Make your musical lines as long as possible. Rachmaninoff said, “Small musician, small ideas; big musician, big ideas.” After an artist has played a program many times he can soar so high above the music that he conceives the whole event in one arch of sound. Make each phrase prepare for the next; make many phrases into a single strong musical line. When the composer permits, make your phrase endings point upward until you have finished your musical paragraph. Hold audience attention by making the peak of your musical arch near the end of the idea. Try inverted arches; for variety combine several arches so that they form a dynamic circle. Play legato with fingers, here the pedal should supplement rather than cause liquid sound. Obey the composer’s written phrase slurs; make a difference between the small raise-wrist sound of small phrase groupings and the arm-guided ending of a final cadence. Phrasing should be as natural as speaking, never predictably the same, but expressive of innuendo as well as thought.
R. Slenczynska, PianoMusic at your fingertips; aspects of pianoforte technique, advice for the artist and amateur on playing the piano, New York, Da Capo Press, 1974, p. 155.
— Ruth Slenczynska, pianist
Ruth Slenczynska’s advice on musical lines
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Determination not to be hurried
“Nothing can be more useful to a man than the determination not to be hurried.” – Henry David Thoreau
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