The Taubman approach

What separates the greatest performers from the rest of us? What secret techniques do they know? What knowledge do they possess, that can only be found with the most elite teachers in the world?

I spoke with someone who has coached those elite performers… and their teachers too.

Robert Durso is a piano performer and teacher who has worked with hundreds of students and teachers, and has coached several of literally the world’s best piano performers.

His students have performed at Carnegie Hall and won prestigious piano competitions. They have been accepted (and have attended) several of the leading conservatories, including the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School, Oberlin Conservatory, Indiana University, New England Conservatory, and the Peabody Conservatory.

Let's say... he knows a lot about the piano.

Robert uses a very specific approach called the Taubman approach to get results for his students, and trains teachers as well. I sat down with him to discuss Taubman, what holds people back in their playing, and the mindset of professional concert pianists vs the rest of us.

Welcome to the world of high-level piano study. I'll turn it over to Robert.

Support this work

Contribute

Meeting Dorothy

My first awareness of Dorothy Taubman was when someone mentioned her in a course I was taking in my first or second semester of my master's degree. They just said one sentence:

There's a woman in Brooklyn and she knows a lot about playing the piano.

Now at this time I had already been to three very prestigious schools. I started at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. I did my degree work at Indiana University. I was in a master's fellowship at Temple University, I had had, by that time, 12 piano teachers.

I grew up in what one would more or less call a formal conservatory environment. The expectation was that you came in, you played through, at minimum, a movement of a piece (or an entire piece), and then you waited for your teacher to make some kind of judgment about it. They told you what they wanted to hear, and you were pretty much told "practice hard, make it happen, and come back next time with those results."

I was practicing in my teacher's studio and I saw a brochure for Taubman's summer program on the coffee table. I read it, and it was very interesting.

When I went to Mrs. Taubman and played for her, the first thing she asked me was, "are there any parts that you know you've practiced, and they're not turning out well each time you play?" And then she came to the piano and she demonstrated a way to move between the notes, and we kind of rehearsed it maybe once or twice. And then she said, "now go faster."

In that moment I experienced something at the instrument that I had never experienced before. It was as if my hands took off on their own! There was such an ease and a security at the same time in a way I had not experienced before.

The whole lesson went like that, she implemented certain things and each time there was a different experience of the passage. Suddenly something that I knew I had practiced and struggled with, became accessible.

So that just completely rearranged all the molecules in my brain.

The work

People can have difficulties playing the piano physically. Taubman's work actually addresses those issues in a very concrete and matter of fact way. The work deals with how we line ourself up (area of alignment), and how we move. It creates a kind of science of movement that's completely fascinating. And then this science becomes a framework and a vocabulary that people practice from, so they're able to solve their own problems.

If we talk about controlling sound and controlling different textures, which is all about making music different colors... how do we do all of that? If you're physically locked up, it's not possible to really control the instrument in an effortless way. There are inconsistencies in sound, there's holes in the texture, there's unevenness, and all of those things are really solvable at every level.

You'll get many physical insights just from understanding how the music is constructed. Choreography is a main part of how we work through repertoire. We work through difficult passages of repertoire and we figure out what is the actual choreography here that works.

What was so fascinating about the work, was that there was an immediate physical recognition of something becoming much easier and sounding better. That quality of not having to fight the instrument is really at the heart of what Taubman was really determined and committed to helping people with.

Only 2 things

I've taught now 45 years inside of this work, and I ask every student, "what are the 2 things that happen when somebody plays the piano?" and you can't believe what elaborate explanations I get.

There are only two things that happen: 1) the key goes down, and 2) we either move left or right. We never really ask our teachers, "Listen, if the key has to go down, first of all, how do I do that? And then how exactly do I move left and right?"

You have engrained habits, no matter if you played for two years or 10 years or 15; certainly the longer one plays the more ingrained the habits become. What's nice is when the body begins to feel other movement patterns that are much easier. The brain also gravitates to that. So, the acceleration of playing more easily, more fluently, more evenly, more beautifully... is actually much faster than the process of how everybody gets to where they are. Where they feel they've either reached the limit or in many cases are very injured.

What we call practicing is really rehearsing correctness, and I like to use rehearsing versus tell someone to go practice. We have to get it into condition where it works. When it works, we rehearse it. Rehearsing doesn't imply anything different. Like the dress rehearsal is not a different thing than the play.

What people think sometimes is that they have to practice the piano many, many hours a day, and it's just not true. Of course you have to practice. You have to live with material, you have to be at the piano, you have to try it. You have to work hard to do what you're being advised to accomplish. All that's true...but where the difference should be is not in the quality of playing. Everybody should be able to achieve a high quality of playing.

I've taken people who are working as a waiter and put them on Carnegie Hall stage. That is real. That is absolutely real. I can give you the receipts for that. Very happy.

Or injuries: we work with carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, something called thoracic outlet syndrome. There's a condition called dystonia where the mind and the body no longer function together. So your second finger is sticking up and your brain says, put it down, and nothing happens. And we have rehabilitated those people to concert level.

The work is about giving people expanded skills. You know, it certainly can't make everyone into a Horowitz, but it can go so far beyond what one thinks is possible in their own playing.

The best byproduct

To be brutally honest, I think people accept their limitations and then sometimes it gets kind of confirmed by the environment. There are a lot of reasons that are given as to why development is not happening. You know, "if you had started younger." So people will go to the limit, they'll try to play the hardest piece they can, they'll realize, "wow, I can't go any further" and kind of accept it. And that's so not what the Taubman work would be about.

But when people have things like very low tolerance, say, for wrong notes... My teacher in my undergrad, if you played a wrong note, she, she would really yell at you. So when your goal is "to not play a wrong note," that's a very frustrating experience. So the whole notion of perfectionism is misinterpreted because you're thinking, "I'm not perfect enough," but there's nothing in that that will ever change.

If you were to shift say into a problem solving mode, then you would have satisfaction. And the byproduct would be, the note would be there, because the choreography would take you there.

I think when people think they're pursuing perfectionism, what they're really seeking is satisfaction. And there's no limit to how far we will engage when we have the experience of satisfaction. If we get into a satisfaction loop, then we're going to do it better and better.

You can't strive for perfection because perfection is something that lies outside of oneself. It's a concept. But actions can be evaluated as to being satisfactory or not. And I don't know anyone who loves the piano, that doesn't love in engaging in something that makes them play better.

Personal fulfillment doesn't have to be for a performance or for a job. It could just be for the satisfaction of experiencing the piece in a certain way. The amateur pianist, the person who loves it... all the way to the serious pianist; I think they all enjoy improving the quality of their playing, and that can be very fulfilling.

Top performers vs the rest of us

I haven't seen a very big difference in any way... physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually... between somebody who loves music and plays at maybe a less experienced level and somebody who plays at the top level.

They're all dealing with the same things. They're all dealing with the same things. Myself included.

When the shift becomes a deep, inner knowing of the material, a deep inner knowing of your surety at the instrument, there's a willingness to kind of be accepting, like "it will go where it will go." And it usually goes much further career-wise because the opportunities become easier to meet.

Robert's Zeitgeist Moment

I remember playing the Mendelssohn G minor concerto in a very beautiful hall on the coast of Oregon with an orchestra. There's a moment where the piano is just trilling, very high, high trills. And the orchestra's playing this incredibly beautiful, almost hymn underneath this trill.

And I remember just feeling like... I'm just part of vibration. Like, it's not even music really. It's just visceral vibration and being one with vibration or something, and it elevated in that moment to some place that I couldn't really recognize on earth.

Follow Robert, and resources

A huge thank you to Robert for the wonderful conversation! Listen to the full podcast interview at zeitgeistacademy.com/radio or use the link below.

Robert has a ton of resources; his YouTube alone has hours and hours of video content about the Taubman approach, and the Golansky Institute is something he formed with his teacher to educate students and teachers about the work.

The Golansky Institute: golanksyinstitute.org

Website: http://www.robertdurso.net

YouTube channel: Robert Durso - YouTube

Did you enjoy this content?

Listen to the interview