![]() "How could this happen to my piano?" by Shirley Kirsten."Did Somebody Say Fresno" compiled by Aviva Kirsten."Children Playing" by Daniel Gottlub Turk."Children Playing" by Daniel Gottlob Turk.Learn how your comment data is processed. Having small hands like mine that needs exert myself to play octaves is a serious disadvantage. ![]() Stretches do matter, but only to a degree. It is true that big hands don’t necessarily have bigger reaches. Let alone more problems that come with the tension of having hands stretched to its limits all the time. I do this all the time, and have to practice “blind jumps” enabled by my arm time and time again movement just for the sake of accuracy without suffering the musicality. This necessitates much practice purely for the sake of accuracy. For example when jumping from one note to a distantly placed note, small-handed pianists need to use their arms to find the notes and refrain from reaching with the fingers. Small handed pianists have to overcome so many unnecessary “challenges” because the 6.5 “standard” keyboard is not designed for small hands to begin with. There have been many studies regarding hand size and injury and the correlation is clear. When I take problems during my practice to my piano teacher a lot of the times she doesn’t have a solution to it because she never encountered those issues with bigger hands (she can reach a 10th comfortably). A small handed pianist made a video about her struggles and the solution here if you are interested. If I go at it too hard I’m afraid I’ll injure myself by forcing my hands into unhealthy positions repeatedly. I can’t do the octave exercises without hitting the neighboring keys. That does not allow me to play quick jumps between octaves. I don’t think my hands can be further stretched. I can also stretch the thumb and my 4th to nearly 180 degrees. The 7 inches comes when I stretch my thumb and my pinky to nearly 180 degrees. My hand span is only 7 inches which allows me to play an octave. For the majority of females though, even good stretch cannot allow them to play a 10th comfortably. If that’s true then that could actually be called having small hands. Yuja Wang could strike a 10th also even though may thought she has “small hands”. I read that Daniel Barenboim could reach a 9th. To satisfy your curiosity, watch this video, and think of what Professor Henry Higgins said to “My Fair Lady” as he rehearsed the Cockney out of her:Īs someone has mentioned above, Alicia de Larrocha could reach a 10th at her peak time. So even with my smaller hands, I smoothed out a gnawing passage, avoiding further anguish. One solution was to lower the wrist and change my fingering. To cut a long story short, after I carved out what seemed to be a legato-feasible fingering, I found that my work-horse wrist had to elevate beyond comfort. 331 with finger-jamming parallel octaves in legato. So why should I bring this up? Well, because my current obsession is Variation 3 of Mozart’s Sonata in A Major, K. And there was no easy way around it.)Īfter all is said and done, however, one must admit that some passages in the piano literature are more easily navigated with big hands and long fingers. (To be a devil’s advocate, I’ll admit that I’ve had students with such thick, long fingers, that if sandwiched between two black notes, their one finger couldn’t avoid depressing more than one key. ![]() ![]() I’ve also discovered that Artur Rubinstein had rather small hands, and Daniel Barenboim, even smaller.Ī famous pianist of yesteryear, Arthur Loesser, was said to have diminutive hands and fingers but played with finesse and fluidity. Imagine this woman dancing around the keys. But listening without the distraction of vision is even better.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |