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New Dynamic Finger Power
by Roy Holmes
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 1st September 2011
ISBN: 978-1-908477-26-2
Price: €35.00
Roy Holmes is on a mission to cut through the dogma that has been constructed around piano playing ever since the words STRIKE THE KEYS were first used. By retrieving and analysing the approach of the earliest keyboardists, he has brought their fundamental methodology into sharp focus in a logical and methodical way, providing for today’s pianists, and their teachers, a springboard, from which they may take a quantum leap into their own realms of technical and musical possibility.
This investigation offers an intriguing exploration into the practical needs of the performer and the creative concepts of the composer. Technically informative and innovative, the project has the potential to breathe new life into too easily accepted traditional limitations.
Dr. Philip Hammond, composer and pianist.
Roy Holmes rationalises and verbalises a new approach to the core principles of piano technique so successfully in this thought provoking book, I would warmly recommend it to all piano students and teachers.
Dr. Una Hunt, pianist.
In a remarkably readable form, the author brings to life the great but rather obscurely transmitted two-and-ahalf- century-old tradition of piano playing. His notational rendition of Chopin is unique.
Prof. Yo Tomita, Queen’s University, Belfast.
I am most impressed by your concentration on the nitty-gritty of finger control and balance. A rare distillation indeed — your approach is unique, and works.
Kenneth Weir, pianist.
I have been right through your remarkable work twice, tried lots of the exercises, and am convinced!
John York, pianist.
About the Author
One of Ireland’s foremost pianists and piano teachers, ROY HOLMES holds qualifications from Queen’s University Belfast, Royal College of Music, London, Indiana University, Bloomington, and Temple University, Philadelphia. He has considerable experience as a soloist and chamber musician and is a lecturer in the Keyboard Department at Dublin Institute of Technology Conservatory of Music and Drama. Born in Carrickfergus Co. Antrim, he has a particular interest in piano music by Irish composers, and has recorded the two-piano music of Joan Trimble with Una Hunt on the Naxos Marco Polo label.
His preoccupation with technique was first inspired by his studies with the renowned Dieter Weber at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, where he spent three years after graduating from Queen’s University Belfast. As a pianist and teacher Weber had an open mind and was constantly thinking and rethinking his approach to piano technique. This apprenticeship prepared Roy for his studies with the legendary György Sebök at Indiana University. Here the technical focus changed from fingers to include the rest of the body.
A few years later, now working on his own, he came fully under the influence of the weight transfer/rotation method; the fingers had become almost completely redundant, the sound being made by a constant rotation or a constant dropping, lifting and levering at the wrist, or further up the arm. The catalyst for rethinking this approach was a performance of Shostakovich’s piano concerto no. 1 with the Ulster Orchestra, when he found it impossible to use the rotational method with any degree of speed, combining brilliance and reliability.
During a year’s study with Harvey Wedeen at Temple University Roy moved towards a personal technical synthesis. He became aware of the significance of being able to aim simultaneously (or almost so) for different depths with different fingers of the same hand.
This journey towards technical resolution in piano playing has preoccupied Roy Holmes throughout his professional life, and has led him to this study edition of selected Préludes and Études by Chopin.
