Principles underlying Josef Weiss' piano method

Many pianists as you have the desire to have a flow in their music, to play beautifully, to let it happen and to observe themselves playing. Either they have this way of playing or they do not. They sense that luck unfortunately plays a more important role than knowledge. Very often so called natural talents do not know how to create freedom in their playing. They just do it. When these talents become older, tension develops and they loose their freedom of playing. And more tragic, they do not know how to find it again. The loss of the balance between mind and body goes hand in hand with the loss of their spirituality. When the pianists realize that they lost the good coordination, they do not have a tool to achieve it again.

If you belong to these natural talents or you never experienced the freedom in performance, only a conscious approach promises success. The approach of Josef Weiss leads to a new way of thinking and connecting the body and mind creating a relationship with the piano, which will lead to the high quality performance which pianists always seek. The difference to various other methods shows that the pianist will start to know how to create the 'it'. You will find the means whereby you can achieve the desired flow. At first the new means can feel wrong, but with time you learn to trust them. They will lead to freedom and joy. Josef Weiss will be your guide on this journey.

A description of my own journey will help you to understand what my method of teaching piano intends to create. As I began to investigate how to free my own playing, I came more and more to the conclusion that my wrist played an important role. I found that I could tell only by listening to the sound if my wrist was free. I could additionally diagnose that I did not interfere with my wrist from the way I moved it. The application of the hands on the back of a chair developed by F. Matthias Alexander helped me to find a free wrist.

I worked on the procedure that the fingers move away from the wrist; the wrist moves away from the elbow and fingers; the elbow moves away from the shoulder and wrist; and the shoulder moves away and out from the spine. With time I found out to send the fingers away means to send them into the keys. While sending the fingers into the keys I found that the arm pushes the hand forward while going up with the wrist. The upwards movement of the wrist helps to eliminate this force. The movement of the wrist may not be initiated by a contraction of the hand or the wrist itself, but actually by a movement of the lower arm bending at the elbow and by a complete stop of interfering with the muscles of the fingers. This discovery led me to the exercises which help to create a free play.

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