You certainly recognized him: it’s Czerny. Why Czerny? Well, Czerny’s work encompasses 861 opuses, but nowadays the only “works” for which he’s remained famous are his exercises, which worried many budding pianists. Allow me to wonder about these well-known exercises, not only those by Czerny but by others as well.

I’m often asked what exercises I recommend to advance the technique. That’s a problem. I’ve never done it and thus find difficult to see any usefulness in it. I had at home Cortot’s exercises, but used them just as an inspiration for fingering. I practiced one or two weeks the 51 Brahms’ exercises, read some Hanon, but I never forced myself to work these exercises everyday. My friends pianists often recommend them or give them to their students, but except the fact that these studies are short and thus give a short-term objective, what is the real benefit of this work?

Most of these exercises date from the 19th century. If some of them can be still relevant in specific cases, a large majority have been written for instruments which are totally different from modern piano. The technique has also changed a lot since Czerny or Hanon, and naturally these pianistic exercises only deal with problems of that time’s repertoire. In order words, you could play all the Hanon exercises, I’m not really sure it would help you, for example, in Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit.

Besides the historical background or the piano’s evolution, I’ve always been thinking that the piano technique stems from observation and thought rather than from “sport”: a gesture adapted to each thing. Based on this point of view, each technical passage is different and it is impossible to find twice the same combination. We would need to practice every possible combination to complete the exercise, which is unimaginable. Wouldn’t it be better to practice the technicalities straight through the repertoire?

Repeating formulas or spending time on pages without musical interest, isn’t it likely to scare young musicians off or to make them focus on technique rather than on music? Technique must remain background, it only exists to realize the musical idea.

I don’t really know what to think about those exercises, even if, as you can see, I’m more inclined against them. What about you? Have you ever practiced some of them? Were they useful?

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