Arm Weight and Piano Playing

My personal arm weight journey began at age 13, when I enrolled at the NYC High School of Performing Arts. The preceding summer, I’d been a music camper at Merrywood in Lenox, Massachusetts where I’d met student cellist, Douglas Freundlich who regaled his aunt Lillian as an exceptional, Manhattan-based piano teacher.

Such a name drop, well timed amidst Bach Brandenburg 5 rehearsals, inspired a musical life-changing event. In a deep well of frustration, partnered with a mentor at the time, who omitted a basic approach to singing tone production and whole arm relaxation techniques, I needed to be relieved of un-blissful ignorance and physical tension.

That’s when Lillian Lefkofsky Freundlich came into my life and made an eternal imprint that was her legacy to my practicing, recording, and teaching.

The first few lessons were singular immersions in dropping my arms with supple wrists and relaxed hands/fingers, onto individual keys. I was being sensitized to “tone” that was full and round–not punched, poked, or squeezed upon impact. The ingredients of “sound imagination” and kinesthetic awareness formed a worthy bond, that included relaxed breathing.

Lillian checked my shoulders, wrists, elbows and hands for any trace of tension, while she assessed the balance of each individual finger that had been dropped with a sense of earthbound gravity—without my resistance to a natural fall–never on “hard turf,” but welcomed into a bed of honey. (an invitation to a cosmos of “density” in piano playing)

These arm drops into one finger after another, well-balanced and centered on each key, were the mainstay of many lessons until they expanded into scales wrapped in a seamless legato–framed by effortless, deep breaths that kept them well spaced, and contoured with a supple wrist. (The various motions of forward wrist rolls, rotations, etc. eventually gave shape to phrases embedded in tonal beauty and musical expression that had welled within me but needed modeling and guidance for development.)

To describe in words, the “feeling” of these arm drops that blossomed into multi-note groupings, flowing through rollouts toward destinations–and often governed by harmonic rhythm–is a challenge.

Therefore, the following video demonstration of what Lillian Freundlich shared during my formidable years of piano study, fleshes out her gift, not only to me, but to my many student partners.

from Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten)
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/arm-weight-and-piano-playing/