Glarilication of performer's concept of a piano work by performing on other musical instruments

This article discusses a pedagogical approach to elucidate and enrich the performer's vision of a piano piece by playing it on another musical instrument whose use is consistent with the character of the work and the professional needs of the learner. The approach is applied to students studying piano as a second instrument. Discussed are two cases of application of the approach in works in varied styles, with varied character and to some extent diverse specific pedagogical purposes. I taught the piece “Lullaby” by Veselin Stoyanov (one of the Bulgarian composers-classics belonging to the generation creators of national musical style). At the moment, I had to work on delimitation the elements of musical thought through “breaths,” ie. on phrasing. The main instrument the learner plays is kaval (a Bulgarian folk woodwind musical instrument with gentle sound). I thought that by performing the tune on the kaval, moments in which it is appropriate to take a breath, will clarify much more easily and naturally. No less important was that, given the timbre characteristics of the folk instruments and the nature of the play - beautiful, gentle, warm, touching melody with finely nuanced accompaniment, it will not “suffer” in an arrangement for kaval and piano, even the use of a new instrument is more likely to suggest new ideas for interpretation. I asked the student to play the soprano melody on the kaval and I accompanied on the piano. We created the arrangement in real time as we played. When he feels “in his own waters" with well-known timbre and expressive possibilities, the student inspiringly began to “create" his own version of the melody - changing technic marks, dynamic nuances, shading individual constructions in a new register, adding meaningful accents, agogics, ornaments. In other classes I prepared a student for a competition of piano performance of works by J. S. Bach and baroque music. The works the student mastered were “Prelude c minor” - No. 3 from “Little Preludes and Fugues” by J. S. Bach and “La Pateline” by F. Couperin. Looking for a timbre resembling the original sonority, I offered the young performer to play the two pieces on harpsichord, on which, after repeatedly playing, discussing and solving a series of tasks (described in the article), we prepared the basic look of the interpretation concept for piano performance. Apart from the concrete benefits of including other musical instruments on enriching the concept of the trained performer for the musical work, there was also a favorable effect to their artistic palette, their musical culture was enriched, they got new ideas for their future work as performers and pedagogues, their motivation was increased.

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