Are you a pianist who has played concerti, but had to rely on a second pianist to imitate the orchestral parts on the piano? Do you play another instrument that has its own concerti that you’ve played along with a collaborative pianist?
If so, have you wondered just how these pianists make sense of orchestral scores that sometimes look like total chaos? And on top of it, how do they call forth the sounds of violins, clarinets, or timpani when all they have is a piano? Is it magic, or can orchestral playing be learned?
I’m happy to tell you that imitating orchestral textures on the piano can indeed be learned, provided you have good facility at the instrument and a willingness to modify the musical text that you see on the page.
And in this article, I’ll provide some tips I’ve found useful for working with orchestral scores and imitating each instrument family, along with resources for further exploration.
The prerequisites for playing orchestra reductions at the piano
The first prerequisite that I emphasize in my collaborative piano studio is that the player should have at least solidly late-intermediate chops before they begin to add collaborative skills like reduction playing. This allows them to access most of the common repertoire without having to spend disproportionate time on note-drilling.
Most of my collaborative work is acquired on a fairly last-minute basis, so there isn’t a ton of time for simple technical drilling—I once stepped in on just about a half hour’s notice to play a movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto for a competition.
As a result, I find that command over repertoire like Bach’s 2- and 3-Part Inventions is a good benchmark.
I also recommend that aspiring collaborative pianists, especially those who might play a lot of reductions as instrumental repertoire specialists, have super-strong theory and analysis chops and a creative approach to the score, avoiding the impulse to try and play every note just as it’s written.
That “I should play what is written!” feeling is a huge problem for pianists who are new to encountering orchestral reductions, most of which are totally unplayable as is. Attempting to reproduce the written text exactly will usually lead to an unmusical result and, worse, can cause injury.
Keep in mind that most of the repertoire through the early 20th century had reductions made before recording technology was widely available, so if not reduced by the composer, the editor making the reduction only had the full score to work with (and one attendance at a live performance, if they were lucky) and may have had no clue what the resulting sound would be. And some otherwise great composers just didn’t have the appropriate piano chops needed to make a good reduction.
Ideally, good orchestral reduction players also have a good enough ear to follow along with recordings and fill in parts that might not be written into the reduction.
Sometimes publishers lean toward creating a score that is very playable and, in the process, will leave too much of the music out. Or, on the other hand, an over-ambitious editor may have tried to cram as many notes into two staves as humanly possible, and listening to a recording may reveal that most of those extra notes are not audible enough to worry about.
If you took aural skills courses in college and wondered just why you were in there: this is (one reason) why! As Juilliard’s longtime (now retired) collaborative piano professor Margo Garrett likes to say, “play what you hear, not what you see.”
Developing your interpretive chops
Before we carry on with the core of this post, it’s important to emphasize that having good interpretive skills at the piano is very much needed to understand how to embody the orchestra in your playing.
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What to do first
Before I even take a reduction to the piano, ideally, I’ll grab a few professional recordings of the piece and my iPad, and I’ll follow along to start marking instrumentation: who is playing which lines? Is it a horn playing that middle line or is it a viola? Are parts of the score all winds/brass or all strings? Are any parts so inaudible that I can just cross them out?
When I do this, I like to find at least one live recording and one studio recording that will be “crispier” and more balanced among the instruments.
While it’s also widely encouraged to look at the full score for the piece, I rarely do this unless there is something I really can’t figure out from the recordings. Consulting mostly the full score may encourage you to overstuff your reduction, exactly as happened to those pre-recording-technology editors.
I use ForScore on my iPad to learn and display my music, so I’ve created a color-code system: instrumentation indications will be in red, my own markings and cross-outs will be in blue, and translations (if it’s an opera not in English, and especially if I’m coaching singers on the text) will be in green. ForScore lets you create custom colors too, so you can go even deeper than this.
I will use abbreviations to mark instruments and their groups, and this is pretty intuitive to me with my extensive background in composition.
I use “str” for strings, “ww” for woodwinds, “br” for brass, “pz” for pizzicato, and the standard abbreviations for each instrument (fl, picc, ob, cl, hn, bsn, tpt, tbn, tba, vn, vla, vc, db, hp, timp, pf).
You don’t want to clutter your score with fully written-out instrument names because when you get nervous in performance you will have a harder time filtering all that info.
Playing each instrument family on the piano
Strings
Strings are pretty much the backbone of most orchestral literature, and quite a bit of it (like the Bach concerti for violin and for keyboard) only requires strings.
When imitating strings at the piano, play with as warm a tone as you can, using a flexible but aligned arm/wrist, and feel free to use whatever degree of pedal is appropriate to the piece, piano, and room you’re in.
You won’t park your foot on the pedal for 16th-note passagework in the Mozart G major flute concerto as you might in parts of the Brahms violin concerto, but a dry, pedal-less sound will not capture the echoing resonance that string instruments have.
Passages with muted strings or strings marked sul tasto may benefit from you using the una corda (left) pedal, depending on how much your piano changes color when you use it.
I’ll even do this more widely if the piano badly needs a voicing and the hammers are too hard. The una corda is the closest a piano can get to the muted string sound without extended techniques.
Passages marked pizzicato can be imitated with some very precise timing: I recommend that you play staccato with a “grabbing” chord motion, but especially if it’s cello/bass pizzicato, add a dab of damper pedal just as you’re starting to come off the notes.
This will capture some but not all of the strings’ vibrations, and this is the closest approximation I’ve found of the “pluck” and remaining resonance you get in pizzicato, particularly with cello and bass.
You may choose not to add any pedal for violin and viola pizzicato. If the pizzicato is intended to be on the soft side, you may also try parking your left foot on the una corda as you execute the coordinated damper pedal.
String tremolos are probably one of the more annoying aspects of orchestral reductions and they can get very tiring if you don’t approach them in a healthy way.
Max Bruch’s first violin concerto, op. 26 in G minor, is absolutely full of them, and it’s also a popular piece among good student violinists. I had to play it alongside some other big literature for a preparatory recital at the Cleveland Institute of Music once, and I knew I had to conserve my energy by not spending it all on the tremolos.
Here’s one such tremolo passage from the piece:
I like to approach these in one of two ways depending on what I hear in the recordings, my energy level, and the context.
One approach, particularly for softer tremolos, is to gently “wiggle” the fingers in an irregular way among the notes in the tremolo, almost “tickling” the keys. Harpists call this technique bisbigliando, or “whispering.” This is much easier on my arms than trying to play a measured and even tremolo and it’s much more musical.
Here’s how one might render that in notation for the aforementioned Bruch passage:
Another approach, espoused by the collaborative piano legend Martin Katz in his book The Complete Collaborator, is to play the chord as a block (all the notes in the tremolo) and then start alternating notes after that. He further suggests only “tremolo-ing” the chord’s inner notes when the tremolo is in a high register and could get too “tinkly” (my words) on the piano if played literally.
Now what about the opposite of tremolo—when sustained notes are being held much too long for the piano to hold them without decaying?
This happens most often in the strings, since bowing can be disguised and notes can go on seemingly forever in the string section.
Katz suggests strategically re-striking either the bass or the whole chord as needed, and I’ve taken this a bit further, actually executing something like a very slow bisbigliando in pieces like the second movement of Vivaldi’s piccolo concerto in C, RV443, which I recently performed.
The slow undulations that result are, in my opinion, a good match for the atmosphere that the piece is intended to create.
Woodwinds
To differentiate woodwind passages from string passages, it will be most effective to avoid using the pedal, and you will want to use a more “pointed” touch, or what Katz calls a “steely, cool and very articulate” attack.
Since woodwinds don’t have extra strings that vibrate sympathetically with most pitches, the tone they produce will be cleaner, and avoiding the pedal helps emulate that.
Like Katz, I have not figured out a way to distinguish a flute from a clarinet from an oboe from a bassoon when imitating winds on the piano, although I do mark who plays what on my scores.
{{trip-wire}}
Brass
When imitating instruments like the trumpet, horn, trombone, and tuba, we don’t have to avoid the pedal so much, but as Katz notes, these instruments tend not to sound as legato as winds do, so we can play their notes sustained, but slightly detached.
If you can use more of the flat, fleshy fingertip surface and maintain healthy alignment, feel free to do so when imitating brass at the piano. Katz suggests imagining a bit of tenuto on each brass note when it has the melody.
One exercise a friend of mine recounted being asked to do while studying with Prof. Katz at a summer festival was to play a major scale in the style of a given instrument that Prof. Katz would call out.
When imitating the horn, my friend used the sustained, but non-legato touch described above, then intentionally cracked the top note—which Prof. Katz found hilarious! (It’s very difficult to play accurately in the highest range of the French horn, so cracking can be frequent.)
Cracks aside, playing scales in the style of all the instruments is a great exercise in varying the touch you will use when you encounter melodies played by different instruments in the orchestra. It can also enliven your scale warmups, which can get tedious otherwise.
Other Instrument Groups
Piano: Occasionally, as in the opening to Zerbinetta’s monster soprano aria “Grossmächtige Prinzessin” from Ariadne auf Naxos, there is an actual piano part!
In that case, you don’t need to do anything special aside from what the score might suggest regarding pedaling, articulation etc.
Harp: The harp cannot play legato, so keep everything detached and “plucky,” but you can pedal freely because the harp strings also ring freely unless stopped.
You may also roll chords more than the reduction may indicate, since harpists love to roll and arpeggiate—the word arpeggio literally derives from the Italian word for the instrument, arpa!
Percussion: This group is harder to imitate because most percussion instruments other than mallets and timpani are unpitched.
If I hear a low timpani roll I will try and grab the lowest notes on the piano that I possibly can, then tremolo them into a “roll,” much how Katz explains it. He also suggests taking pitched timpani passages down an octave if possible for extra fuzz in the sound.
Basso continuo groups/harpsichord: Continuo is something I’ve been doing increasingly frequently, and playing these on the harpsichord would be ideal—but mine is currently in disrepair.
So I just aim for as plucky and non-legato a sound as I can get. Some may advocate for using the una corda pedal, but for me, on many pianos that would soften the sound too much to hear the “pluck.”
In explaining the harpsichord sound to a non-musician friend recently, I compared it to a metallic guitar, and that’s a good sound image to use. You also won’t want to voice chords or layer dynamics in ways that the piano can do but the harpsichord can’t.
Miscellaneous tips and tricks I like (listed alphabetically)
fp dynamic indications: In a trick I learned from Katz’s book, I imitate the “forte to sudden piano” effect by overstuffing the initial chord with extra chord tones, if my reach allows, and then removing those extra notes before grabbing the pedal.
The sudden reduction in the number of notes automatically lowers the dynamic level enough to get this effect across. If the chord is already full enough to occupy all my fingers, I will choose some chord tones to immediately release after the initial grab.
Jumps that switch direction: I like to think of condensing arm motions/gestures into fewer as often as possible. Therefore, I would find the pitch equivalent that could be done in a single arm position or gesture rather than something that requires zig-zagging.
This is particularly helpful to me because my hands are small and my arms are short. In fact, I also often do this in music written for piano accompaniment if I don’t have much time to learn the piece or it would significantly lower my endurance during a long concert. This change should be basically imperceptible to the ear.
I have created my own example of this for maximum clarity, but a good “real life” example of someone just going ahead and doing this in the piano is Sergei Prokofiev (also a fine pianist) in his own Flute Sonata in D major, op. 94, last movement.
At measure 30, he starts alternating octaves and single notes, but interlocks this figure within each hand so that the whole passage sounds like running double octaves. Doing the same in any running octave passage where I’ve not decided to omit one of the octave tones creates a lot more security and better tuning.
Low Clusters: I thin these out. On the piano, closely-spaced chords in a low register will sound muddier than they will on just about any other instrument. I might even take some of the notes up an octave if the texture and my reach allow.
Octave runs/doublings: As Katz’s Chapter 9 details, there are some things that are much easier in the orchestra than on the piano, and the sound of that extra effort needed to play a bunch of double-octave runs and other jumps can ruin whatever orchestral effect you were going for.
Additionally, because pianos must be tuned in 12-tone equal temperament, they are always a little out of tune compared to groups of string players who can make micro-adjustments to their pitch. This can be extra noticeable when playing octaves.
I will usually cut out the lower octave of an octave run in the right hand or the upper octave of an octave run in the left hand, leaving only the outermost pitches, unless I feel that the top is too high to hear all that well on the piano.
For example, if there’s a line that flutes and piccolos are playing and the piccolo is an octave higher, way up in the stratosphere, I might just play the notes at the flute’s pitch, which is an easier range to hear.
The one potential exception I’ll note, which Katz also mentions, is that if it’s totally doable, you can add a lower octave (8vb) doubling in string parts that serve as the bass line.
Additional thoughts
As veteran vocal coach Kathleen Kelly mentioned in a conference talk given at Collabfest last year, whatever adaptations you make to a score should be repeatable: they should be doable even under duress (like when you are nervous onstage) or when you have to look away from the keyboard, like if you need to check in with a conductor or watch the staging in an opera scene.
That means that even if something is technically possible for you in ideal circumstances, like alone in a practice room, it should be dialed down a few notches in technical difficulty so that it’s reliably doable in any circumstance, like in a nerve-wracking audition.
Your reduction should also balance adequately with the singers (or instruments) and not overpower them because you wanted to show your ability to toss off a bunch of double octaves.
If you are also working at an opera company or coaching singers in staged scenes, you will likely need to make the reduction playable enough that you can also sing the missing parts and cue in the singers without getting your fingers tangled up.
Accessible Accompaniments
When you don’t have time to do all this pre-reduction work (something that is frequent in audition sight-reading situations and last-minute work with singers, in particular), you might prefer to consult a pre-reduced edition that’s engineered to be playable.
My friend Carol Leybourn Janssen had already done this for years with her Frustrated Accompanist string concerto reductions, but to my knowledge, no one had yet offered anything like that for the operatic literature, a repertory that much more often puts collaborative pianists into sight-reading and crash-learning situations anyway.
So I started offering playable reductions of the toughest public-domain arias I could think of, and some have since become the standard reductions for their arias.
You’re welcome to peruse my Accessible Accompaniments and consider them one of many possibilities for reducing their respective arias.
In a couple of the Accessible Accompaniments’ completed arias that are also mentioned in the Katz book, he and I have come up with very different solutions for the same problems.
Additional resources to consult
Here are some resources I strongly recommend for collaborative pianists of all experience levels:
- Martin Katz’s wonderful book The Complete Collaborator
- The Collaborative Pianists’ Community, a Facebook group I created in 2015 to foster conversation and knowledge sharing in the collaborative piano community
- Chris Foley’s excellent Collaborative Piano Blog, which was a resource I leaned upon heavily when I first pivoted into collaborative performance myself
On Collaborating, the IKCAS-sponsored journal featuring articles of interest (including, full disclosure, my forthcoming article “Learning the Licks: How Galant Schemata Can Make Your Rep Learning and Sight-Reading More Efficient,” which I gave as a talk at Collabfest last year).
I hope these ideas have inspired you and that you’ll discover the joy of collaborative piano if you haven’t already!
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Happy practicing!
