Or Oscar Peterson, who made a loud monotone “nnnnggggggg” noise as he played. It was very distracting to singers who performed with him, and is audible on recordings.
Only took a half-year of piano instruction, but I play a bit by ear which is good enough for me. Right off the bat, I’d say my piano teacher would yell that his hands are too high and not properly arched over the keys. Is that what’s bothering you? Personally, I think whatever gets the job done is fine.
Now, as for the cellist, he needs to just…chill-a-cellist! Sometimes, he looks like he’ll give himself whiplash! :o
pianodave, I have to confess, I don’t like it when musicians are insincere, either, but I’m surprised anyone would think that the pianist in your link is a fitting example of that! Nothing about his movements appears insincere, exaggerated, or basically in any way unusual for a musician performing IMO.
I’m not a professional, but I’ve played the piano since I was 4, and I’ve often noticed that playing the piano is the only activity in my life in which I hold no emotions back. I have some degree of emotional restraint in every single other thing I do in life, but I put my whole self into playing the piano…and I play alone! I’m not exaggerating anything, neither for an audience (of none) nor myself. If I sway on the bench or make a face, it’s because, well, that’s just what happened while I was playing. I didn’t plan it or do it deliberately, there’s nothing self-concious about it…the feeling of the music just came out of me in that way. You play something beautiful, something that resonates with you and makes some raw emotion bloom within you, and you can’t help but furrow your brow and sway toward and away from the keyboard as your hands provoke or caress the notes out of your instrument.
This video of Andrei Gavrilov performing Rachmaninoff’s Elegie in E flat minor is a perfect example to me of a pianist wholly engrossed in his music. That moment at 4:10, when he brings his left hand up to rest on his right arm during the furious climax of that section and leaves it there as his right hand plays the bridge to the reprise of the exquisitely melancholy primary theme, as if bracing himself against the coming pain…goddamn, Andrei, I feel you, brother. That is a man who fully groks at every level the spirit and significance of the music he is creating. How much of a cynic would one have to be to watch him and think his movements and facial expressions were exaggerated, forced, or otherwise insincere?
If I heard that very same performance but watched Gavrilov perform it stiffly and without bodily expression, well… how would that even work? Could you even produce the same performance sonically without engaging your whole physical self in the creation of the music? The impulse that moves you to sway your torso as you sit at the bench is the same impulse that is guiding the movement of your hands on the keys. The emotion flows through you from your spine down your arms to your fingertips into the keys. What would be the point in restraining it?
For what it’s worth, I thought the cello player was more annoying than the pianist. That, and the phony outdoor setting. I can’t find any fault with the pianist himself. He didn’t seem to be exaggerating his performance, nor did I find his facial expressions objectionable.
I think part of what makes an effective musical performance isn’t just technique. Flamboyance and flash is a big part of it as well. If musicians don’t look like they enjoy what they’re doing, the audience won’t either. Even if the performer looks pretentious and smug, at least that’s some kind of character that contributes to the art.
Since the OP prefers the Russian style, how do you like Vladimir Horowitz? He keeps his wrists down, occasionally bobs his head to the beat, and looks in a continual state of rebuke, like he’ll severely punish himself if he misses a note.
Yeah, I’m starting to get what you’re saying. It’s really quite interesting trying to figure out where that line is between pretentious and emoting.
I guess the consensus is I have to start listening with my eyes as well as my ears instead of being the critic. I’m probably depriving myself of a lot of chances for musical enjoyment. It’s just incongruous when you see them emoting like they are getting such thrills out of it but the music itself is so blah, so thin. Maybe that’s it as well. How much can you really get out of a pop song with four chords, you know? I mean, with classical music, there’s story, there’s pathos. But with pop, it’s just so weak. That’s my perspective, at least. Thanks for your replies.
I’ve played piano for 50 some years and I, too, was taught strict classical technique and posture from both my great-aunt (who was a concert pianist) and my teacher, a very old school European Dane. He would hold a pencil under the palm of my hand when I was playing in order to enforce the proper hand position and finger technique. I’ve never forgotten that.
To this day, I find my hands ‘assuming the position’ when I play classical, and depending on the composer, I will toss in a flourish or two, just out of habit, even though no one is watching. I don’t know what you were taught as far as performance is concerned, but I was always instructed to emote appropriately when I was playing Chopin or Liszt or Schubert, but to maintain a stricter posture for a more mathematical composer like Bach or Telemann. I think when you are used to performing for an audience, some of these gestures and flourishes become somewhat exaggerated, much as a stage actors do when compared to a movie actor. You want your enthusiasm for the music to be apparent to the ticket purchasers in the back row. You want to put on a show!
I don’t play like that anymore, because I no longer perform classical music, or even whatever you might call the Ferrante and Teicher type of music these days. My keyboard position on my piano is pretty much like my keyboard postiion on my laptop…relaxed and low with no flourishes at all. But I could certainly understand a popular performer, if they had a classical background, believing that they should use flourishes and performance art for their audience.
Since the only type of emotion I convey in my piano playing is “Holy crap, I hope I don’t screw up too many times”, I’m impressed by anybody who can get through a piece, whether it be with calm restraint or dramatic hyperbole. To each their own.
Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. You can get a lot out of emotion out of four chords. Hell, even one chord.
Obviously you are right. It’s more a reaction against pop music in general I guess. I am incredulous that a whole industry has been formed around these four chords. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, John Legend, the list goes on. I suppose that the audience of pop music is willing to look past the simplicity and predictability of the music and enjoy the entertainers themselves. So in that sense, maybe the motions and the emoting, as well as the other aspects of the music (rhythm and lyrics, instrumentation, etc.) are necessary to make up for the same old harmonies. But that leads to the question of what the pop music consumers think of the “higher level” complex classical music of the past. Can it be enjoyed the same way?
I played cello (very badly) for a few years in my youth, and I agree. The overly exaggerated emoting people do these days is annoying. It makes for good youtube videos, I suppose, but it always looks incredibly artificial and stilted to me. Lindsey Stirling, the violinist, is the absolute worst. Not content with facial grimaces, she insists on high kicks and twirls and whatnot to the point that it would be utterly impossible to play music like that.
Or maybe sometimes the music, even “pop music,” God forbid, does move us. Take a song like, say, U2’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” It’s basically a straightforward three-chord, blues progression. But the song moves me. I’m not looking at the entertainment value of Bono; I’m reacting to the music itself, and somewhat the lyrical content. Speaking of blues, that’s considered a fairly emotive, expressive style of music, yet it’s completely and utterly predictable in the vast majority of cases. Four bars of I7, four bars of IV7, one bar V7, one bar IV7, two bars I7 (with optional turnaround.) Simplicity and predictability have little to do with emotion.
Right. It affects the way you play a phrase, but doesn’t affect the tone of any notes.
His teacher was wrong. I’ll believe otherwise when a properly constructed scientific experiment shows it, with results repeated by others.
It’s SO easy to be misled by your preconceptions, regarding what you hear. As Ethan Winer points out, listening is active, and you never hear the same thing twice.
Keith Jarrett too
good post, great example. Still, I feel the guy in the OP is amping it up a bit. The whole piece is a bit pretentious.
IMHO, what really matters is the results.
Me too. I thought the pianist was maybe pushing it a bit, but am not as bothered as the OP.
I suppose it depends on how you’re defining “tone.” When I hear “tone” in relation to the sounds a piano makes, I take that to mean the overall sound. Basically, on a piano, there’s only a couple things that affect the tone: the velocity of the hammer striking the string and perhaps what strings are undampered (in terms of resonant harmonics.) The motions one makes while playing can affect the evenness of your key strike, which does affect tone. So I personally don’t have any issue to pianists and pedagogues referring to this as “tone.” That’s what I’ve always interpreted tone to be when it comes to piano. If, say, I play a trill from the wrist vs from the fingers, it has a different “tone” to it. If you analyzed the timing and velocities, you’d note they’re different depending on the technique I’m using. So if I could get my finger technique to match the exact timings and velocities of the wrist technique, I would get the same “tone,” of course. But the way I physically hit the notes gives me different sounds and slightly different phrasing, which contributes to what I’d call “tone” in relation to the piano, because it does affect the timing and velocity of my notes.