Taught by renowned pianist
Penelope Roskell
Join Penelope Roskell and Seymour Bernstein as they lead you in a routine meant to prepare you physically for any practice session. Roskell gets your blood flowing first with warm-up exercises targeting your whole body, before she and Bernstein take turns offering exercises in sitting posture, finger flexibility and firmness, and basic keyboard touch.
Firming Up the Fingers
After loosening up the fingers, a developing pianist must learn to mold the fingertips so they are taut. For Seymour Bernstein, it is a myth that you must be "relaxed" to play the piano. In fact, we are engaged in contracting and resting the muscles at every moment in our lives, so the real objective is to learn when and what muscles to contract at the keyboard. Involuntary contractions are the culprit, and Bernstein demonstrates exercises to teach the fingers to be firm without creating tension in surrounding muscles.
Warming Up the Fingers
At some point during the course of his life (92 years and counting), Seymour Bernstein realized that when he finished playing a piece at the piano, he had been involved in a kind of "keyboard dance." In this lesson, Bernstein helps you warm up for this dance and avoid injury by showing you some basic exercises and stretches for the five fingers, including special exercises for the thumb and pinky. Using a pencil he then demonstrates the three positions our fingers assume at the keyboard: on the key, escapement level, and at the keybed. Each motion at the piano produces an opposite motion, Bernstein notes, for example when the finger depresses the key and the hammer is propelled upwards.
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Unlock Course →Equally renowned as a performer of international caliber and as an inspirational teacher, Penelope Roskell is the leading UK specialist in healthy piano playing, and her book The Complete Pianist is one of the most significant recent publications on the art of piano playing.
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