Recently, I had a great time writing an article for the newsletter of the New England Piano Teacher’s Association this month about a few of my takeaways after attending this year’s NCKP Conference (National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy).
It was my first time attending this major event as a piano teacher, and I had definitely wished to treat myself to this experience, as I am going on 9 years of piano teaching this upcoming summer.
So many seminars were incredibly edifying, but I keep turning back to one of the seminars presented by Dr. Luis Sanchez at Texas A & M University on the subject of the performance and practice of Mozart’s music on the fortepiano. Maybe this is because while I was a music major at Hunter College, I had some access to a harpsichord and, while it is not a fortepiano, it is much like the fortepiano. In fact the fortepiano, the earliest version of today’s modern piano, was developed by an Italian harpsichord maker, Bartolomeo Christofori.
Anyway, I shall never forget how “metallic” the early piano sounded to me, compared to the pianos of today. Also those early pianos had much lighter action than the modern day piano, and, in this way, they are easier on the fingers, to some degree, to play and to play fast, especially. One needs degrees of more physical power to play on today’s pianos, unless they have light key actions. I just think that these physical factors surrounding the construction of the keyboard in the past, have a real say when considering how pieces by musically frolicking artists like Mozart are played now by today’s players.
I go into this a bit more in my article for NEPTA (shown below) which you can hopefully access by clicking here. Also, I share about my impressions of a few other seminars that I attended, too, at NCKP. Stay tuned because in a future post, I will be sharing a few thoughts on my most recent experiences playing Chopin mazurkas.
Hi! I’m Isabel Marcheselli, an artist teacher. If you liked this post, please “like,” “favorite,” leave a comment, or “share” it with others to show your support – it really helps me to reach others out there – thanks! Also follow this blog and visit my links at: https://linktr.ee/marchesellimusic
