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I recently came across this interesting case - not a first however. A student 14 years old who had several Chopin nocturnes, etudes and the 1st and 3rd ballades in his repertoire.

In my first meeting with him, I was glad that I was helping an advanced student. He played the 2 ballades he knew and Chopin's 8th etude. The problem was evident immediately: he wasn't technically equipped to handle the difficulties in any of these pieces!

My issue here is not him per se or his study habits, but the teacher(s) who gave him these pieces without providing him with some good quality excercises for his fingers. One of the first things I put him under were the 1st 6 studies in Hanon's method book. He handled the 1st 2 studies with mediocrity and he severely lacked evenness, and he crashed with the following 4 studies, pretty much giving up.

I've decided to put him under much-needed Hanon and now the mom complains I'm taking him a step back. This is very dis-heartening for me but the truth is I don't want him to be under the impression that his sub-mediocrity is perfectly fine, or that he should even be tackling these pieces. According to him he would've been playing Chopin's 4th ballade very soon. And how?!!!

Is Hanon the usual solution for anyone else who might have had a student like this?

I mean - my problem put very simply in this way:

A kid playing Chopin's 1st ballade (or 3rd ballade) who has no awareness of tempo, can't play legato, overuses the pedal and lacks the technique to execute the work(s) properly(????). What kind of teacher lets this go on?

You could try turning some of his Chopin into exercises.

I don't think Hanon is going to cure much of what's wrong.

I think a TRUE and complete step back, chucking the big pieces out the window and doing music that he can actually play well, is absolutely going to happen. If you volunteer to be the one to do it though, you may quickly get dumped for another teacher.

I would say Mozart sonatas, Bach fugues, and other real music that is impossible to fake, would do him much more good than Hanon - which is more boredom than it's worth IMO.

Thanks for the advice David.

The "impossible to fake" is certainly what I'm going for, and Mozart or Bach can do that. It's his fingers, PERIOD. They're not trained at all. He probably couldn't play 'Fur Elise' evenly.

I just don't want this hurting the reputation I'm beginning to acquire since I live in a private community where this could all turn against me. I have several students.

The mother is very proud of her son's accomplishments but she didn't like the idea of him moving back a step. She takes it that I'm just slowing him down when he is in fact very talented. AND there's no way on earth he could fix half the mistakes in his repertoire. I hope he likes the idea of Bach or Mozart, or surely this kid will quit and the mom will be happy. =(

In that case go for Mazurkas.

It's time to go back to basics. Scales and arpeggios every day without fail. I was going to suggest some Brahms exercises but those are beyond him. Czerny exercises - not the 51 we're used to seeing, but the lesser known ones - are fun to play and can be very musical.

I'm sure the mom is very proud, but the reality of the situation is that if something isn't done now, someone else will be much more rude to her in the future. Explain that her son needs to shore up his basic skills and make a comparison with any great athlete or musician that regularly goes back to his roots. Michael Jordan spent hours practicing dribbling and simple jump shots knowing that those two skills at the highest level would allow him to do greater things. Time and time again, concert pianists start from the beginning and rebuild their technique. Every few years, I hear, Murray Perahia returns to scales and arpeggios and rebuilds his technique with them. He practices only scales and arpeggios.

Liszt believed that in order to become a master at piano, one had to practice technique - scales, arpeggios, octaves, trills - for hours a day. I think it was some ungodly number like four. So in the end it is no big deal to go back to the basics. The challenge is (some reverse psychology here) how well her son will be able to handle it. If he's truly gifted and dedicated to piano, he will understand the value of these exercises and devote his time to practicing the foundations of piano playing.

I'd couch this with some talk about general musicianship activities such as theory, sightreading, ear training, basic composition, and see how well that goes over.

Best of luck!

Remember that recent "comparisons" thread.

Well, now may be the time to give mom a cold shower. Compare her son to students who have a proper technical foundation. Do it in a clinical, matter-of-fact way that avoids judgmental tone. You may lose them, or you may convince them. Better to lose them now if they are untrainable. If you convince them, you will have more willing partners for whatever remedial approach you take. You win either way.

BTW, I like Hanon for finger dexterity if used judiciously. But I agree that you may face attitude problems in telling an older student to begin such 'basics.' Scales and arpeggios are also basics, but it may be easier to convince student and mom that they are part of the arsenal of any serious musician.

I don't think it'a an issue about "which" exercise is the best to "treat" his technical problems.
It'a all about awareness: you believe the guy needs technical work, mom and son don't.

I think you mentioned a few nice examples of what he cannot accomplish: make them listen to something on par and compare it with his performance (may a recording can do the trick).
If they recognize the difference you have a totally new student probably willing to improve; if they don't you have a clear sign that the son is probably untrainable.

You have provided the solution in your above quote.

Have him play Hanon #1 in front of mom, and then you play it. Explain that the first few Hanon exercises are very basic, and that a student with 6 months of study should be able to do them easily, perhaps hands separate, but like you did, much better than this boy.

The fact that he could not even do the first one, which is basically a simplified scale, without errors and very unmusically indicates that the he has not been properly prepared, and that the only way you can help him is to take him back to the beginning and rebuild / build a proper foundation.

As others have said, you might lose him, but what is your option? To keep him you will battle and struggle, and likely not get anywhere. As Sviatoslav wisely said above, it is an awareness of the deficiency issue that is foundational to any progress.

I disagree with your assessment of this student and your handling of him. You're doing it strictly by the book (he doesn't have "foundation" and thus you're giving him "foundation"), which seems to justify your approach. That's easy way to handle it, but this calls for much more flexible approach, in my opinion.

First of all, putting him on Hanon studies is not going to give him the foundation for the Ballades in no time. Anyone should be able see that. What I would do is to work with what you've got, so to speak. He can play the ballades, at least in some measure (and of course he's not going to sound like Arrau at this point). So work with that. Let him keep working on them, using repetition and time to smooth things out. With patience, and time, the ballades should fall in place under his fingers.

We know that this method takes ten years for ONE piece, and that not up to a good standard either. Your method is what the boy has already been doing, and we see the results.

,

I agree with Gyro on this one. simply asking the kid to go back to scales, arpeggios, Czerny, and Hannon is the easy way out, it is usually what the less competent teacher will do -- they go by the book.

A competent teacher should be able to create customized exercise regimen specific for the repertoire at hand. The kid is 14, he should have no problem reaching an octave with ease, so physically, he should be able to play anything.

If the kid and his mom think his playing is so awesome, let them listen to or watch how the best play the same pieces, maybe they will be humble enough to go along with the remedial program.

I'd like to thank everyone for their comments and help. Very appreciative.

It's 18:00 over here and the lesson was over an hour ago. I am still his teacher. =)

Getting more information on what kind of things he was asked to prepare for lessons, not once did I hear scales or anything that might resemble a method book for building up technique. I played several passages of the 1st ballade for him so that he also understood and observed what he is doing wrong, not because he's a bad pianist but because he hasn't obtained the sufficient agility and/or dexterity in his fingers to achieve a higher degree of fluidity.

It'll be Hanon exercises 1-6 for about a month until his fingers start showing serious improvement. I followed someone's advice of something like Bach or Mozart and my student happily accepted claiming he had wanted to do a piece like that for some time.

I think I'll be able to help him out and also help him polish up his repertoire for his satisfaction. I just don't understand what kind of teacher ignores technique?!!! I'm sure nobody here gives any of their students advanced pieces just to show him/her off as their student. Despite his accomplishments with 2 of Chopin's ballades, they remain way past his technical ability. As a student I must've done Chopin's complete nocturnes before I even dreamt of wanting to do the 1st ballade. My teacher was highly aware of what I could and couldn't do, and I'll try to follow that example.

I must admit, I fail to see how an abysmal performance of a technically challenging piece would "show off" a student in a way that would benefit a teacher.

Me neither, but surely I can't think of many reasons why a teacher would do that. In retrospect, I remember perceiving that in my teacher when I was barely a teenager when for a concert she was dying to have me perform last, which meant that I was performing the most difficult piece. Lucky for me, I didn't make a fool of myself trying to learn something much harder and opted for a much easier nocturne by Chopin. The Schubert impromptu the girl played at the end was way* out of my league. So afterall I do believe some teachers push their students too much, especially when these concerts/recitals become about whose student is the most advanced. I knew my teacher was one of those, but she didn't push me too much, luckily.

Are you saying those posters who made such suggestions are "less competent"??

When Czerny first took Liszt as a student, he made Liszt play nothing but scales and technical exercises...for TWO YEARS!

You are justified in having him do Hanon and some other exercises (you could try the Jazz Hanon if you want to make this more interesting for him harmonically and if you want to involve all keys and hand orientations). Maybe try giving him some pieces from Mikrokosmos (again, more interesting harmonically). However, kicking out those pieces that he's been playing will be received well neither by the student nor by the mother. What you can do is, you can work on one of them, two measures at a time, at each lesson. Maybe you'll have him play that ballade much better in 4-5 months from now along with having him do the basic technical exercises, scales and arpeggios if you allocate time wisely (do just 10 mins of the ballade.. 2 measures should take 10 minutes of explaining and demonstrations. Move on only if he perfects those for the next lesson and make sure he memorizes the connections with the previous measure and the succeeding measure, so that you teach him how to memorize effectively along the way). Strictly instruct him NOT to play at speed. Have him play it at an extremely slow tempo. Tell him never to try out what he just practiced at speed to "see" what it sounds like. Just a few suggestions..

William, I'm just curious, but what does your student think about his playing? I realize his mother believes he is immensely talented, but does your student hold the same opinion? Unless I missed it in this thread, I didn't read any indication that the mom and son have the same high opinion of the son's playing. Is it possible he realizes his current skills are woefully inadequate to conquer the pieces his previous teacher assigned? Perhaps he realizes this, and desperately wants to improve his basic skills, but, as he apparently hasn't had a decent teacher until now, he doesn't know how to go about doing so.

One reason is staring you right in the face. Student and mother were convinced that he was advancing and advanced. Everyone's happy, right? - what a wonderful teacher who can make his student "advance" so fast. How wonderful everyone is. If a student does notice that his later pieces can't be brought to sounding decent, he won't know why he's struggling. I mean who would know that when you are "advanced" the solution lies in what you should have gotten in the beginning, while under the guidance of a teacher? Why would anything be missing? It is close to a betrayal of trust. As student I am glad you are doing this.