Should we play the piano strictly in time?

 

Liszt 'Au bord d'une source' played by Eugen d'Albert

Should we play the piano strictly in time? Not according to contemporaries of Beethoven and Liszt. This is what von Bulow writes. He was a concert pianist celebrated in USA and Europe; married to Liszt' s daughter, was considered one of the leading piano pupils of Liszt.

"The time (tempo) should not be a tyrannically restraining or driving mill-hammer, but should be to the musical composition what pulsation is to human life. There is no slow  tempo in which places do not occur requiring a more rapid movement, in order to avoid the feeling of dragging, just as there is no presto that does not, on the contrary, demand in many places a quiet delivery, in order not to take away, through over-haste, the means of expression. Both however, the accelerando as well as the ritardando, must never give the impression of being pushed, jerked or forced: it must always only be employed by the periods and phrases". [from Bulow's influential edition of  Beethoven Piano Sonata Op 110, movement 1.]

On a slightly different tack, William Blake writes: "Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius".  (Proverb of Hell).  

Why has so much piano playing become boring lately? Because students are trained to pass their exams and win competitions, which is different from playing the piano in order to express what the composer wants to express.  In order to pass an exam you can play correctly: in order to express deep emotions, you have to abandon yourself, to some extent, to the emotion, which results in slight distortions of pulse - playing 'between the notes'. 

Please enjoy listening to the fluid, flexible, outpouring of watery notes performed by another pupil of Liszt, d'Albert who shows us how to play the piano. If you as the listener are not breathing more deeply by the end of the performance, please ring your doctor!