Here's a quick review of yesterday's master class. Firstly, there were none of the problems I've noticed in some other classes with how the student performers were treated (either too harshly or with kid gloves).
But most importantly, Rosenbaum had so many great and convincing ideas. He said that many pianists(as opposed to violinists for example) try to play too evenly on say a passage of 8th notes. He was constantly trying to get the participants to play passages so that every phrase was more meaningful, expressive, rhetorical. He often did this by making up words to fit the passage and singing them. He warned about putting composers into categories and illustrated this by playing parts the Schubert like second movement of Beethoven's Op. 90 and the Beethoven like first movement of Schubert Sonata in A minor Op. 42. He told us the following story. A student played the Sarabande from Bach's C minor Partita correctly but unconvincingly. Then he told the student "What if the name of the piece wasn't Sarabande, but Lament on the loss of a child?" For Rosenbaum, all music seems to be highly Romantic and he is always focussed on exopressing that emotion. He was very good at illustrating differences (what the student was doing vs. what he wanted) at the piano. The audience ant the student participants immediately liked him.
He said he felt that students and teachers sometimes overemphsize the use of contrast so that what students play as ff vs. pp should be more like f vs. mp (otherwise the loud places are too harsh and the soft places are too weak).
All the above is really a very poor summary of what what I saw and heard and doesn't really do justice to Rosenbaum. I think he is a truly great teacher!
