29 Concert Pianists Teach Pedaling

0:00 I never learned how to pedal
1:47 Pedaling mechanics
5:31 Soft pedal
7:06 Sostenuto pedal
8:15 "Half pedal"
9:41 Pedal in Bach?
11:17 Pedaling Haydn and Mozart
12:43 Beethoven's pedal markings
15:18 Pedaling Schubert
16:41 Chopin's pedal markings
20:20 Pedal work in 19th-20th century rep
23:27 Pedaling Debussy and Ravel
26:13 You pedal by ear

Featured tonebase Artists (in order of appearance)
Garrick Ohlsson
Jerome Lowenthal
Leann Osterkamp
John O'Conor
Edna Golandsky
Nicolas Namoradze
Seymour Bernstein
Dominic Cheli
Frederic Chiu
Jean-Yves Thibaudet
Michelle Cann
Claire Huangci
Daniela Bracchi
Asiya Korepanova
Barbara Nissman
Gwendolyn Mok
Evan Shinners
Anne-Marie McDermott
Simone Dinnerstein
Sara Davis Buechner
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
Norman Krieger
Henry Kramer
Vadym Kholodenko
Rebecca Penneys
Jarred Dunn
Jeffrey Biegel
Jon Kimura Parker
Imri Talgam
Peter Dugan

Hosted and created by Ben Laude
Post-production assistant: Robert Fleitz

---

[jessevallejo]

Legend has it she is still indicating "Pedal... Pedal... Pedal... Pedal... Pedal... Pedal..." to this very day.

[mhermarckarakouzian]

After 12 years with the same teacher, I switched to another teacher and my first lesson with her was all pedalling. She was on the floor like some crazy person with her hand on my foot pressing on my shoe. On off, on off. My mom was there too and it was such a clown show that I nearly decided to not continue with her. Thank God I didn’t. She ended up changing my life (she had actually studied with Babayan for 6 years, but back then, no one really knew who he was.. we’re talking 2005-2006). I’ve never forgotten that first lesson.

[CodyHazelleMusic]

This is very interesting…the first lesson I give to all of my students, assuming there is an acoustic piano around, is just having them look inside the piano and see how the pedals work as I press down on them one at a time. I also inevitably give ( maybe a year or two in) what I call “the pedal lecture” where I spend nearly the whole lesson explaining different contexts of pedaling and how to use your ears.

[nancyandcortaz]

This was one of the most confusingly helpful pedal videos ever. I will be watching this many times! 😂 Thank you for putting it together!!

[gamlie]

18:58 I spat out my drink. Seymour is such a legend

[theresawolf]

I had a very good piano teacher before I went to college who taught me all sorts of pedal techniques. Not once in college did anyone mention the pedal. Non-piano faculty used to ask me how I was creating so many different sonorities with the pedal.

[TheBlackD]

This is clearly the best piano channel of youtube. Thank you for your hardwork !

[ikemyung]

WONDERFUL! When I taught piano, I noticed that there were some students who used the pedal "naturally" without major problems. Others, were a disaster, and I created exercises to teach them to pedal correctly....because to begin with, pedaling MUST be within a rhythmic context.

[maxcohen]

All my years of study came rushing back during this video, forcing me to remember two things I learned along the way:
1. The ability to do and the ability to teach are light years apart.
2. Performers rarely know what composers wanted – _especially_ when handed detailed instructions on a diamond encrusted platter. 😅

[lindafitak]

My first piano teacher, in 1977, taught us in detail how to use the pedal, when not to use it, etc, and I have never forgotten it. ❤

[tedpiano]

27:04 Jean-Yves "what are those!!" Thibaudet

[oldschoolchartist]

Nobody really mentioned flutter pedaling... That is a very quick half pedal that can be 3-4 pedals per second that is particularly useful in more modern music that contains a lot of atonal passage work. Also useful in some of the more chromatic passage work in romantic compositions.

[vaadwilsla]

12:45 blows me away. Incredible sound.

[HighlyShifty]

Tonebase piano content is consistently fantastic.

[alonamaloh]

I'm not a professional pianist, just an advanced amateur. I use the middle pedal in several pieces I play, usually to hold the bass while allowing my right pedal the liberty to clear the harmony when moving lines make it too blurry. Two examples that come to mind are Debussy's Claire de Lune (in the section starting on bar 15) and Albéniz's Corpus Christi en Sevilla (both in the beautiful section in the middle with lots of ppp markings and in the final section).

[aBachwardsfellow]

For me, the piano wasn't so bad; it's when I hit 32 pedals on the organ that things started to get ... interesting. 🙂

[scottjoyce]

This is great. The only lesson in pedal use I got was when they put a book under it. This video confirms that everyone is different. Great job.

[udonsschaach]

I didn't expect this video to be that helpful . I am truly thankful

Maybe this channel is strong and widespread enough to teach young pianists about pedalling in baroque music. Just please do never forget that the damping in any harpsichord action is very rudimentary, to say the least. So even if all the registers are in the ON position with the dampers on the strings, there will be some amount of constant sympathetic resonance. If any of the registers is/are in the OFF position, the dampers won't even touch the strings so you get a lot of sympathetic resonance, the more registers in the OFF position, the more sympathetic resonance the instrument will produce, since the strings share the same bridge and all the undamped strings will vibrate as well. Plus in historical instruments there were often stops that just did not have any damping at all and could be used as a special effect. (N. B. CPE Bach says that the best way to play a free fantasia on an early fortepiano is if you do it on the undamped stop). So no matter what you do on an early keyboard instrument, whether they be harpsichords, clavichords, early fortepianos, spinets etc, you will always have a bit of a pedal in the sound. The amount can of course vary, but there will always be some constant "pedal" in the sound. Andras Schiff is just utter nonsense to me. Playing baroque music on the piano in a horribly flat way and then use the harpsichord as an excuse... Awful.

We also know from a letter by G. F. Duarte Antwerp 1648 to Constantijn Huygens (father of Christiaan Huygens) that harpsichords were set up in a way that the dampers of the registers in OFF position did not touch the strings:

"The extreme length of the large clavecimbels is 8 voeten more or less, the pitch Chorista, with 3 registers - that is, three different strings of which 2 strings are at unison and one at the octava and all three of which can be played together or each string separately, with or without the octave, like the ordinary clavecimbels that your honour mentions. But they have a better tone because the unused strings which is not played moves of its own accord, producing such a sweet quiet tone through the principal sound, which does not occur when all three strings are played together."

[jeffaldridge]

Informative and beautifully constructed! A real treat to hear these great pianists teaching us.