LYDIA JARDON

LYDIA JARDON

MASTERCLASS

Masterclass courses for future professionals

The aim of this one-year course is to provide future piano professionals with a set of technical and musical solutions designed to perfect their basic training.

The objective is to prepare students for the increasingly demanding national and international tests and competitions they will be taking.

These competitions and examinations over the last fifteen years show a twofold evolution: on the one hand, a significant increase in the number of candidates aspiring to a career as a pianist; on the other hand, an ever more ruthless selection process based on the desire to promote only the best. 

Music is a sovereign art that does not allow for any approximation. However, most of the time, the candidates show mechanical and technical problems that prevent a logical and successful musical construction.

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Therefore, my teaching method is based on three distinct but equally important pillars:

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1/Perfecting pure piano technique

2/The search for musicality

3/Psychological preparation for exams

The presence of these three aspects, which will be studied successively during the year, is essential at the time of examinations and competitions.

1/ Perfecting the pure technique begins with the awareness of the engagement of the body weight at the tip of each finger: what I call the back to front pressure. Only the horizontal and lateral transfer of the gradual energy of the body's weight from one finger to the other will allow us to obtain perfect equality of each finger and a balance of sound between the two hands, depending on the desired musical colour. The body becomes the instrument, the piano the sounding board. 

In addition to this, there is the fundamental learning of the appropriate positioning of the forearms which will condition virtuosity. 

Once these parameters have been integrated, it is essential to master the score both in terms of notes and rhythm in a perfectly rigorous manner.

The traditional pedagogy is to work on the complex passages in a repetitive way. I propose to isolate the difficulty, to eradicate any untimely gesture usually linked to the bad axes of the elbows, then to recondition the good reflexes in a very slow speed before accelerating again very gradually.

At the same time, there is the pedal technique, the use of which is too often instinctive or even neglected. By becoming aware that you can make quarter pedals or half pedals, lengthen or shorten them, you will make the musical discourse much clearer by creating an adequate sound climate.

Misuse of the pedal can seriously compromise the clarity of the musical phrase. 

At the same time, all the work on inverted rhythms will be proposed, which, even if they are intellectually destabilising at the beginning because they are unusual, will prove to be very effective in terms of technical solidity in the mastery of this or that passage.

2/ In a second phase, we will tackle the musicality part so that each person can fully express what he or she has inside. This musicality results from inner listening and is often lacking in future professionals. It is first necessary to define the contours of the musical phrases in order to be able to reproduce them, to learn to sing the phrase internally in order to self-correct.

Inventiveness is also essential. Faced with identical musical lines throughout the piece, nuances have to be created, crescendos and diminuendos have to be incorporated, polyphony has to be released. Each line must be unique from a musical point of view. My teaching will lead the student to find and express his/her own musical language. I will also help him/her to build the global architecture of any performed work, which must be structured and conducted like a conductor with great coherence in order to be clear from the first listening.

The art of rubato, which is a freedom in apparently improvised phrases, will also be studied in depth. Indeed, it is always according to a basic pulse that musical freedom can be organised.

Musicality is all the more important as it is most often the criterion that will decide between candidates in a competition or examination, the technical level being generally roughly equivalent. 

3/ But this immense work of technique and musicality will not produce any results if the candidates are unable to manage their stress before taking a competition, an exam or playing in concert. To achieve this mastery, my teaching focuses on memory and concentration.

The first remedy for dealing with stress is to acquire a flawless memory.

There are three memories:

- Visual memory (the photograph of the score in one's head)

- Muscle memory (where by repeating all the sequences and strokes a large number of times, automatisms are created and become embedded in the muscles almost independently of oneself)

- Intellectual memory. It is the latter that I attach great importance to,

by working "by heart" with the hands separated, with the exact nuances and pedals.

It is enough for one of these three memories to be deficient for the redhibitory incident to occur at the time of the competition or examination.

The second remedy, especially for very young candidates, is to learn to concentrate so that when they sit down in front of the instrument, their mind is focused only on the piano and the score they have memorised.

This necessary ability to concentrate calls for breathing control techniques that I teach my students, taking into account my practice of yoga and meditation. These exams and competitions are of great importance for future piano professionals. This teaching method, which I have developed on the basis of my experience as a concert performer, will give them the keys to succeed.

VERIFICATION OF LEARNING FOR VALIDATION OF THE COURSE :

 

Three months before the end of the course, the candidates will be given three compulsory pieces in three different styles (Baroque, Romantic, Contemporary).

They will have to work on them on their own and present them to Lydia Jardon who will check that the various technical and musical precepts have been integrated.

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