The fingers of the hand must never be raised, curved hammer-like, kept in rigid positions; they must never make vertical movements but instead maintain a passive position of relaxation, which predisposes to the sensitivity of touch: the fingerpads must “feel” the key and take advantage of their elevated sensitivity to create the sounds and timbres desired.
The so-called “articulation”, or vertical movement of a single finger, taking advantage of the small flexor, abductor and lumbrical finger muscles, and the relative tendon apparatus, causes the total rigidity of the wrists, and it is the cause of uncontrolled, disconnected sound, devoid of expression. The search for height through using the greater muscle mass instead permits control of the sound, the precision, the creation of connection and of sound capable of conveying expression. The articulated movement of the finger is in practice substituted by the controlled movement of the upper arm or the entire arm.
Subjecting the tendon apparatus of the fingers and elbows to force has physical consequences: tendonitis and bursitis at the expense of articulation. The physical limits of execution are given by the scarce capacity of resistance and development of the small muscles, a capacity which contrarily increases in an exponential fashion thanks to the use of the large muscle mass, which above all can be trained, thus increasing their volume (red and white fibres) and consequently their resistance.
The same speed of execution is therefore an ability of resistance and muscular capacity which can be learned and which is the result of constant training.
Other types of movements which use other muscle masses do not minimally allow the control of sound and, on the contrary, the rigidity of articulation; for example the rotary movements of the forearm achieved by the supinator muscles, typical of split octaves and tremolo, and which are taught in some schools even for repeated octaves and re-hit notes, which result inefficient for obtaining control of the sound.
The rigidity of the articulation is often caused also by wrong fingering; each finger of the hand is different from the other, it has its own specific character and favours a specific type of sound; in a melody I often suggest using a unique fingering to favour maximum homogeneousness of sound and maximum control of the connection.
(FIG. 1: Chopin Prelude no. 6 left hand)
(FIG. 2: Chopin Prelude no. 15 right hand)
The position of the hand also has to be maintained in a way as to sustain the weight, in a way as to maintain and not “collapse” the phalanx joints of the fingers and metacarpals (FIG. 3); this common mistake, often not even corrected, is caused by the pressure exerted on the key and does not allow the weight on the tips of the fingers to be correctly reached, causing imprecise sounds, “flattening” of the sound, no consistency to the sound. In fact, no type of pressure should be exerted when lowering the key; each form of pressure, even minimal, will inevitably cause the “flattened” sound, a sound that is thin in harmonics, which cannot expand, free itself, reach the listener.
