A String Player’s Guide to Playing in a Piano Trio
Take a seat in this Ida Kavafian master class
Ida Kavafian walks before the crowd after the second performance of the morning; a piano trio from SUNY Stonybrook has just finished playing Ernest Chausson’s Trio in G minor for piano, violin, and cello. The crowd has gathered at the Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Rehearsal Studio at Lincoln Center to watch her teach a master class, and the players wait expectantly for her critique. “You need to think about sound production,” Kavafian says, pointing at a nine-foot Steinway. “Do you see how much bigger his strings are than yours? If you play the same length as a pianist, the balance won’t be correct.”
She explains that if the students play the length of the note exactly as they see it on the page, it may not be long enough for the acoustics of playing with piano. The piano will naturally ring longer, she says, so they need to learn how to play the acoustic, not necessarily the literal, length of the note.
She asks them to play again.
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