How To Play Delicate On Piano

[Ling Kliment]

Majorheadline-grabbing fires were hungrily devouring brush on the hills surrounding the city. A quick check showed the humidity in the air at 10 percent at the time of violinist Joshua Bell's concert with pianist Alessio Bax - it had been extraordinarily low for days. Violins don't like such extremes. That morning, when I took out my own violin, I discovered that the G-string peg had slipped - no, completely given way, allowing the string to unwind. As I fixed the G, the A string peg lost its grip, and then over the next 10 minutes every single string on my violin unwound itself in succession. I've had pegs slip, but this was unprecedented. For the remainder of the day, my students reported strange problems with their violins as well: "The string unraveled and nearly came off!" One boy's wooden bow simply snapped at school. "I didn't do anything, I swear!" he said. I believed him.

Thankfully for Bell's 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin, the humidity at Walt Disney Concert Hall is well-controlled. If the lack of humidity caused any problems for these two artists, I could not detect them.

In fact, a little musical journey that wound the clock back a hundred years or more proved a much-needed getaway in this smoke-choked city. It was a program that largely emphasized Bell's connection with several great violinists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Eugne Ysae, who taught Josef Gingold, who taught Bell; and Csar Franck - whose gorgeous Violin Sonata in A major was a wedding present to Ysae in 1886.

From the beginning, Bell played this piece like he owns it. Bax's delicate piano playing allowed dynamics to grow organically and individual lines in both instruments to emerge through a texture that is at times dense with notes. Franck was an organ player - one with great big hands, who wrote a florid and demanding piano part for this sonata. Bax seemed to savor every important note while letting the others float by -- with pinpoint accuracy, like a flurry perfectly-crystalized snowflakes.

In the stormy second movement, no speed ever seemed too fast for Bax's playing. During this movement's moments of repose, the simple melody grew almost spooky in Bell's hands (reminding me it was the day before Halloween!) The final build-up started a slow and breathy portato that wound into a spectacular sprint to the end, after which the audience erupted into applause - it was really hard not to. But there were two movements remaining!

The third movement's Recitativo-Fantasia brought out more elegant playing in both musicians, flowing as if inevitable, and at times seeming like a prayer. Then the affable fourth-movement canon - which begins like a mint after dessert but then builds back to the big drama, in which Bell was pulling every last bit of sound from the fiddle. What a performance.

Also vying for top highlight of the evening was Bell's performance of Ysae's "Ballade," the third of six sonatas that the composer wrote for solo violin. Again, so many notes, so many double-stops, and triple-stops, tenths, string-crossings, weird voicings...Even a well-versed reader of music might squint in confusion at the sheet music for this piece - Ysae was being so inventive in his writing that he created a full page of special-instruction symbols to get across his ideas and innovations for the violinist.

Also on the program was Bach's Violin Sonata No. 4 in C minor, written for violin and harpsichord (as was everything in the days before the fortepiano was invented). I was not familiar with this piece, but I could definitely become a fan, especially of the fourth movement which was full of counterpoint and intricate rhythms that occasionally felt little jazzy with syncopation. Bell took a modern approach to the interpretation, which also fit with performing the piece on a modern piano. In recent years, because of the period performance movement, I've become more accustomed to hearing big-bellied notes, sighing phrases and tinkly harpsichord in Baroque music, so to me Bell's version sounded almost Romantic. But this was artful phrasing and beautiful playing, a reminder that Bach can be played successfully in so many different ways.

As an encore, Bell played Wieniawski's showy "Scherzo-Tarantelle," and then concluded with his own arrangement of Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, a very familiar and appealing piece that Bell recently recorded as an Amazon Original. "If you like it," Bell said, "you can go home and 'Ask Alexa!'"

November 2, 2019 at 03:22 PM That has never happened on any of my instruments since I had gear pegs installed in them. The only downside is that it's made me a little complacent about humidification. This winter, however, both my violin and my viola will be kept in my practice room, which will have its own temperature and humidity controls independent of the house.

"Bach can be played successfully in so many different ways." Not only is that very true, but if you think about it, it's really not all that true of stuff like Sarasate. Bach is more adaptable, more versatile.

November 3, 2019 at 10:55 PM We live in LA and it happened to all of our instruments too last week. Same thing with my to kids' friends from orchestra. Loose pegs, violins and cellos impossible to tune...Guess it's time to get the Dampits back to work :-)

November 6, 2019 at 01:35 AM Laurie, Loved reading your reveiw of the performance. I was also in the house and had felt that in the Schubert (1st piece which you did not discuss) that he was overpowered by the piano. I am not familiar with the piece so I was not sure if that was Disney Hall's acoustics, intentional on Schubert's part or a mismatch of the Huberman with the Rondo, especially so as in the rest of the program Bell had the violin just singing. Do you know the piece and have any insight?

November 6, 2019 at 09:52 PM Steve, I agree, I felt the piano was a little overpowering in the Schubert, and as a result the drama was not coming across in the same way that it did for the rest of the performance. I am not familiar with that piece, but I wondered if it was a little piano-centric in the way that it was written.

The library comes with 18 reverb IR, all chosen specifically to offer the most beautiful and lush sounds. This piano sounds beautiful, rich and intimate, while retaining its clarity and character, even at low velocities, making it perfect for film/TV/underscore/drama and so much more.

A lovely piano with beautiful soft dynamics which is a joy to play and particularly good for quieter emotional passages. The best part? VSTBuzz are offering it for free + it works with the free Kontakt 7 Player.

Estoy realmente impresionado con la calidad del plugin y la diferencia notable que ha hecho en mi composicon musical. Su generosidad no solo ha enriquecido mi experiencia musical, sino que tambin ha ampliado mis horizontes creativos.

I read some of the reviews on Facebook complaining that the piano was bass heavy. I think it is just musicians who use instruments out of the box without adjustments. That is what EQ is for and adding a high pass filter fixes that issue right away. Very decent piano especially for the price. And yes, you need to use Kontakt Player 7 as documented.

Pra mim um piano que no deixa a desejar a nem um outro, timbres de excelncia, qualidade mpar e muita gostosa de ouvir e focar, e viciante tocar e ficar ouvindo a reverberao do timbre para nena pelo produto e aguardo por mais produtos assim .

12 Velocity Layers is very fine. It can be used in many styles. The sound is very nice and realistic.

The settings are intuitive.

Overall as a free tool it is definitely worth having in my library.

A Neumann SM-69 tube microphone was placed about 40 cm over the hammers about where middle C is. This gives a natural stereo image, still enough closeness to not lose contact with the instrument, even when played softly.

The samples have all been recorded in crystal clear quality, with a subtle sense of stereo width and a fairly close, dry recorded perspective that, nonetheless, amply captures the unique character of each instrument.

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Casio ctx700 is inexpensive (relatively) and would be a better tool for piano. Sorry to give you an answer that is a purchase, any workaround will probably be unsatisfactory when trying to use Keystep to play piano sounds. That is mostly because while Keystep and Digitakt together WILL chromatically modulate pitch, it will be the pitch of a single sample and will not sound at all organic as the piano sound that you enjoy and are trying to achieve does.

Using a Retrokits Rk-002 cable you can do some interesting things with midi loopback, but I think a cheap rompler, even a secondhand piano rompler, will ultimately make you much happier. It will perform much more like a piano and in some cases will be a midi controller in itself so you may be able to substitute that for the Keystep while recording. You could also consider sampling that into the Digitakt as chords or riffs and then using those new sampled sounds on tracks, then control the Digitakt with your Keystep as the end game.

Honestly, if you want to use high quality sample for piano or at least really decent, go buy a MPC one or MPC live.

There is sample pack for Piano which are quite good !

Plug your keystep on it, it will provide you in a DawLess scenario everything you need to play Piano, Rhodes, similar sounding keys.

It will be less painful than trying anything using the Digitakt for that purpose. I really love the Digitakt, but you will be disappointed. You will learn lots doing that with a Digitakt, but not musically.

The DT is a one shot/loop player with tons of capability, but not a keygroup/Kontakt/NNXT player. Wrong tool for the goal here.

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