How to Play Masterclass 2

With practice and imagination, says Graham Fitch, fiVE COULD EQUAL TEN – THAT’S IF YOU FOLLOW HIS CREATIVE STRATEGIES LAID OUT BELOW (HAVE A MIRROR HANDY!)

Graham Fitch presents a range of exercises aimed at coaxing the best out of your left hand

Pianists tend to complain that their left hand doesn’t feel as strong as their right, and students often ask me if they should be practising special exercises for the left hand alone to help their weaker hand catch up. Is it possible, though, for the left hand to be as agile as the right? In 2011, Psychology Today published some interesting research that showed that whether a pianist identified as right- or left-handed, the performance of the right hand always displayed a higher degree of evenness and motor control than did the left hand. Also, the more practice time a left-handed player had accumulated, the better the performance of their right hand.

In this article I explore a range of exercises, studies and repertoire written for the left hand alone, and offer suggestions for general practice to ensure the left hand is constantly challenged to match the right hand in technical proficiency as well as quality and finesse in sound.

In much music written from 1750 onwards we find a main melody on the top, the left-hand accompaniment assuming a supporting role. As we play, we tend to listen more to the right hand even if the left hand has more notes and is technically harder to play. In this example from Chopin’s Nocturne Op 32 No 1, we are so focused on creating the perfect singing line in the right hand that we might hardly pay any attention to the quality of the left:

The first part of the solution is to work on the left hand alone, with the pedal, until we are satisfied we have created a smooth, luxurious carpet of sound that will support the right hand’s melody. If we struggle with this, make a two-handed arrangement of the left hand’s part for practice. Easier to manage technically, the left hand then replicates the sound we have created using two hands. If we really want to know what the left hand actually sounds like when we put both hands together, mime the right hand as we play the left hand. Miming, or shadow practice, is when we touch the surface of the keys without allowing the notes to sound; this practice tool exposes any lumps and bumps that are going on in the other hand in a way that separate-hand practice might not.

Many players seem to enjoy practising technical exercises and studies. I always stress it is how we do them that is important; by following a middle path and doing exercises mindfully and in small doses, they can certainly be of some value. German Romantic composer Hermann Berens published his Training of the Left Hand Op 89 in 1870, at a time when mechanical exercises were especially lauded. Avoiding at all costs the old-school method of isolating and lifting individual fingers prevalent during this period, the first exercise can be useful once we find a way of aligning the arm behind the ‘weaker’ fingers using choreography based on circular and rotational movements (see my video demonstration for this on YouTube). Practising these exercises in two or three different keys adds significant value, provided we use the necessary up/down and in/out movements along the length of the key to accommodate the different patterns of black and white notes.

The second part of Berens’s Op 89 contains 25 short studies for the left hand. Because these are more developed compositions, we can make music out of them by using some pedal and adding colour and shaping into our sound. We might include a selection of these studies in a warm-up or technical regime, along with other things. [No 5 appears inside Scores].

Bach for one

No article on the left hand would be complete without reference to Paul Wittgenstein, the Austrian pianist who lost his right arm at the age of 27, while serving as an officer in the First World War. Determined to continue his career, he commissioned some of the best-known music for the left hand, including Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand written in 1929. Wittgenstein published his own School for the Left Hand, comprising exercises, studies and transcriptions. Had you ever thought to try Bach’s first Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier with the left hand alone? It works, provided we use pedal. Among many other transcriptions, I especially like his left hand version of the ‘Little’ Prelude in C minor BWV 999:

On the subject of Bach, it occurred to me that we might take movements from the cello suites (great music, indeed), and adapt them as piano left hand studies simply by adding some fingering and playing with touches of pedal here and there to capture the resonance of the open strings on the cello. Aiming to make it sound as good as your favourite cellist means you will be focusing on quality of sound and articulation, thereby developing your left hand technique considerably more effectively than dry exercises would. I am presently creating my own edition of the Suite in G BWV 1007 (details at the end); here is the opening of the Allemande:

There is a wealth of repertoire for the left hand, some of it magnificent. One of the best-loved shorter works is Scriabin’s Prelude and Nocturne Op 9 [the Prelude appeared inside issue 104, with a lesson by Lucy Parham]. Like all the best music written for left hand alone, the listener is fooled into believing both hands are being used, and this work is absolutely ravishing. If you are looking for something very special, I highly recommend Frank Bridge’s Three Improvisations. Written in 1918 for pianist Douglas Fox, who also lost his right arm during the First World War, these three miniatures are exquisitely written and unjustly neglected. Another idea is to take some pieces where the right hand is relatively straightforward, but the left hand more challenging. Two examples that are featured in the magazine are Mel Bonis’ Phoebé (issue 121) and Reynaldo Hahn’s Les Rêveries du Prince Églantine (in this issue).

The mirror effect

Another way to gain parity between the hands is to make sure any technical skill we develop in one hand, we also develop simultaneously in the other. This can be achieved using symmetrical inversion. You have probably noticed that the piano keyboard is symmetrical from two places within the octave – the note D and the note Ab. Try playing a chromatic scale in contrary motion from either of these two notes; you will find it much easier than from any other note because of the bilateral symmetry of the keyboard. When you play a black note in one hand, you will be playing a black note in the other (and vice versa with white notes), and fingerings also coincide.

Taking this a stage further, we can create in the right hand a mirror image of a passage the left hand has to play and practise them simultaneously. Any variants, such as rhythm and accent practice, can be included here too. The dominant hand helps the other hand, and the benefits enhance tactile and intellectual memory, because we are thinking about every single note in its context. If your left hand is struggling with the opening of Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary’ Etude, practising the symmetrical inversion in the right (second example) will certainly improve the left. Don’t worry – this practice tool is very challenging when you first explore it, but it gets easier over time.

I wonder if keyboard players in the Baroque period complained about a lack of left hand skills? If we really want to develop our left hand, perhaps we should always be working on contrapuntal music – especially fugues, where both hands are completely equal in terms of input. Our left hand may never be quite as agile as our right, but there are certainly steps we can take to ensure we don’t let it lag too far behind. n

For more on resources for developing the left hand, follow this link to the Online Academy (bit.ly/developinglefthand). For more on Graham’s transcription of Bach’s Cello Suite, follow this link to his blog Academy (bit.ly/cellosuitelefthand).

Further related articles inside this issue include Nils Franke’s survey of repertoire for the left hand and Kathryn Page’s Teacher Help Desk.