J. T.—1. Slow and methodical practice is the best prescription for a careless pupil, one of the hit and miss kind. Such pupils must be made to play very slowly and with extreme accuracy until each passage is satisfactorily mastered.
2. A stiff wrist must be remedied by physical work done away from the piano. Exercises for relaxation of the arm will prove of greatest benefit. After proper arm control has been acquired the “stiff wrist” will be a thing of the past.
A. E. C.—1. In the alternation of the clinging legato and elastic touches in the two-finger exercises, you are correct in thinking that the second key is released by an up motion of the forearm rather than by a finger staccato. It may be done by a finger staccato, but such is not the general custom at present.
2. In the chord of five notes in the Chopin A major Prelude the thumb of the right hand is laid across the A-sharp and the C-sharp, striking both keys and enabling the notes of the chord to be taken simultaneously.
3. Although makers differ as to the covering of the pin-block of a piano with a metal plate, we fail to see how it can have any effect upon the tone of the instrument.
X. R.—Josef Hofmann is Russian by birth, but his present home is in Berlin. He began to study as a child, and appeared in public as a prodigy pianist at ten years of age. He was born at Warsaw, June 20, 1877.
