Good morning everyone, I hope I have chosen the right section to ask for the following advice:
I have been taking private lessons for 3 months now and I recently started practicing (starting from absolute zero); I am quite meticulous and I consider any discussion related to the Piano important, especially now that I am in the complete learning phase. My teacher had me start some exercises from Antonio Trombone's beginner book at 50bpm where, in the finger training exercises, you have to hold one key pressed down and "hammer" (as he says) the other keys to train each individual finger. What I am asking for is indeed your advice and opinion on whether this is the right way for you, because to be honest, hammering the keys with force has raised some doubts in me.
Technique, or rather I would say the restrictive exercise of legato notes, has proven to be a failure. And yet, its promoters were Pozzoli and even Liszt. Every form that forces the contraction of small and large muscles is against all good sense. The energy that the student will gradually acquire during their studies will be generated by learning how to relax the muscles and how to "combine" the assistance of the large muscles to the small muscles. It cannot be explained by words alone. Technical growth does not lie in muscular training, but in understanding how our rich muscular apparatus can be best exploited. Every technical formula must be approached with awareness and patience, without expecting to achieve great skill in a very short time. Everything that generates fatigue is wrong. I recommend reading (like a novel... without becoming "obsessed" with it) Sandor's wonderful book "How to Play the Piano," published by Edizioni Economica BUR (I believe).
