New Music Blog

Let's give a hearty Blogville Welcome to Heather, blogging at the newly discovered (by me, anyway) in the wings (thanks to Steve Hicken at Listen 101 for getting me there). Heather is a pianist based in Oakland, Calif., and she has several great posts up right now. The one that really struck me was about a favorite piano work, Robert Schumann's Carnaval (Conceptual Art, 1834?, February 23), in which Heather describes the "Sphinxes" movements (two enigmatic series of pitches) as her "introduction to conceptual music." In another interesting post (Paws or Claws?, March 6), she considers the question "Pianistic hands?" I don't have a very good image at hand, but Francis Poulenc is another pianist-composer, like Rachmaninov (her example), with legendary (large) hands.

This might be an interesting topic for more general discussion out there in Blogville. Are there stereotypical "perfect hands" for players of other instruments? Helen the Harpist? Isaac the Cellist? Patricia the Oboist? Anyone?

UPDATE:
Thanks to Helen for answering this question.