We regret that we are unable to join the Member in his evident approval of glissandi. We do not understand how it is possible to perform them without injury to one's hands, the instrument itself, or both.
Practice.
We are ourselves no pianist but have been enjoying a few bashes through the said concerto in recent times purely for our own amusement. The glissandi are really no great problem - they need no great amount of force (the resulting dynamic level is, rather, a result of the number of notes they set ringing) and as long as the friction between the fingers and the keys is not too high nothing too horrible can result. Of course one must undertake a few experiments along the way to find a safe method but a few minor scrapes during one's school years are part and parcel are not they? And until one has found something appropriate one can in many cases use the backs of the fingernails.
The Stockhausen situation as regards his Piano Piece 10 is certainly rather more drastic. It employs glissandi in clusters and early performances did indeed often end with blood on the keys. One early player employed dustings of chalk to lessen the friction and his performances apparently ended in a cloud of chalk dust with him barely visible. But the standard now-a-days is the employment of bicycle gloves covering only the palm of the hand.
We have often thought an appropriately rubberised version of one of these might have interesting applications.
There are on the other hand some (to us, not to such as Member Pace) horrendous stretches required at many points in the Ravel left hand concerto (a couple of elevenths on the black notes, and not always with the most convenient notes in between... and in a texture which is later repeated verbatim by the orchestra so arpeggiation is not really ideal). That's another story.
