🎶 Chamber music is the BEST music!

Dear Friends,

Before we get started, a couple quick things:

Next weekend I'll be playing Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's Das Jahr and Mozart's Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, with the Griffon String Quartet, in Door County, Wisconsin. The dates are Oct 4 (Sturgeon Bay) and Oct 5 (Egg Harbor). If you're interested, you can get more info and tickets here.

I'm also playing a solo recital on Oct 28 at 7:30 pm Eastern Time here in Indianapolis. This is free and open to the public, and it will be live streamed. More info here.

If you want to learn more about this project, here's a short “preview” video I made, introducing Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Das Jahr.

Anyhow, today I’m thinking about chamber music. As I mentioned, I've been practicing this Mozart piano quartet in preparation for working with members of the Griffon SQ. As part of that preparation, I enlisted some of my colleagues here at Butler University to read the piece with me the other day.

That reading turned out to be the highlight of my week: a good reminder that chamber music is simply the best music, and that so much of the music we perform today was written to be played in small spaces.

One reason I love to play chamber music is because it’s social. Chamber music readings have a festive, fun quality about them. In this case, it was the chance to get to know two of my new colleagues and the perfect excuse to see an old friend.

I also love playing chamber music because it brings together the best qualities of all the instruments in the group. This allows the music to be inventive. It’s like having the advantages of an orchestra, but in your own living room.

Chamber music also makes you a better player. It takes the focus off of just yourself, compelling you to listen to the other members in the group. It’s a very good exercise in splitting your listening between yourself and others. In some ways, it’s harder than just playing your own instrument because you have so many more variables and factors at play.

Humans crave connection. Playing chamber music with other people scratches an itch because you’re creating something that is larger than just any individual in the group. Preparing separately and then getting together and producing the whole musical “product” is part of the delight of the experience.

And the good news for pianists is that chamber music is everywhere, from piano duets to the largest-scale works for piano and other instruments. Even method books for beginners often have a duet part printed in the book that a teacher can play. On the advanced level, there are so many amazing examples of piano duets and chamber music.

Reading chamber music this week after practicing solo repertoire for a while reminded me how incredibly fun and rewarding it can be. I hope you’ll find a chance to experience it too, either with a friend at the piano or with musicians in your local community. And so my question for you this week is: When was the last time you got to make music with somebody else?

Have a great week! Happy practicing! 👋

Kate

🎹 Practice Tip of the Week: Slow (-Motion) Practice 🐢

Lately, in preparation for those upcoming performances I mentioned, I've been doing a lot of slow practice.

You might reasonably wonder, since I can already play the pieces at a fast tempo, why I would spend a significant amount of my limited remaining practice time playing slowly.

For me, slow practice is helpful in this polishing stage in order to continue to refine the motions that I make at the piano and practice thinking ahead as I play, anticipating each and every motion.

This will be much more helpful to me in my upcoming performances than if I were to use these last couple of weeks before the concerts to simply play through my pieces over and over.

The purpose of slow practice isn't just to physically play the notes slowly. It is to help think better, moving our body slowly enough for our brain to process the motions.

A lot of piano playing is about thinking ahead to where we need to go next. That is what creates economy of motion. If you watch an incredible professional pianist playing the piano, you will notice that they seem to be hardly moving their fingers at all. These artists play with great efficiency, and they are constantly preparing for what is coming next.

Students, on the other hand, often move in fits and starts. This is because they are thinking and processing between the notes they play. Students will often play a note or musical gesture, then think, and then move their hand to the next place. No wonder it feels stressful!

Slow practice helps address this. If you practice slowly, focusing on smooth, fluid motions, it will help you build control, listen better, and learn to anticipate where you are going.

Instead of “slow practice,” I like to think of it as “slow-motion” practice, a bit like Tai Chi, where you are always moving in a steady, inexorable way toward the next gesture or position, in a smooth, unbroken line.

Counterintuitively, slow practice can be especially helpful when we want to play faster. If you slow down and focus on making very efficient motions, your hands will learn pathways between the notes that later translate into better accuracy and speed.

As you practice this week, notice the places where you feel mentally stressed or where things feel jerky. Notice where you hesitate or it feels like you are grabbing for notes. Those are perfect places to do “slow-motion” practice. Give it a try this week and see how it helps you. I’ll be doing the same thing as I get ready for my own performances!

🎥 YouTube:
My latest video is about what to do when you start a new piece at the piano.

I talk about problem-solving in your practice, applying fingering as you go, and give you my take on the role slow practice plays when you start a new piece (which is different from when you are in the polishing phase, as I described above).
👉 Watch it here

Want to be notified when a new video comes out? Click here and I will send you a quick email the day I publish a new video.

Picks of the Week:

🎹 Performance: Fauré - Elegie, Op 24, with Daniel Müller-Schott. He played this this weekend with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and it was gorgeous. [Listen here]
📖 Book: Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, by Jan Swafford. Well-written and well-researched. [Buy it here]
🎧 Podcast Episode: "Dvořák in America." This fascinating episode came up in conversation last night when I heard the ISO play the "New World" Symphony. [Listen here]

🎹 Stay Connected:

🎧 Explore my six-week listening course, Piano Lit
📺 Subscribe to my YouTube channel
📱Follow me on Instagram
📚 See my favorite books and resources on Amazon
🎓 Interested in studying with me at Butler University? Reply to this email!

Some links in this email are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support of my work!

Dr. Kate Boyd
🎹 Pianist | Educator | Creator
Professor of Piano, Butler University

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Kate Boyd

🎶 Chamber music is the BEST music!

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