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!

 

 

Inspiration.

This Monday I had the pleasure of enjoying a drink with my daughter Poppy on a red double decker bus, which has been converted into a vegan restaurant, situated on Brewer Street, Soho. This is very handy for my partner Jo-chieh to buy Japanese noodles at the store down the road.
Meanwhile at the British Library that day I came across some very interesting comments about inspiration by Plato:
"The muse inspires men herself, and then by means of these inspired persons the inspiration spreads to others... For not by art do they utter these things, but by divine influence... the poets are merely the interpreters of the gods."
Beethoven echoes this when he says: "A Rhythm of the spirit is needed to grasp the essence of music... What we attain from art comes from God... Music grants us inspiration of celestial sciences, and that part of it which the mind grasps through the senses is the embodiment of mental cognition".
Relating this to pianists, Schnabel writes: "Creativity is inspiration filtered by artistic conscience". Rachmaninoff too favoured an element of discrimination in his music making, as opposed to the musician delivering him or herself entirely to the wildness of the moment.
Should pianists be totally wild and inspired (like Nyireghazy), or cool and controlled (like Michelangeli), or wild in a calculating way (like Horowitz)? Or simply divine like Dinu Lipatti? Here's what mysterious Sofronitsky had to say (www.sofronitsky.com) :
" the more emotionally you play, the better, but this emotionality should be hidden, hidden as in a shell. When I come on stage now, I have «seven shells» under my tuxedo, and despite this I feel naked. So, I need fourteen shells. I have to wish to play so well, live so fully, as to die and still feel as if I have not played."