LESSON SUPPLEMENT

ON RESTS
WATCH THE LESSON
AT TONEBASE.CO
GARRICK OHLSSON – INSTRUCTOR

"Let the music kiss the rest."

Pianists don't take rests seriously enough, and it's

easy to understand why. If you play a string,
woodwind, or brass instrument, you can sustain
straight through a note and stop when you reach a
rest. On the piano, though, the sound will die away
naturally: "the piano is a box of decrescendos."
Lower tones decay more slowly, and higher tones
more quickly. With the pedal, the note
decrescendos more slowly and colorfully. Anything
you do on the key isn't going to change the sound
once the key has been pressed!

Keeping this in mind, let's consider ways of

thinking about rests to ensure you're approaching
them as an essential part of musical expression.

In the slow movement of Beethoven's

"Emperor Concerto," there's a passage for
the strings starting in measure 7 that
features a crescendo through three notes
before arriving at a quarter note rest.
Ohlsson loves conductor Larry Rachleff's
image for this: the right musical approach is
to "kiss the rest" and round off the end of
the last quarter note, rather than abruptly
cutting it off on beat four.

Watch the lesson at tonebase.co Ohlsson 1

 A similar phrase can be found in the second
measure of Beethoven's First Concerto, second
movement. Hold the G in the V7 chord until the
beginning of the rest. This makes it clear to the
audience that the music is continuing, and
creates a less artificial cutoff.

"Play through the rests" is good advice. Put

another way, don't play the rest too short
unless that's what you want. In the opening of
the Beethoven's Op. 22 Sonata (pictured), it's
tempting to rush the rest in beat 3. However,
it's actually better to make the rest longer,
since then beat 4 becomes more surprising.

In Brahms' Intermezzo Op. 116 No. 5, the opening is deceptive on several levels.
Many students instinctively accent the upbeats, the denser chords. Instead, focus
your ear on the inner voice of the melody. The notes on the downbeats are usually
the most interesting, so it's especially important not to cut off notes early before the
rest. Try practicing this opening without rests to hear the melody sustained.

Compositionally, Brahms is anticipating the Expressionist aesthetic of Schoenberg

and Webern, where the silences mean as much as the music. Above all, with any
music, it's very important to think about "what the rest is doing there."

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin

International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick
Ohlsson has established himself as a musician of
magisterial interpretive and technical prowess.
Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire,
which ranges over the entire piano literature. He
regularly performs around the world, receives
commissions, and collaborates with chamber and
string ensembles as well as vocalists.

Watch the lesson at tonebase.co Ohlsson 2