Originally posted by pianojerome:
Heinrich Neuhaus, the teacher of Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, also used to teach his students about cooking.

Imagine, he would say, that you want to cook some potatos. So you start the water boiling in a pot. You wait, but you get impatient... and before the water has finished boiling, you turn off the burner and go do something else. 10-15 minutes later you come back to finish boiling the water, but -- alas! -- the water has by that time cooled back down.

So this time, you wait a little longer... this time the water actually begins to boil... but you get impatient again and turn off the burner before putting the potatoes in, and you go do something else. When you come back later, the water has cooled down again.

Finally, you realize what is going on... you turn on the burner again and wait very patiently for 15 minutes until the pot of water is in full boil, with water spitting out the sides, and then finally you are able to put the potatoes in and cook them and enjoy a nice meal.


So what does this have to do with playing piano? It takes a long, uninterrupted time just to get the water boiling... just to get to the point where a passage is finally beginning to make sense, and you can play it well without any mistakes. But that is only the beginning... you still have to cook the potatoes. So if you get up and leave before reaching this point in your practice, you will not reap the benefits that you would get if you keep on going.

If the passage is easy, then you don't have to practice it as much. If it is harder, then you have to practice more. But however long it takes, it is going to take even longer if you are impatient and spontaneous about it. [/b]

Originally posted by PoStTeNeBrAsLuX:
...and that listening to a good singer or violinist can help in understanding how not to rush and to achieve a good cantabile tone and expression.... [/b]