing piano based on listening, I have my great doubts! During past 3 decades, I have many of students who were first trained under such listening instructional method transferred to me, they failed to sight read, they failed to feel rhythm, they played piano like they have never been taught by a piano teacher, quite a hurting remark which my famous Polish piano professor gave me after she heard my piano playing during the audition, she was once a president of European confederation of musician. She was right, I once played piano just liked these students who came to me, but I don't want them to suffer like me when they reach 22 years old!

I noticed this phenomenon of students who transferred to me who went through S method. If I played an excerpt of music, if such students were not born with a recorder kind of ears, they wouldn’t be able to play an excerpt from memory upon hearing it, I noticed that they actually learned to play piano not much from the ears, but actually they used more of their eyes and memory to play piano in an act of “monkeys see monkeys do” imitation. 

My “little sister” who could only read 5 music notes but she won her school talent quest two years ago by playing Chopin’s Minute Waltz, but she could do it better than those students who went for the school which teaches piano playing through ears, she won due to she has a set of dexterity that those other school of students don’t possess.  The secret was I paid some of my ex-staff members to train her fingers since she was two!

Will the untrained ears and dexterity hear the best timbre out of a piano? Aural training doesn’t mean to be only able to hear the relative pitch if you don’t have a set of perfect ears, but a piano student has to be trained in listening the sound within the sound, he has to be trained to listen the timbre out of a piano sound. 

It is one of the requirements during the process of piano learning. When the old generation piano teachers who taught based on how their ex-piano teachers taught, they neglected to write out a feasible instructional method for their piano schools. When they didn’t give aural training to their beginner students but only during ABRSM exam, you never blame your ex teachers but you blame an old piano teaching method of no aural training, so you enrolled your children for a school that learned piano playing by listening. 

After a year or two later, they probably could play many songs by memory, but how many songs are played with a good standard. And worse, they can’t do sight-read and feel rhythm by the conventional method of teaching, they thought they have learned something new, yet they lost something the old school taught! What a bad instructional design or simply no instructional design selling in our open market like hawker stall and fast food chain. Remember, learning piano does have the 6-stars fine dining restaurant!

Piano learning experience with me could become one of the best memories happened in your life, this remark was mentioned to me so often when I met my ex-students, who are now mostly successful professionals. 

Scientists said that we only used 5% of our brain, but through my Siwen Wong's Piano instructional designed program's fingers strengthening process, you gradually able to use your mind to control your fingers instead of the other way, from the phase of learning your brain will be evolved, you also being conditioned to be more discipline, you will find out both your dexterity, EQ and IQ have improved. 

Improving in piano learning also indirectly helps to boost your confidence, this in turn will begin to help you in school work if you were not a good student through dexterity and mind agility, e.g. it could take you 1 minute to take a book out of your bag on the table, but after the training your trained dexterity help you to become a faster person, your mind and muscles are coordinating much better than before.

If you are under my care to learn piano, in order to ensure the best achievement during the time you learn under me, please abide the following rules and regulations to ensure success in learning.

1. Please don't simply find excuses to miss your piano lesson.

2. Please don't eliminate your piano teacher without advance notice, a minimum one month notice is required. What do you feel if I inform you that I am going to stop teaching you piano on the eve of piano exam? Ethical standard is a requirement between parents-student-teacher relationship.

3. You must learn to discipline your practice hours at home, your brain must be conditioned to develop a control over this issue, it is an EQ training to make yourself practice piano for an hour time frame without moving away from that bench for a single second. untrained mind is like a yo-yo, an unruly mind like a messy mind-shelves. Our school system has emphasized too much on play and learn method, children are conditioned to learn with this method since young, are they flexible enough to adopt any new form of learning like a chameleon? Children whose learning prowess are adapted like a chameleon are the most successful candidates to any institution according to my past 30 years observation. Some were taught and encouraged by their parents, some were disregarded and dismissed by their parents. 

4. Always full of positiveness and encouraging, only hard-working students have hopes, if you use your aging age standard to judge your children's physical and mental stamina, you won't have a successful kid. I can't give lazy students who indulge in good life for a good feedback due to many bad disciplines the minute out of my once a week "piano lesson jail", I have tried my best within a short 60 minutes lesson to help a student, I tried to feed you the essence, you have to swallow it and digest it.

5. Most ancient way of imparting knowledge was done in a very selfish way, but if you come to me, I am a self-less teacher, I will teach you every thing I know of.  I learned everyday during the teaching, from any kind of students, even the worse behaved students, thus my teaching skills and tips could be improved, accumulated or discovered through teaching, assessing and observing.

Saturday, 31 December 2016

Latest Update of Piano Studio Launching at Grafton, Auckland, New Zealand

Dear Students, Student-Parents and Blogspot Friends from all over the world,

















Picture: Dec 26th, 2016. I organized pianist dexterity and performance aesthetics masterclasses at Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, Finally able to meet one of our Blogspot readers, she contacted me three years ago when her daughters were still very young, finally on this date, we met, she brought her three little cute and talented daughters for this masterclass. For security reason, I don't post the young students' picture on this Blogspot. 














Picture: Many of you would wonder what did during my hibernating from the music industry .... actually I enrolled a chef school, I already earned several certificates and also a London City Guild's diploma. Thus I was even given a piece of A5 Saga Beef as Boxing Day gift from Japanese BBQ Restaurant (http://www.gyukingu.com/), Thank You Ng San San of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for this ultimate treat, please don't miss to visit Ng San San's restaurants with the link attached!



Happy New Year 2017! It has been a few years I haven't post anything on this blog, for music education sites, I found some articles I posted got very high browsing rate, that's why I never deleted this website

After a long hibernation from the music industry, in between I only composed, arranged and produced two music trailers, I decided to launch my piano teaching again at Grafton area, Auckland, New Zealand after my ex-staff, a lawyer convinced me that I should start to teach again to continue our decades of known quality teaching to train students' dexterity. Last year end, 2016 was quite a sad time for me when I heard that my beloved mentor - Polish piano professor deceased in Texas, whenever I missed him, I felt that I should teach piano again.

Here I would like to encourage our blog spot readers to join and like my Facebook. As I have an almost completed a book with revolutionized methods to train pianist's dexterity and performance aesthetics, I need your feedback especially your opinions - if you can tell me your greatest weakness that crippled your better performance, I will send you tips to overcome your problem, then you give me feedback, I need more case-study. I plan to publish this book about mid-2017 in both English and Chinese versions. 

Please don't hesitate to email me if you need help, for your information especially readers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, I can read and write Mandarin. 

https://www.facebook.com/siwenwongspianostudio/
https://www.facebook.com/siwen.wong
My email: siwenspianotechnques@gmail.com

If you want my faster email response, please join my Facebook, don't forget to send a little note to introduce yourself, I will be very happy to hear from you.


All the best for the new year ahead.

Best Regards, 
Siwen Wong

Monday, 11 May 2015

HOW TO PASS A PIANO DIPLOMA EXAM?


Don’t be too sure of yourself even if you have perfect ear and good musical memory!


By Siwen Wong


What were the causes of failing various diplomas?

(1)    The teacher/parents/student got not much idea regarding the expected passing standard of a particular music exam board’s various diplomas. Also they got not much idea regarding the marking style and standard of a particular country’s music exam board. For an example, I learned that a certain country’s exam board could award a diploma candidate’s exam performance highly with almost 98 or 99 out of 100%, but such marking of 98% or 99% marking to reward a diploma exam candidate could become a historical record for ABRSM and TGH exam boards!

Note: Don’t be fooled by those student-parents when they bragged that their daughter/son scored closed to a 100% distinction.  Comically, this kind of parents usually would also criticize the exam board that failed their kid and they would highly recommend highly of the exam board that passed their kid's exam with distinction!

(2)    Stringent examiners may require a diploma student’s performance reaching semi-professional or professional standard, that including how well-trained/developed was such student’s dexterity and techniques, understanding and interpretation of music, how mature was the presentation. A close-to-perfect or perfect performance is a MUST! And the repertoire must be memorized if it’s a recital diploma.

(3)    Think too highly or overconfident of own student/ own kid/own teaching’s standard or musical talents. Usually these students would prepare their diploma exam in less than three month time, only after they registered the exam, then they started to learn their repertoire. They couldn’t make it on time to memorize their repertoire, there was no auto reflects developed yet in their performance and that could be easily revealed during their performance. This was mainly caused by they thought that diploma standard was easy like their Gr. 8 standard.  

Note: To perform confidently in the public audience or exam, a student must perform at least 7 times for a group of people/mock recital to secure  perfection.

(4)    Bad selection of repertoire. Never select an easy repertoire for a diploma exam just because your child/student was young. Choose the right repertoire to suite the character of your child/student is more important than if you were familiar with certain pieces in the exam repertoire list! Those repertoires that you were familiar with not necessary helpful for such student’s character, students must like his/her repertoire, even they didn’t like it at first, this usually happened to a modern piece. Avant Garde piece’s sound actually could be acquired if it was taught properly by a teacher.

Note: A well-balanced repertoire is a MUST.

(5)    Began to acquire resources and research your repertoire and prepare to write program notes from the first day you prepare to learn it. Don’t burn midnight oil that actually happened frequently to many diploma students.

Note: Never copy and paste information acquired from internet, these days’ examiners all have access to internet!

(6)    Get ready your exam’s attire/shoes months before the exam. Don’t spend too much time over your make-up and hair on the day of exam. Skills to make yourself look smart/nice with little effort and time is very important!

(7)    Learn a performance’s etiquette – how to bow to the audience (examiner) humbly and politely before and after the performance, the appropriate pausing timing between pieces.

(8)    Good exam piano is important, diploma exam must use a grandpiano with all three pedals functional, as impressionistic music performance may require both una corda pedal and sostenuto pedal other than just sustain pedal alone.

(9)    Good tuner is required - badly tuned piano’s disturbing timbre might irritate well-seasoned examiner’s ears!

(10)Good acoustic is required for an exam hall/suite – the pleasing sound could generate one’s good mood. Exam hall/suite needs to decorate nicely, sound proof, temperature must be right.

Monday, 10 June 2013

It’s Van Cliburn Competition Again!
I knew ahead who would be the gold medalist after listening to those recitals!





Written by Siwen Wong







Vadym Kholodenko, I voted him after I heard his first recital for 14th Van Cliburn International Competition. After listening all those most gifted pianists’ performances, then I didn’t have much time to listen more as that was the time my two 10 and 8 years old children were having their school holiday; I sent them off by MAS’s excellent "children delivery service" to Miri to let their aunty and cousins dotting them. The quietness enable me to confine in long hours researches on astronomy, mtDNA, creation timelines, Book of Enoch, celestial beings etc. in preparing a future story book with an expecting someone would throw me stones!

   It happened that Kennedy’s birthday is also my old professor’s birthday, he is 90 this year. It took me 15 years to call him all because youngsters like me don’t like to spend money anymore on long-distance telephone bills, we rather use free skype and viber, my professor doesn’t like computer and internet, he told me he still re-learning his Chopin Ballade last number, we both agreed during re-learning we could dig out more discoveries! 

   It was quite heartless for me not to call him for 15 years, but he was always in my heart honestly, frequently telephone him is also not a good idea,  time for him is even more precious at his age now, I am just so glad that Chopin’s music gives him health, motivation and satisfaction. Intellectual men and women spend their times in search for something, whereas men and women with no interest usually would spend their times gossiping and bragging off their outstanding children in cafĂ© with their as equally nothing better-to-do old friends, going to church activities or just watching Korean soap opera to pass their remaining days on earth!

   Two weeks ago, my Brunei student got all excited informing me that Van Cliburn piano competition was on again, I got as excited with him and we would share from time to time what we had heard.  Then few days later he told me a Chinese pianist performed so well, but I disagreed with him this time.  As I learned with Debussy gold medalist before, so I won’t appreciation acrobatic expressions on impressionistic music, but the Italian pianist Beatrice’s Ravel was good. Hmmm……tell you a secret, it’s because my student has a penchant for talented young Asian girls,  when he used his eyes, he closed his perfect ears too!  
   
   Last Cliburn he adored Korean pianist Joyce, I also loved her cheerful character. As a piano teacher since I was 15 years old, I listened to timbre after I endured long painstaking self-learning and researching to master in my techniques teaching, as almost everyone of them played with good interpretations, all of them are extra-gifted than normal pianists, they also possess high EQ to sustain and endure all those heavy repertoires and lastly they all have records of winning many competitions since their very young age. In short, they were one of the best in their generation to represent their respective country. They came together to perform, I would call that as "tempering" to hammer the three best out of all!

   The exceptional unfairness may be the physical size of individual pianist, if one is tall and big size, he could give titanic result in sound, timbre wise he is still better than those small strong fingers unfortunately. But there is one medicine to cure …. GO FOR WEIGHT LIFTING, but must be under special qualified coach!




Last night, I finally  got time to share Vadym Kholodenko’s youtube performance with quite many of my students, I wanted to show and encourage them that I didn’t impart them wrong techniques and they are on the right path! I told them when I taught a student who didn’t appreciate my techniques; it was like giving a pearl to a pig! In old days, Asians were conservative and they didn’t dare to overtly express themselves physically, including no kiss and no hug, so in this new generation most Asian parents and piano teachers would think that in order to express the music, then ones should express it through "physical movements" (physical gestures), thus we saw lots of “kinetic movements” like dancing with piano went on when some Asian pianists performed.

   Not many Asian teachers and parents are exposed to Russian and French’s techniques, thus they possess stereo-type expectation on how a pianist should perform, I know a piano teacher in Miri, she expected her students who joined competitions, their every movement on a repertoire were monitored. I believe in training a cat to catch life rats rather than keep feeding the cat with dead rats! 

   Most Asian countries are practicing so called “spoon-feeding” regime; teachers, parents and students never like to see their paws getting dirty during the progress of teaching and learning! Most of the time, Asian parents with slightly talented kids, they began to flatter their talented kids so much that they only became humble to westerners (My friend once called me British slave to give me an awakening!) just because they are willing to submit for what they want and trade-in, yet they would brag and show-off so much within own Asian circle! I believe many humble and experience Asian piano teachers who read my article would all agree with me!



I was trained from beginning of my first day in techniques by Polish concert pianist and then more Polish pianists along the way and eventually an Hungarian, I was taught to listen for timbre which is above all. I learn that with good strong fingers, their knuckles would eventually form a specific shape, when ones have good facilities, they don’t need to use acrobatic gestures to cover the bad (insufficient or limited) facilities. Usually pianists with poor facilities are too talented that they think techniques as NOTHING, as everything came to them fairly easily and quick, so most of the time they would prefer fast foods than a formal meal! They would quickly give up strengthening fingers’ exercises etc. But when all talented ones got together, finally the one who believes and works hardest on techniques, his fingers showed obvious difference from others, his sound within the sound,  timbre sounded so different from others, his performance seemed  effortless to others' view and he could perform with excellent balance aesthetically.

   I always told my students, great techniques is like duck swimming in the water, it endured to the second movement ending, where I heard some strained timbre around minute 18 -19+, but the minute when a tired duck got to the land, it flipped its wings, water dropped off, very soon the duck got into the water again, he approached the third movement concerto with relaxing timbre again!!

  Strong fingers are facilities enabling endurance, good visual and  aesthetic view from audience's lateral view.  Sometimes over reacting movements in soft lyrical fragments really spoilt the style of specific composer’s music. The intensity of music is through emotion, and through the intensity of timbre ones could feel its depth. 

   So "dancing" with the piano, waving big elbows, every great movements being monitored, taught and prepared  by many Asian piano teachers for their most talented students or pianists before they joined the competitions are so common in this Asian pianists' booming generation. And these students or pianists love to jump from one competition to another, as well as jumping from one better teacher to another better, like once I got like a “frog” student, her mom would inform the new teacher that Fou Ts' ong was my professor’s classmate, it really embarrassed me!  In that case sure enough the new teacher sure would be impressed to take her, but did those individual teachers ever find out she only learned with me for only few sessions? And her piano teacher mom kept doubting and asking their newly engaged respective teachers if I had taught her daughter wrong kind of techniques! If such mother and her daughter got doubts in my techniques, do you think she would work hard on whatever I imparted her? 




For me, pianist Vadym Kholodenko’s performance was way beyond other competitors, I could tell the other runners-up fingers are not as strong as him, he has the specific pianist’s hand shape strongly formed already, French great piano teacher Long believed pianists must develop a specific hand shape. I “judged” and voted him based on his fingers and hands shape, but I did pray for him that no “memory slip” happened to him! 

   Russian techniques also taught students to memorize music differently even if students have very good musical memory, it’s a painstaking for gifted people when everything comes to them easily but to ask them memorize line by line or separately! That's how memory slip could be prevented! 

   So as an excellent pianist, he or she must be very patient, including his/her journey to success and famous, usually for those great pianists musicality would always come first to them, they don’t ask for reputation and success, what they want is to achieve and challenge the highest attain in expressing their own performances, artistic expression and expectation, as in music one can never score 100% mark!