Taught by renowned pianist
Edna Golandsky
The leading exponent of the Taubman Approach to piano technique, Edna Golandsky has spent decades helping pianists recover from injury and overcome the core physical challenges of piano playing. In this course, Golandsky expands upon Dorothy Taubman’s insights and applies them to specific expressive tasks. Far from mere mechanics, the Taubman Approach realizes its full potential when a student’s physical movements and musical intentions are one and the same. This course is intended for pianists from early intermediate through elite virtuoso levels; beginners and those unfamiliar with the Taubman work should first watch Robert Durso’s course ‘The Principles of the Taubman Approach.’
The Craft of Musical Expression
In this lesson, Edna Golandsky extends Taubman’s principle of physical shaping to phrasing passages from two Chopin Nocturnes. By combining guided movements of the forearm with the elements of tone production – weight and key speed – Golandsky shows how to craft a singing line. In this way, she offers a physical basis for realizing musical ideas at the keyboard. In subsequent lessons, Golandsky will then extend this framework for physical-musical practice to common expressive challenges found in the repertoire.
Melodic Continuity
In this lesson, Edna Golandsky explores the meaning of 'legato,' which she sees as more than physically linking one note to the next. Legato at a deeper sense is the expressive effect of creating a continuous musical line, which can occur with or without making a physical connection between notes. Rather, as Golandsky demonstrates in passages from Chopin, Mozart, and Liszt, melodic continuity can be achieved across leaps, rests, hand crossings, and redistribution, by integrating your choreographic movements with shaping and tone.
Legato Octaves
In this lesson, Edna Golandsky shows you how to shape lyrical octaves using principles of expressive playing developed in previous lessons. She demonstrates how using the fifth finger on octaves passages prevents you from twisting. Golandsky then applies physical shaping, in-and-out, and tone production to legato octave passages from Liszt, Schubert, and Chopin.
Voicing Textures
In this lesson, Edna Golandsky turns from melody to polyphony, applying insights gained from Taubman principles to break down a multi-layered passage from Schumann's Fantasiestucke.
Expressive Repeated Notes
In this lesson, Edna Golandsky demonstrates the prevalence and importance of expressive repeated notes. Composers often depend on melodic repeated notes in melodic passages as well as structural repeated notes at recurring pulses in a given texture. Golandsky demonstrates how to synthesize physical and choreographic principles from prior lessons and utilize them to achieve profound results in passages from Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.
Interdependence of Hands
In this lesson, Edna Golandsky synthesizes different elements of the technical craft in order to coordinate the two hands together, showing how to choreograph two simultaneous and unlike tasks. She draws freely from the skill base developed by Taubman principles and applies them to crafting expressive textures and lines in a Rachmaninoff Prelude, before coming full circle to finish choreographing a Chopin Nocturne from Lesson 1.
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Unlock Course →Piano technique guru Edna Golandsky is the foremost exponent of the Taubman Approach, a revolutionary way to play without tension or injury.
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