Swaying/looking away/acting emotional while playing

[nearenough]

I dislike swan-like wrist and arm floatings; they do absolutely nothing to improve the sound and are pretenses. After you hit a note, the hammer goes down and trying to manipulate the key is useless.

I attended Artur Rubinstein's performances perhaps a dozen times. He used to raise his arms nearly 2 feet overhead before hitting those alternating R & L chordal sections in Falla's Ritual Fire Dance, and similarly did the amusing and theatrical "arm" poises at the 6 chords just before the octave section of Chopin's "Heroic" polonaise. This was just forgivable play acting demonstrating his sense of humor and irony.

[end]

Bottom line: there are great pianists who move a lot and great pianists who don't. If they're great, it doesn't matter how much they move around. I can always close my eyes and just listen to their music and be very grateful for the privilege of listening to them, admiring all the effort they've put into producing music at the level they do.

It takes such an incredible amount of work to play well that they're actually teaching us all a lesson or two: instead of wasting our time with sometimes quite mean criticism, why don't we all use up that time practicing.

Now, when I play, I'm very quiet, like a statue, concentrating to get it right, too much aware of all the things I could be doing wrong, doing my best to minimize them. When I'm listening, however, if I'm alone, I can get so involved in the greatness of the people I choose to listen to, and the fantastic music, that I find myself moving a bit, my hands or head. Sometimes, I end up moving my whole body (I dance classical ballet). Sometimes it's just my eye ducts, when I can't handle all the emotion and end up crying.

When I play something I find specially beautiful, I can't help it, but cry while playing (discretely ).

[hodgeinator55]

It didn't harm the reputation of Glenn Gould either, that he did exaggerate his gestures and his crazyness to the farest possible exteme, didn't it? 

Dont even talk about Gould when on this subject. Yes he was a great pianist but his annoying twitching and swaying whilst playing just pisses me off to the maximum limit every time I watch a vido of him playing on [ Invalid YouTube link ] .