CSM Students in Piano Master Class

by

Lyn Bronson

People arriving class last night at the Stevenson School’s Rosen Student Center to attend the Sharon Mann piano master at California Summer Music were greeted with a surprise – no Sharon Mann, for she had suddenly been taken ill that morning.  Stepping in at the last moment was affable master pianist and teacher Hans Boepple, a member of the CSM faculty whom we heard in the Sunday evening faculty concert performing Chopin’s F Minor Ballade.

Cristina Lee

The first young pianist to appear on the evening’s program was 15-year-old Christina Lee, a 10^th grade student at St. Francis High School, who is currently studying piano with Mr. Boepple. Her work chosen for the occasion was the very difficult Concert Etude No. 2 in F minor, La Leggierezza. She gave it a robust, extroverted performance impressive for its technical mastery and musicianly expressiveness. At its conclusion, and after some hearty applause from her peers and the many guests who were attending, Mr. Boepple, all smiles, stepped up to the piano and congratulated her on her “really beautiful performance.” However, he wanted to suggest to her that the lovely introduction could begin much softer, as could the first statement of the theme. He pointed out that the beautiful theme appears in many guises during this piece, and each has its own special character – initially in the key of F minor, then in brighter key of A-flat major, and finally in the gloriously triumphant key of E major. One of the glories of this piece is the swirling chromatic passages in the right hand while the left hand has the melody and the harmonic movement. Here he suggested that although the swirling passages were nicely blended with pedal, she needed to pay more attention to the changing left hand harmonies, which dictated a much more frequent change with each harmony change to keep the pedal sounding clean. Mr. Boepple had some suggestion about helping the piece wind down in the most graceful manner possible in its closing pages.

Petra Victoria Priesterová

The second young pianist, Petra Victoria Priesterová, 20, is a student at the Conservatory in České Budějovice, Czech Republic, where she studies piano and composition. In addition to her awards and accomplishments as a classical pianist, she is also the lead singer, songwriter, lyrist and keyboardist of the progressive art-rock groups M.O.R. and M.O.R.tronics. Petra gave us a robust and intense performance of Chopin’s Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major. At its conclusion, Boepple praised her for her remarkable playing that was so free and refreshing. He did take exception to her opening phrase where her rubato was so stretched that the rhythmic values of some notes became distorted. They worked together to allow a rubato stretch, but without altering the length of the notes and disturbing the underlying pulse of the music. The result was more natural sounding. Boepple asked Petra whether she was aware that most pianists split the right hand octave passage on the first page between the hands. When he said that she was aware of this, but preferred to do it with the right hand, Boepple admitted with a smile, “You do it very well!” During his session with Petra, he asked her many probing questions to determine whether she was doing something by choice, accident, or merely lack of a better way. Sometimes he would say, “There are three notes here, but I only hear two, and here is a place where I see two, but only hear one. There are more notes in the texture than we are hearing, and they are important.” After such a challenge, Petra showed how quickly she could respond and make changes. In the last three pages of the Ballade, Boepple said, “Your great climax was spectacular, but after that you are missing some of the violent intensity, which is this work’s endgame. He demonstrated some of the violent clashing patterns in the base and helped Petra wind up the end of the Ballade in a more satisfying manner.

Jennifer Lee

The last performer of the evening was Jennifer Lee, 20, and a student of Dr. Robert Roux at Rice University. She has accumulated many awards and some fine experience playing recitals and ensemble. Jennifer performed the first movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. At its conclusion, Jennifer earned a lot of applause from her peers and the guests attending the event. Boepple complimented her, “This was really deep and dramatic playing, for you have a strong musical conception of the work and your pianistic skills are very solid.” About the enigmatic first page, Boepple began to ask questions about her opening phrase and why her opening upbeat was louder and seemingly more important than the down beat. They worked together refining this shaping of the phrase, and we heard some very important changes developing. Boepple asked her why she didn’t try using the soft pedal to get some of the obtrusive repeated notes more in the background. Jennifer stated that she avoided using the soft pedal, for she was trying to accomplish greater dynamic control without depending on it. Boepple was astonished, and admitted to her and the audience, “The soft pedal is often my best friend, and it is not just something for people who can’t play softly.” He explained to us how the soft pedal moves the hammers slightly to the right and in addition to reducing the volume by approximately 30%, it also provides a much more important function – it allows a softer section of the hammer, one not rutted with hard grooves, to contact the strings with much softer material. Therefore, using the soft pedal offers us not only slightly softer sounds, but also a much greater variety of sounds. Within a few minutes, Boepple was able to get Jennifer to begin to experiment with the use of the soft pedal.

Next Boepple asked Jennifer about tempo variation and why in one place she had three different tempos in five measures. Very discretely, he beat time and helped her bring a consistency to her tempo fluctuations. Lastly they worked on the problem of tempo and consistency of beat in the cadenza, and he urged her to adopt a faster more urgent tempo in the coda. Right in front of our eyes (or maybe “ears’), we began to see the result of these suggestions, and the performance developed greater tension and urgency.

At the end of the master class, Mr. Boepple turned to the audience and said that since most of the students in this session were string players, he wanted to speak about tone production for pianists. He said that there was a lot of mythology about how to produce a beautiful tone and much has been written about stiff versus pliant wrists and fingers, and also whether the fleshy pads of the fingers contribute to the production of beautiful tone.  He said he wanted to dispel some myths. In fact a pianist has only one control of an individual tone on the piano, and that one control is how fast the hammer is going when it hits the string. What actually allows a listener to perceive beauty of tone is the skill of the performer in projecting the tone and making it louder than its accompaniment (cantabile), and also shaping a musical line with crescendos and diminuendos and lovely legato. To prove his point, Boepple took a pencil out of his pocket and used its eraser end to play the gorgeously cantabile melody of the first few phrases of Chopin’ “Raindrop” Prelude. It was a very effective demonstration.

 

End