francescochopin90 wrote:On 22/6/2020 at 06:10, francescochopin90 said:
Muscle warming up per se is often not necessary, unless we are at freezing temperatures. Human blood is warm and hands are irrigated with blood. In reality, hands do not need to be warmed up, just as the voice does not, except perhaps in a minimal part, not even remotely comparable to an athlete's warm-up. Personally, I need warming up, yes, but "mental" warming up. It is about getting familiar with the instrument, playing some chords, playing pp (our touch relies entirely on the escapement! The rest of the key travel serves us to manage energy in dynamics and various technical approaches), savoring the tuning (one hopes!), how the instrument vibrates, how the hall responds. But also entering into harmony with the composers we are going to play, etc. Sometimes even being alone, in silence, helps a lot: at least for me!
In public (but also alone) I never start a piece from the first note. I choose a musical phrase that connects well to the first note and... I sing it in my mind! It also helps when a slightly more "suspended" attack is needed.
Another thing is understanding how we react psychologically to a performance. Personally, I tend to have a more blended, slow, contemplative touch at the beginning, then becoming easy, articulated, extroverted as it progresses. Well! I will choose my repertoire also based on this characteristic!
Every individual is unique. Physically, cold does not exist, only the quantity of heat. If we are walking around on a cold day, our body gives off heat to the environment and thus, in common language, we say it "cools down." That blood is warm is an assumption that, put this way, means little. If it is 0 degrees Celsius outside and your hands are bare, the amount of heat given off to the environment is much greater than the heat that blood circulation can return to the hands (that's why hands get cold). If the assumption were true that blood is warm and therefore hands are warm, none of us would ever have cold hands because the blood would be able to return the calories lost to the environment instantaneously. In that area that "cools down," however, even the blood gives off heat and its temperature drops. Now, there are people who basically have excellent irrigation of the extremities, others who have less, just as there are people with higher or lower blood pressure. We conclude that with cold hands, everyone has their own time for them to warm up. I probably suffer from poor irrigation because on cold days my hands require biblical amounts of time to return to temperatures that allow me to play. To go to extremes, I believe frozen hands do not allow anyone to sit down and play the Etude Op. 8 from Chopin's Op. 10.
I remember one evening in particular (I was 15 years old) and I was returning from practice on my scooter. It was very, very cold; I remember very well that I had to be careful because it had snowed a few days before and there were still sheets of ice on the road. I forgot my gloves and when I arrived home I couldn't even open and close my hand because it was so frozen.
As mentioned, some people overcome this thermal gap sooner, others later. I belong largely to this second category, and for me, the hindrance is exactly the opposite of yours.
Mentaly, even in concert, I am always very relaxed and I have the concert clearly in my head even before stepping onto the stage. We played together in concert with Paolo, and he has seen me more than once even in solo concerts, being able to witness my psychological state of absolute serenity and relaxation. But this happens on the condition that my hands can physically do what my head tells them, as if there were a single thread. With cold hands, I cannot play, and this indeed generates anxiety for me. Therefore, before a concert, I always prefer to spend an hour (which costs me nothing) to warm up my hands well so as not to suffer from fears during the concert regarding the pieces or simply the technically more difficult measures.
