I had the great pleasure of attending the Paul Galbraith masterclass, and came away totally inspired by three hours’ worth of great tips and anecdotes. These are the notes I wrote down after the class. They are very subjective and most probably contain mistakes—it would definitely have been worth it to have a tape recorder running the whole time and to transcribe from that. My head is still spinning, soo many useful things were said.

Colt Valenti played a Menuet from a Mozart piano sonata (K.V. 330 or so) that he was preparing for a competition. Unfortunately, he had picked a transcription with some incorrect bass notes, so some time had to be spent on identifying and correcting the errors. Miguel Llobet had done a fantastic transcription of the same piece, which I am sure Colt will look into.

But here comes all the valuable information. One can typefy composers of that time into Adagio and Andante composers, according to what they liked to compose and how they played. It is strange, Galbraith thought, that record companies are bringing out recordings of Mozart’s Adagios since he was known as a “fast” player—apparently, his tempi in performance were on the fast side. At some point he also talked about doing cross-string trills, but warned about over-ornamenting, because many ornaments are already written into the music. One also needs to know the harmonic rhythm of the piece, of Menuets in general, to see what the composer started out with and what he added. Now how’s this for a wonderful piece of information: courtly dances with flourishes were used to show off the latest fashions. He mentioned that the previous piece ended on the Dominant of the is one. As far as general interpretation tips were concerned, he talked about the use of gravity instead of placing an accent on a particular note—accents can be a sign of insecurity! This shortly after explaining that technique means the art of playing, which is always evolving and does not concern itself solely with playing fast. Also, 85% of interpretation problems are man-made, because they see all these black notes on a page. One of his teachers must have coached a lot of singers, who wanted to do Mozart Arias with him, but he preferred to spend his whole coaching session on the Recitativos, and by the end the singers would find all their questions answered.

Ray Garafalo next played a Tango. The first thing Galbraith did, if I got this right, was to say he doesn’t know that much about Tangos and proceeded to ask some questions. I admire a person who will turn everything into a learning experience. Then, of course, he became extremely prolific. He talked about the underlying rhythm of this tango being in 8th notes, which gave the whole piece a much more intense feel. Another great anecdote: Chopin’s piano playing was characterized by a very steady rhythm in the left hand, while the right hand wandered and came back. I also liked the part about whittling a difficult passage down to the three notes that really cause the problem instead of playing the whole passage over and over again. Galbraith got into the use of the left hand wrist for a while with Ray (not just the arm and the fingers).

More about technique: first of all, the original concept of a piece often gets clouded over by technical worries. Use big motions to teach your hand, then they become imperceptible. As far as I could see, he likes the use of figure eights and the use of the wrists in both hands...Fortes are easier to do than pianos, that’s why people can shout (or maybe sing) at the top of their lungs for a long time.

Tristan Bligh next played the A-minor Bach Fugue. Galbraith first rattled off each and every piece in g-minor, the original key of the piece, because it is important to know the character of the music Bach would write in a particular key. He then mentioned that Bach had no problem transposing pieces to different keys for different instruments. He spoke about similar themes to this one, and about the fact that Bach could use the same theme for a very sacred piece and the Kaffee Kantate. I believe he said that another composer had used the exact same theme somewhere else. More anecdotes: Bach took long walks just to find the right theme, but once he had it, he could write down a piece in a matter of minutes. And that he told his pupils to give him a theme, and he would tell them what they would be able to do with it and exactly how long the piece would be. In order to get a better feel for this fugue, Galbraith suggested first playing an eighth note instead of doing the eighth-note rest, then of course leaving it out again. He learned a lot from conducting lessons. He also talked quite a bit about articulations that start on an upbeat and go to a strong beat. I believe the high-falutin’ term for this is French phrasing instead of Italian, which starts on the strong beat and tapers off from there. He would find a text underlay for the phrase.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember much after that. I know Elizabeth Brown played from El Decameron Negro by Leo Brower.

-Mary Lord

Editor's Note: Elizabeth performed the second movement, “La Huida de los amantes por el valle de los Ecos.” Galbraith used the image of a traditional yodeler calling from a mountaintop for the opening narrative section. Also, this piece has two “galloping” sections in either free or constantly shifting meter. Galbraith encouraged emphasizing the rhythmic groupings in these sections, to increase the drama and to give a greater sense of direction.