“The real artist starts performance not from the first sounds of music, but the silence before them – the main silence.”
Natan Perelman “In the class of the grand piano”
Music is the art of sound. To improve the quality of your sound on the piano, try exercises recommended by famous piano pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus (1888 – 1964).
- Listen to the “birth” of the sound creating the first possible pianissimo (pppppp) that you can hear. Slowly increase the force of the sound reaching the loudest border (fffff), after that no sound but only knocking is possible.
- The next exercise is equally useful for training both the ear and the tactile sensation on the keyboard.
The sense of this exercise is to take every sound with the same force that resulted from the expiration of the sound before it. This exercise will help you to achieve “singing” on the piano.
- Play beautiful melodic passages (e.g. of Chopin) in a very slow tempo similar to a slow-motion movie. Enjoy expression and melodic of the sound imagining yourself as if you are admiring a painting trying to see more of it as close as possible, maybe even through the magnifying glass.