As a pianola player, I am in a unique position to answer this question, because a standard (non-recorded) pianola roll provides the notes and nothing more. So everything I do is concerned with the performance of the music, and not with the individual notes. There are, of course, obstacles that confront me that are unknown to pianists, such as the possible difficulties of bringing individual notes out of a complex texture, but we'll leave them on one side for now.
Playing the piano is rather like acting. Two actors will never perform a speech in the same way. A poor actor may leave you feeling that the text is banal, while another may move you to tears, or make you laugh. And we shouldn't discount laughter as an emotion, by the way; too many pianists seem to believe that piano recitals must be deadly serious.
The tools that an actor has are the control of his body and his voice. I know the voice is effectively part of the body, but in essence there are two major elements to consider. The body element is not so important in playing the piano, though I think it is still relevant. Audiences need to sense the humanity in both the music and the performer, and natural body movements that communicate enthusiasm and commitment to music can be part of the repertoire of a great artist. That is not to say that such movements should be conscious or planned, because they would then become unnatural and ineffective, as witness Lang Lang, in my opinion.
Inevitably the voice is the major element in most acting. One can change pitch, loudness and timing. Inflection is a mixture of all these three, and it is the sensitive inflection of words which adds to their meaning and helps to move us. So it is with piano playing. These days many people think that both the pitches and durations are set in stone, and for this reason I consider that piano playing is not as subtle as it was a hundred years ago.
The dynamics of notes and phrases are very important, of course, but it is the timing, or more accurately, the micro-timing of notes which gives them their real meaning. To emphasise a word in speech, we do not have to make it louder, but we simply hesitate slightly before uttering it. These tiny hesitations and variations in note placement and duration are what go to make up an emotional performance.
If you play a recorded piano roll with no dynamics, you can still hear the performance style of the original pianist. But if you play a non-recorded piano roll with the dynamics of some pianist or other, it is no longer possible to recognise the individuality.
To put this all in a nutshell, if I ask someone a question about their life, and they say "Ah," in a straightforward manner, then I expect a reasonably uncomplicated and cheery reply to follow. But if they look sideways at me, with slightly lowered face and big eyes, pause for a while, and say "Ah," rather slowly, then I expect sadness to ensue. If their eyes sparkle, and they say "Ah," somewhat breathlessly and quickly, then I can discern excitement.
There's a piano roll of Percy Grainger playing "Lotus Land" by Cyril Scott, which sounds just like an opium den to me. I'll see if I can post a recording. There are many passages within it where the music speeds up, as though some stimulus has penetrated the fog, only to slow down again as inertia sets in. It's neither a happy nor a sad piece of music, but nevertheless conveys human feelings very effectively through changes of tempo.
I have a theory about the general progression of piano playing over the last 150 years. I think that the greatest dramatists of the piano, in every era, have been the performers. Teachers have tended to be less dramatic, because the allure of the audience/performer relationship is not so central to their existence. So they have always taught the next generation to play a little less demonstratively than the previous one. And so it has gone on, from era to era. As an example, we no longer spread chords or melodies against accompaniments as we did, and indeed it is frowned upon, but in truth it simply means that we have one fewer colour in our palette.
Well, put that in your pipes and smoke it!
Topic: How must a pianist play to constitute playing with emotion? (Read 1693 times)