Notes from the Pianist's Bench

Rating:
Summary: a real gift
Review: During the six years that I was very fortunate to have been a student of Mr. Berman's, I found the countless lessons and the experiences of hearing his concerts to be constant sources of ideas and inspiration. Personally, "Notes from the Pianist's Bench" not only crystallized and revived a lot of the ideas for me, it also offered me much needed inspiration since I began working independently. The chapters included in the part titled "In the Practice room" ought to be very helpful for any practicing pianists; Mr. Berman's insight into the piano technique, whether it concerns sound and touch, or articulation and phrasing, is always incisive and realistic. I personally find the advice offered in the second part of the book titled : "Shaping Up a Performance" to be particularly indispensable. Chapters such as "Technique of the Soul" and "The Art of Teaching and the Art of Learning" are genuine, thoughtful gifts from an artist. Mr. Berman has shared with us in his book a refreshing and intriguing landscape of music-making. "Notes from the Pianist's Bench" is recommended without reservation.

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent and Lucid
Review: Imagine you are a piano student playing a Haydn sonata for your professor. In the slow movement your teacher conjures up a Classical opera aria as an illustrative example, complete with specific characters, and even ventures to invent an imaginary reconstruction of the opening: "Dio, che guar - da [rest] tut - ti gli~a - man - ti [rest] ..." Chances are that you are among the lucky chosen ones in the class of famous Russian-American pianist Boris Berman.
Your level of playing (and your budget) do not allow you to study with a professor of international stature at Yale University? There is no need for despair. Professor Berman has crystallized his most nourishing ideas in an astonishingly eloquent and lucid manner. "Notes from the Pianist's Bench" is his highly informative, rational book of advice geared to the undergraduate and graduate piano student. Unlike those dry and overblown piano methods of early German theorists (Deppe, Breithaupt, Tetzel, Martienssen) Berman's prose is striking a perfect balance between the philosophical and the practical, between the erudite and the anecdotal, the comprehensive and the concise, imagination and realism, elementary and advanced; and it can definitely be comprehended by the educated layman, last not least thanks to the many highly appropriate musical examples.
Unlike Heinrich Neuhaus, the legendary Russian teacher of Richter and Gilels, who opens his "The Art of Piano Playing" with a deliberation on the artistic image (idea, vision), Berman's musical notes do not drop too far off the pianistic bench in the first part of this book. In fact he starts there where most diligent students hopefully find themselves presently: in the pratice room. But what a practice room this is! While yours (and mine) consists of four naked white walls with a big black piano in it, Professor Berman's practice room is a laboratory of experimentation and consideration. His enormous experience in performance practice, spanning all styles from harpsichord to Cage, allows him to approach a topic from several angles at the same time. Berman is especially afraid of exaggeration and dogmatic advice and believes our faults to be the extension of our virtues: "My biggest hesitation about writing this book has been a fear that my advice will be misinterpreted or carried ad absurdum. Guided by the teacher, a young musician must learn to use common sense, both in making interpretive decisions and in deciding on appropriate physical actions to realize them."
Naturally this approach should be recommended to the modern passive student craving for simplistic recipes and instant solutions. Berman: "Being a good student is not as simple a task as one might think. The objective of one's studies should be to become an artist, not to perpetuate one's status as a student. With some students I have the feeling that they fall in my lap as a piece of clay: `Here I am, mold me.' In some cases such an attitude is a reflection of the individual's general passivity, and in others it comes from being accustomed to spoon-feeding by their previous teacher."
It is quite obvious that Berman himself is familiar with the specific cultural background of ethnically diverse students. Consider his lesson to a student from Beijing who lacked an understanding of polyphonic texture: "[...] I made the analogy with perspective in painting, but this concept was completely unfamiliar to her, probably because she did not have much experience with Western-style painting. To make my point, I showed her two pictures of birds, one a Chinese drawing and the other a Western landscape. I asked if she could tell me which birds in the first picture were closest to the viewer. That she was unable to do so was not surprising, because perspective was not a component of the artistic system of the picture. The student had no problem in answering the same question in relation to the second picture. Then I tried to explain how the Western artist created the impression of certain objects being farther away than others by making them smaller in size and-very important-more blurred than those in the foreground. In music, I said, we also present the background smaller (that is, softer) and more blurred (that is, less articulated)."
To the advanced reader the unusual degree of common sense in Berman's carefully calibrated advice may sometimes appear "over-informative." Too much neutrality can obscure a powerful vision. There are moments, I feel, where too much common sense can be an obstacle to the creative initiative of a sensitive student. Neuhaus observed that young pianists of genius go through phases of exaggeration because they have to experience the range and the limitations of their power. But these shortcomings are more than made up for by the second part of the book ("Shaping up a Performance"). Some of the real gems of the book are hidden in these chapters, especially Berman's adaptation of Stanislavsky's psycho-technique and "unbroken line" to musical performance.
I strongly recommend this book to the amateur. If you are a professional it is a must read.
In case you haven't read them, I'd like to draw your attention to two other books in this field: Russell Sherman's "Piano Pieces" (aphoristic reflections `laden with culture and atmosphere') and Seymour Bernstein's more methodical "With Your Own Two Hands" (emphasis on practicing and discipline).

Rolf-Peter Wille

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent and Lucid
Review: Imagine you are a piano student playing a Haydn sonata for your professor. In the slow movement your teacher conjures up a Classical opera aria as an illustrative example, complete with specific characters, and even ventures to invent an imaginary reconstruction of the opening: "Dio, che guar - da [rest] tut - ti gli~a - man - ti [rest] ..." Chances are that you are among the lucky chosen ones in the class of famous Russian-American pianist Boris Berman.
Your level of playing (and your budget) do not allow you to study with a professor of international stature at Yale University? There is no need for despair. Professor Berman has crystallized his most nourishing ideas in an astonishingly eloquent and lucid manner. "Notes from the Pianist's Bench" is his highly informative, rational book of advice geared to the undergraduate and graduate piano student. Unlike those dry and overblown piano methods of early German theorists (Deppe, Breithaupt, Tetzel, Martienssen) Berman's prose is striking a perfect balance between the philosophical and the practical, between the erudite and the anecdotal, the comprehensive and the concise, imagination and realism, elementary and advanced; and it can definitely be comprehended by the educated layman, last not least thanks to the many highly appropriate musical examples.
Unlike Heinrich Neuhaus, the legendary Russian teacher of Richter and Gilels, who opens his "The Art of Piano Playing" with a deliberation on the artistic image (idea, vision), Berman's musical notes do not drop too far off the pianistic bench in the first part of this book. In fact he starts there where most diligent students hopefully find themselves presently: in the pratice room. But what a practice room this is! While yours (and mine) consists of four naked white walls with a big black piano in it, Professor Berman's practice room is a laboratory of experimentation and consideration. His enormous experience in performance practice, spanning all styles from harpsichord to Cage, allows him to approach a topic from several angles at the same time. Berman is especially afraid of exaggeration and dogmatic advice and believes our faults to be the extension of our virtues: "My biggest hesitation about writing this book has been a fear that my advice will be misinterpreted or carried ad absurdum. Guided by the teacher, a young musician must learn to use common sense, both in making interpretive decisions and in deciding on appropriate physical actions to realize them."
Naturally this approach should be recommended to the modern passive student craving for simplistic recipes and instant solutions. Berman: "Being a good student is not as simple a task as one might think. The objective of one's studies should be to become an artist, not to perpetuate one's status as a student. With some students I have the feeling that they fall in my lap as a piece of clay: 'Here I am, mold me.' In some cases such an attitude is a reflection of the individual's general passivity, and in others it comes from being accustomed to spoon-feeding by their previous teacher."
It is quite obvious that Berman himself is familiar with the specific cultural background of ethnically diverse students. Consider his lesson to a student from Beijing who lacked an understanding of polyphonic texture: "[...] I made the analogy with perspective in painting, but this concept was completely unfamiliar to her, probably because she did not have much experience with Western-style painting. To make my point, I showed her two pictures of birds, one a Chinese drawing and the other a Western landscape. I asked if she could tell me which birds in the first picture were closest to the viewer. That she was unable to do so was not surprising, because perspective was not a component of the artistic system of the picture. The student had no problem in answering the same question in relation to the second picture. Then I tried to explain how the Western artist created the impression of certain objects being farther away than others by making them smaller in size and-very important-more blurred than those in the foreground. In music, I said, we also present the background smaller (that is, softer) and more blurred (that is, less articulated)."
To the advanced reader the unusual degree of common sense in Berman's carefully calibrated advice may sometimes appear "over-informative." Too much neutrality can obscure a powerful vision. There are moments, I feel, where too much common sense can be an obstacle to the creative initiative of a sensitive student. Neuhaus observed that young pianists of genius go through phases of exaggeration because they have to experience the range and the limitations of their power. But these shortcomings are more than made up for by the second part of the book ("Shaping up a Performance"). Some of the real gems of the book are hidden in these chapters, especially Berman's adaptation of Stanislavsky's psycho-technique and "unbroken line" to musical performance.
I strongly recommend this book to the amateur. If you are a professional it is a must read.
In case you haven't read them, I'd like to draw your attention to two other books in this field: Russell Sherman's "Piano Pieces" (aphoristic reflections 'laden with culture and atmosphere') and Seymour Bernstein's more methodical "With Your Own Two Hands" (emphasis on practicing and discipline).

Rolf-Peter Wille

Rating:
Summary: A very helpful book
Review: This book is extremely helpful for advanced piano students looking for some concrete advice on how to make the difficult transition from student to musician. The extent to which Mr. Berman has considered every aspect of playing the piano and being a musician is a great inspiration. I imagine that even someone who might disagree with any of his statements about physical technique or performance issues will gain a lot from reading this book, because it touches all these areas very intelligently and makes the reader really think about his or her own feelings on the subject. In short, READ THIS BOOK if you are at all curious about the tremendous scope of things a pianist must face in order to become a true artist.

Rating:
Summary: A Piano Book of our Own
Review: Very often when musicians, especially performers, attempt to write about music they lapse into a pseudo-poetic and philosophical tone that, although seemingly charming to the uninitiated, remains unworthy of the serious scholarly and academic environment to which the musical community, particularly in North America, aspires. To offer one example I shall quote one of Mr. Berman's illustrious predecessors - Heinrich Neuhaus:

"polyphony expresses in musical language the highest union of the personal and the general, of the individual and the masses, of Man and the Universe, and it expresses in sound everything philosophical, ethical and aesthetic that is contained in this union. It fortifies the heart and the mind." - The Art of Piano Playing

This is a lovely sentiment, to be sure, but what does it actually mean? Mr. Berman, to his credit, avoids such purple prose in his book. He provides us with an objective and highly informed guide to dealing with the issues that arise in attempting to teach or play the piano and the wealth of great music written for it, as seen through the eyes of one of his generation's most respected pianists and teachers. Of course my purpose here is not to criticize past books on the subject, or even to compare them in any detail. As Mr. Berman himself illustrated in a memorable seminar at Yale University, changes in pianists' approaches to a given body of music cannot be seen as developmental in a scientific sense. It is not that one generation of pianists has more insight into a given piece than did the preceding generation, but simply that each generation has a slightly different set of musical priorities which govern the kind of information they seek out about a piece and the way in which they choose to apply it. Books like Neuhaus' "The Art of Piano Playing" and the two or three others which, together with Berman's "Notes from the Pianist's Bench", make up the highest achievements in this field of study, serve to represent the musical preoccupations of a particular era, just as the finest pianists of a given era do the same through their performances and recordings. Perhaps in another twenty or thirty years a new generation of pianists will once again need their own book on piano playing and teaching which addresses their unique preoccupations. Until then I am certain that "Notes from the Pianist's Bench" will serve as an invaluable guide to students, teachers and even professional pianists of this era who are interested in better understanding the best examples of performance practice in our time and the timeless art of piano-playing.

Vadim Serebryany, pianist