The Long-Awaited Sequel to The Craft of Piano Playing
The cutting edge in technique for advanced pianists
that empowers amateurs and intermediates as well.
A New Evolution in Piano Technique
HONING THE PIANISTIC SELF-IMAGE is the follow-up to The Craft of Piano Playing, Alan Fraser’s comprehensive piano technique. Where Craft focused on the foundational security of the hand’s innate structure and function, Honing shows you how to take that structure up into a new, sophisticated state – unstable equilibrium – to gain an even finer control over the colours and emotion you produce at the piano. You acquire an even greater freedom while losing none of your power, whose refinement actually increases through this process of functional evolution. Honing also relates unstable equilibrium in the hand to a similar state in the body, showing how a harmonious whole-body relationship to the field of gravity is a crucial support to the empowered hand on the keyboard.
Relates Feldenkrais Method to piano technique
The structure of Honing the Pianistic Self-Image is similar to its predecessor – explanatory text alternated with practical applications – and the link to Feldenkrais Method is even clearer in Honing than it was in Craft. Near the end of Honing you’ll find several full-length Awareness Through Movement lessons linking hand function to whole body organization.
Links musicianship to piano technique
Honing is not only about technique but musicianship as well – ‘physical’ chapters are balanced out by those dealing with specifically musical issues, where Fraser links the idea of skeletality to rhythm, phrasing, harmonic colour and orchestration.
Sonya Ardan, Alan Fraser’s stellar artist from his earlier book, has once again turned her keen eye to sketching his hand in attitudes that evoke not just numerous unexplored possibilities for position but also gesture – the hand in movement.
Browse excerpts from Honing the Pianistic Self-Image in our page reader