Playing fast

I'm curious on piano player's view of playing fast.

Is fast playing one sign of a skilled pianist?

I play both guitar and piano, and hear a lot of guitarists who eschew fast playing (not that it should be the end all or be all of playing) in favor of minimalism and touting that it doesn't take skill to play fast.

I was wondering if this view is unique to many guitarists, or whether or not other musicians (such as pianists) share this view.

Playing fast is a sign of a pianist who practices. One of my teachers told me: Playing fast is just playing slow speeded up. If you practice rapid finger work slowly, you can certainly build up your speed over time. I suggest Scarlatti for this.

The fact that one can play fast does not mean that one is a skilled pianist. I fail, however, to see how one can be deemed a skillfull pianist without being able to play fast.

I respect someone who can play a passage quickly if they can ALSO play it slowly. Playing fast sometimes is done to cover the errors that are not covered when played slow, kind of akin to a synonym being the word you use when you don't know how to spell the word you WANT to use.

Gary

As always when you do it AND when you do it perfectly THEN you're really a skilled pianist. Sometimes pianists play too fast for a certain piece of music which is certainly not skilled in terms of musical interpretation. Listen to Gyorgy Cziffra playing Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt and you can hear what fast and skillful playing is about: he really plays fast but always keeps the music completely transparent - every note can be heard - and speed is in support of the music, not for showing-off. That's what I call skillful playing.

Of course it does take skill to play fast.

See above - it is always better to play the music above all and not play to show your technique.

Just my opinion. Cheers,

This is actually untrue in a great many cases, especially where very rapid passagework is involved. If you film a (skilled) pianist playing a rapid passage at speed, and then film the same passage played slowly (as if it were *intended* to be played slowly) and then play the first film back at the speed of the second, you will see something very different. There is a way of practicing slowly music intended to be played rapidly, but it involves some difficult adjustments of weight and motion. I'll give a simple example. In scales of slow to moderate speed, there is time for the thumb to pass under the hand well in advance of having to play. In extremely rapid scales the thumb cannot pass under the hand.advance and in fact such scales are not physically legato. This is a reason why players get 'stuck' when trying to hit a certain speed - they are hitting the limits at which certain motions can be performed, not realizing that they are the wrong motions.

I recommend reading Otto Ortmann's 'Physiological Mechanics of Piano Technique', if you can find a copy. Ortmann was the first to describe this issue precisely (as opposed to skilled pianists, who just 'do' it

Marvin Wolfthal

The errors flow better in rapid speed. Actually, things that sound as though they might be errors if played slowly, in the context of speed make sense. I have noticed this with Art Tatum transcriptions.

A brillaint observation. I believe that Mr. Chang makes a similar observation. Query? How does one make the VCR or DVD player play at 1/2 speed '1/4 speed etc. so that we may see what the fast technique looks like in slow motion.

One either finds a software package that will permit this with a DVD player, or one edits a videotape to play 2-3 frames of each frame prior to moving (with the help of a digital time base corrector to get the analog jitter out of it).

Gary (my degree is in TV production - not music) Rimar