Welcome to the Piano World Piano Forums Over 3 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments. Over 100,000 members from around the world.
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
I am a clarinetist who has decided to go back and learn piano for real. I did listen to the BachScholar for awhile. I was pretty fascinated ( I am beginner on piano). I even went as far as contacting him to start lessons but, something came up and I cancelled. Good thing, I suppose.
Just recently he has posted some beg for money ads stating in one that he has some people that are suing him although he never states why. In another ad he writes that there is a child support issue going on and they have used much of their money fighting it. And another ad I saw yesterday states that he must moved back to Florida, blah, blah, blah.
I find it amazing that someone would get into legal problems and then, have that audacity to go on youtube and beg for money to keep BachScholar going. I did write a sentence or two on his wive's FB asking why his business is being affected by money that should be coming from his personal income.
I am so glad that I read all the things on here including his playing issues. To the novice piano ear we do not know better. I do not feel sorry for him but, he is trying to capitalize on his client's feeling sorry.
If I'm recalling correctly, he is an organist, also. I think over the years since his doctorate, organ-isms must have entered into his piano playing too much. Otherwise, I feel he gets criticized a bit too severely. Many of his videos are at practice tempos so people studying the works can hear what's going on more clearly. He may well be a fine Skype teacher.
I disagree with his Bach tempo theories.
A certain amount of "puffery" (exaggerated self-promotion as in advertising) gets misinterpreted as arrogance.
I've never really found his claims about Bach's approach to tempos to be very convincing. For me a lot of it falls prey to what in Math is termed the "law of small numbers". For any given Bach piece, there's a fairly wide range of tempi that might be considered reasonable in performance. So if you take a few connected pieces (e.g. a prelude and fugue, or the different sections of the toccata and fugue), there will almost always be some tempo at which to perform each section that happen to make the section lengths come out to nice ratios.
Not because of any plan or deep meaning on Bach's part, but just by sheer coincidence and/or cooking the length of each piece appropriately to make the numbers come out right. You could do the same thing a large portion of the time even if you looked at a pair of completely unrelated short pieces composed centuries apart.
This thread snagged my interest a little. I watched part of his hand exercise video - Tausig exercise. I'll check out the whole vid later and try it out.
Off hand, he seems like a poor man's wanna-be Donald Trump. When Mohammad Ali bragged about himself, seems like he had a wink in his eye. He didn't believe all his noise. One gets the sense that this guy really means it.
I wonder if he has any videos of him playing one of his compositions. Being the genius he is, I think he'd have written music making points that Beethoven and Schoenberg missed. He would be showing us the musical error of their ways. Just sayin'.
Given he's discussed here, he clearly reached some level of fame
He has nice Joplin rags from him there that are worth listening to.
He makes good recordings (good sound and video). He looks relaxed and solid while playing, even when it gets harder he just goes on metronomically as if nothing happens.
But that is also his weakness. There is stiffness/rigidity in his playing that I like less (e.g., in his la campanella below). This may be more about interpretation but IMHO playing a showpiece with a metronome-like stability is silly. Even his victory wave at the end looks studied Maybe he is just showing how to learn the piece, not sure.
His bragging about the Bach stuff is a bit silly but I guess it's a way of selling things. I don't bother with that, I'm not into Bach anyway.
Given he's discussed here, he clearly reached some level of fame
He has nice Joplin rags from him there that are worth listening to.
He makes good recordings (good sound and video). He looks relaxed and solid while playing, even when it gets harder he just goes on metronomically as if nothing happens.
But that is also his weakness. There is stiffness/rigidity in his playing that I like less (e.g., in his la campanella below). This may be more about interpretation but IMHO playing a showpiece with a metronome-like stability is silly. Even his victory wave at the end looks studied Maybe he is just showing how to learn the piece, not sure.
His bragging about the Bach stuff is a bit silly but I guess it's a way of selling things. I don't bother with that, I'm not into Bach anyway.
Relaxed? Sorry, but he plays with a LOT of tension... it's painful to watch his hands while playing.
He's just a deluded amateur or be it a reasonably good one. Fairly competent technically (by amateur standards), he's got virtually nothing to say musically.
He's just a deluded amateur or be it a reasonably good one. Fairly competent technically (by amateur standards), he's got virtually nothing to say musically.
Is this supposed to be a burn or do you truly believe a paycheck is necessary for greatness?
Bobby Jones was a amateur. As were Gregor Mendel, Michael Faraday, and many others who outshone the "pros".
BachScholar is making a living doing what he does so it seems he actually understands the difference between professional and amateur.
But yes, he is one stiff leaden toned player with an amazing memory.
You mean he's a pro? OMG!!! People will buy anything it seems. I didn't mean amateur pejoratively, I just assumed he was one. In this case it seems we have that rare beast, a deluded professional
Ignorant, pretentious and unfounded theories on a Richard Kastle scale? Or a refreshing and interesting re-evaluation of Bach's work? What do we think of him?
If anyone doesn't know who I'm talking about, search for his videos on Youtube. The one where he compares himself to a prophet is quite good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tRVudoNMLA
Im just being candid here, what is your point with a thread like this? What do we think about him? You already have your opinion, shouldnt that be enough for you? Leave it to everyone to figure out on their own, they are all intelligent to find out what they want to know about him. This suggests more on you than anything else sorry to say.
I would assume that the majority of people who learn piano do not use the Suzuki method. Given what I have learned thus far from my teacher who shall remain nameless there seems to be concepts that are lacking. As with my band instruments I teach hand position, carriage, posture,etc.
When I started Suzuki it was straight into the book with no mentioning of hand position, finger position, nothing about the wrist, what part of the finger touch the keys, what part of the key is touched. I think it was one of my last lessons ( I took for 4 months due to circumstances beyond my control) that a statement was made about my thumb needed to stay over the keys. Gosh, I wish that had been stated earlier!
I see the weaknesses of the Suzuki method if those kids do not in fact read music. Since I am already involved with music I did read music. I cannot image learning by rote or staring at the keys. In college we had class piano ( hated those things) we did scales, chords, modes, etc. No scales with this teacher.
So would it be correct to assume that there are actually teachers out there that leave so much information out to of their teaching?
Ignorant, pretentious and unfounded theories on a Richard Kastle scale? Or a refreshing and interesting re-evaluation of Bach's work? What do we think of him?
If anyone doesn't know who I'm talking about, search for his videos on Youtube. The one where he compares himself to a prophet is quite good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tRVudoNMLA
Well....he did compliment me on one of my Beethoven videos saying something about I played the slow movement well. In a lovely pretentious way. So I might be less harsh on him. :p
When I started Suzuki it was straight into the book with no mentioning of hand position, finger position, nothing about the wrist, what part of the finger touch the keys, what part of the key is touched. I think it was one of my last lessons ( I took for 4 months due to circumstances beyond my control) that a statement was made about my thumb needed to stay over the keys. Gosh, I wish that had been stated earlier!
FYI, hand position, finger position, and posture are part of the very first lesson in Suzuki piano, and this is the very first area covered in Suzuki piano teacher training.
The only excuse I can possibly think of is that you had some piano background already and your teacher thought your hand position etc. was generally good.
Honestly, this post makes me wonder if your teacher was really a trained Suzuki teacher, or just someone who happened to order the Suzuki book.
Heather Reichgott, piano
Working on: Mel (Mélanie) Bonis - Sevillana, La cathédrale blessée William Grant Still - Three Visions
I actually signed up and had a lesson with Cory but I'm a relative beginner (getting back to piano after 50 some years) and don't have the skills to evaluate. The lesson was fun and inspiring but from what I am reading here it looks like will be better served by stopping with him. I just got online to do some research and see lots of complaints about him.
![[Linked Image]](https://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/RedDotMedalSmall.jpg)
