Fake virtuosity

[JK]

I was just thinking and it struck me that most of the people that I know are into playing very fast, hard, virtuosic pieces, they hardly ever seem to play anything slow. Does anyone else feel that virtuosity is taking over and that more and more pianists are abandoning musicality for, for example, the sake of improving how fast they can play their octaves?

In my opinion playing the piano is about playing music not just banging out some virtuosic show-piece for the sake of impressing the audience. I wish we could get more pianists like say Glenn Gould who were totally inside the music that they were playing and get away from pianists such as Lang Lang who seem to simply do nothing but bang at the piano and play with cliched mannerisms! Could it be that virtuosity is a facade that people use to distract attention away rom the fact that they don't have anything different to say?

[amanfang]

I understand what you are saying.  I'm working informally with a high school freshman girl, who wants everything she plays to be "fast and loud" as she puts it.  Certainly the "fast, loud" pieces can be thrillers, but often slow pieces can sometimes be much more reflective, or give the audience (and performer) more time to enjoy the melodic interest or perhaps rich harmonies.  Either way, I think balance is the key.  All fast virtuostic pieces, or all slow reflective pieces won't be for the overall benefit in the long run.

[Dave_2004_G]

I think that that can tend to be the trend since the audiences that many people play for, say at school concerts, tend to consist of people who don't listen to alot of classical pieces, and the most impressive pieces to them will always be the fastest and loudest, not those that require a subtle touch and have a whole range of difficulties entirely seperate from just playing the notes - of course, that's not to say that 'virtuosic' pieces don't have the same sorts of problems, unless you're dealing with things like grand galop chromatique  

I think you're right - it's a terrible shame when people become so enthralled in playing things that sound the most impressive that they forget about the music in what they're playing!  And then they concentrate so immensely hard on getting everything technically perfect in performance that they forget about the music and play like machines - but if you ask yourself what will get the bigger round of applause at a school concert, a flawless (but still exciting) rendition of Chopin's etude op10 no 4 or the most heart wrenching rendition of traumerei...

That said, there's nothing wrong with virtuosity in pieces, but pieces that are virtuosic for the sake of being technically difficult just seem pointless.  Yehudi Menuhin gives an interesting quote on this subject on the art of violin video, I might watch it and get the quote

Dave

[donjuan]

Virtousity for the sake of Virtuosity will be tiring for an audience.  Virtuosity that creates an atmosphere, whether it be diabolical, silly, humorous, angry, or just plain Genius- is a necessity in many styles of music.  Liszt would not have left such a lagacy if he didn't compose works that showed how he matured over time, and turned callous showoff pieces with this "false virtuosity" and created music bigger than humans, nature, religion, George W. Bush, you name it...
donjuan

[RGPianoMusic]

I understand completely.  However, I believe it works both ways.  Although I have seen some very fast, technical players who were very boaring, I have also heard some people who lack the skills to play anything more exciting and stick to very slow impressionistic pieces making the mistake of playing everything at an evenly slow, dynamic-less fasion.  Personally, I go for pieces that have a variety of sounds.  For instance, I just won a piano competition this past weekend in NY and I performed the Spanish Rhapsody (Liszt) in Carnegie Hall (Weil Recital Hall).  I love this piece because it covers all spectrums of musicality.  It has very slow, more lyrical sections and it has its fast, more intense sections.  Even then, it's possible to be boaring if care isn't taken to widely increase one's dynamic range and style, rubato's, ect.  So, believe me, you are in good company here on this issue I would think.   Mechanical playing is becoming a huge phenomenon these days.  

Rich

[monk]

It's a general phenomenon of our days that most people think:

Better = Bigger, Faster, Longer, More, Extreme.

Take sports, architecture, big events, McDonalds, record sales, computers & video games, etc. as examples.

Even the many advertisements for "Penis enlargement pills" attest to this trend :-)

So it's no wonder that music is also affected. Pieces that are not extreme (or at least extremely well-known) are "boring".

And people are more and more hyperactive - a slightly manic behavior is encouraged by the media and society as "active, extrovert living style".

Best Wishes,
Monk

[Tash]

i agree with that, especially when you're playing for an audience that generally doesn't understand all that much about classical music. my own example, last year for my final school exams i played khachaturian's sonatine, chopin's waltz in f minor and albumblatt by grutzmacher. now my favourite of the three varied from time to time but it was generally the chopin cos it was beautiful to play and i put a lot of feeling into it. however i play the 3rd movement from the khachaturian really fast (but that wasn't in order to be incredibly impressive or anything, merely cos i found it helped my interpretation of it and yes it's meant to be fast etc.) and so the audience of our concert was generally school friends and others who were highly impressed by the speed of my hands and thought it was great. but i'm like yeah but that's not all there is to it. like if i was just good cos i can play fast big deal so many other people can do that too and there's so much more to it than that.

i would personally rather get captured by any piece, fast or slow, than just have it played to sound impressive.

which reminds me of when we were younger and more people played the piano and the whole aim was to see who could play joplin's 'the entertainer' the fastest which i now realise was stupid because it totally killed the piece.

[A.C.]

Hi JK! It's me again, haha.

Ya...I agree that most people nowadays love banging piano instead of "playing" piano. Recently I've played in a 'homecoming' concert in Sydney, and there has also been another girl who play piano too. She played Liszt's Tarantella whereas I played a Beethoven Sonata. As I suppose u know what I mean, the audiences loved her playing much more than mine. The audiences said sth like "how can the fingers move that fast?!"...In fact, she got lots of wrong notes and not musical at all.

It is sometimes very hard to decide which pieces we should play for a performance, considering that the audiences are non-musicians. They do not know how to appreciate classical music musically, so they'll judge the music technically instead. Under this circumstance people would choose the fast and hard pieces to show off, and would be guaranteed deafening applause.

This attitude towards classical music must be discontinued.

P.S. I agree that Gould is very good, but Lang Lang is very musical too! I watched his concert in Sydney Opera House, and he gave a fantastic and fascinating performance!

[liszmaninopin]

I would like to add my agreement to most of what's already been said so far.  Just a last Sunday I was at a competition in the D.C. area.  Anyway, in the practice rooms, it seemed like everybody was playing extremely fast, etude like material.  This isn't inherently bad, as I admit, it is fun to play virtuosic stuff; but the music was forgettable.  I stood in the hallway for about a minute listening to somebody dash through hundreds of ultra fast notes, but honestly, the music was that unmemorable that all I can remember is "fast."  I can't remember any melodies, harmonies, expression, etc.  All I remember is how fast it was.  Judging by the fact that many were playing that kind of stuff, I would have to agree that there is a trend towards ultra fast, loud stuff.  I'm not saying that technique is a bad thing, on the contrary, it is critical to an effective performance.  However, having interest and feeling in the music and performance is also necessary to be effective.

[monk]

Yeah, it's really a drag.

On a workshop some years ago there was renowned jazz pianist Paul Bley. Really a creative guy, a free improvisator. His music isn't about technique, it's about discovering sounds in the moment. That was also clearly in evidence in the concert the evening before.

At the end of the workshop, Bley asked whether there were any questions.

A student said: "Mr. Bley, how can one learn to play fast?"

Mr. Bley raised an eyebrow and refused to answer this dumb, unsensible question.

And on our music university where I teach I also much too often hear the question: "How can I become a fast player?"

That's as if students want to learn to write novels and their main question is: "How do I write a thick book?"

Best Wishes,
Monk

[f0bul0us]

Yeah, it's really a drag.

On a workshop some years ago there was renowned jazz pianist Paul Bley. Really a creative guy, a free improvisator. His music isn't about technique, it's about discovering sounds in the moment. That was also clearly in evidence in the concert the evening before.

Oscar Peterson is also a great Jazz pianist, definitely worth listening to.

[monk]

Yes, Peterson is really great.

But what do you want to say with that?

Dismiss pianists with less technique?

Or do you think that I'm dismissing technique? Of course I do not! But it always has to be a means to an end! Too often people want to play fast BEFORE they have anything to say (except perhaps: "Hey, I am the fastest! Look how great I am!").

Much of what goes on in the classical pianists department reminds me of boys comparing their penis sizes..."Hey, I can play Chopin op.10 No.1 at M.M.=192! I'm the greatest!" (One student of our university actually went to the performance of op. 10,1 of another student with a metronome to verify whether he played it really fast enough!)

Best Wishes,
Monk

[faulty_damper]

There must be members on this board who think this way as well.  Who are you and why do you think that way?

I doubt any one would admit to this.

[amanfang]

I would think that because in general, the average crowd of non-musicians are extremely impressed by fast pieces.  So it depends on who one is trying to impress.  I think that sometimes pianists judge themselves and one another this way too, though that is not true musicianship.  The girl I am working with who wants to play everything "fast and loud" has an older brother who is quite good and has been taking longer, and has a lot more natural talent and a better ear.  She feels she is always standing in his shadow, so the way to get around that is to start playing everything really fast so people notice her too.  I tried to get her to play Debussy's Reverie, and she thought it was SO boring.  I personally love the piece.  So I think it tends to be the fact that pianists rate themselves by things that don't even really show true musicianship, simply because it impresses other people.

[Motrax]

Indeed, at school, if I'm working out a Chopin Nocturne or a slow section of some Rachmaninoff piece, inevitably someone or other will either ask me if I can play <some pop song I've never heard of> or just start hitting random keys on the keyboard in order to get me to leave. If I'm playing something loud and fast, I'll get a crowd of students, half of whom tell me I'm incredible when I'm done playing.

What really hurts is when I've just royally botched something fast, and someone congratulates me afterward on the stunning performance.

There is SOME merit in learning to play fast - nobody wants to hear Chopin's Revolutionary Etude played Lento or Adagio. But rather than focusing on technique specifically, speed should come with simple experience and confidence at the keyboard.

In my humble, uneducated, 18-year-old opinion, it all just comes down to impatience.

[faulty_damper]

About the unedumacated audience:  They don't know how difficult it is to play music.  They hear everything done 'perfect' on recorded media.  When was the last time they heard Britney Spears sing off key?  Never.  So when they hear something played slow, they think it's easy to do it.  They don't care about those small things.  So to impress them, you have to give them more stimuli and that means playing faster.

I've gotten that same reactioin.  I'm playing the first movement of the "moonlight" sonata.  Screw that up really badly.  Play the second movement.  Play that better.  Third movement comes and that's when the crowd forms.  And that's when I really screw up... because I can't finish playing it.  Still, I get congratulatories and all.

And you know what?  It kinda feels good to be justified even by my own incompetent playing!  It's funny, really.  If I were to listen to myself, I'd be criticizing until my tongue needed re-salivating.

[ted]

Speaking for myself, these days I cannot be bothered trying to impress anybody, musician or not. I suppose this is easy for me to say because I am not socially obliged to compete or prove anything to anyone.

Forty years ago I belted difficult things out to impress but I grew out of it in my twenties and the desire never returned. That is not to say I do not welcome a favourable response to my music, we all like that, but in general, it is the knowledge that I have expressed the things I wanted to express that matters. I do not have to accept either praise or blame.

[xvimbi]

Excellent thread and lots of insight into one of the biggest problems in piano playing today.

I have one thing to add. I believe a big reason why many pianists chose to play fast and virtuosic pieces is because the slow pieces with few notes are a lot more difficult to play. It is easy to play a fast run up and down the keyboard; nowbody cares about or even notices a few wrong notes here or there, but try to play a handfull of slow notes and make sure they are all nicely legato with beautifully shaped dynamics, and most people would fail. Ask someone who can "pull off" (not: "play") fast pieces to play any of Satie's Gymnopedies in a convincing way and chances are it will sound awful. Every single note or chord is wide out there, and any tiny mistake in pitch, note duration, pedaling, dynamics, phrasing, etc. will be screaming for everyone to hear!

[Spatula]

My hands get very tired (as many of yours do) with these...so I do a balanced repertoire.
I find that presto and allegro music sometimes get me stressed out and worked up.  Music does that to you!  

[jmanpno]

I take particular exception to Monk. 

I don't think what he calls "penis enlargement pills" have anything to do with this!  It's a "problem", if you can call it that, which goes back to the dawn of time.

[thalbergmad]

which goes back to the dawn of time.

The same as this thread.

Monk has probably died of old age.

Thal

[jmanpno]

The question is one that is skirted around nearly every day on this board, but rarely approached directly.  The post stands!

[technique]

Its amazing isn't it?  What I do now is totally change things around...

 approach the piano very slowly, methodically, look at everyone or whoever for a nano second..
    show huge patience before even touching the piano....not too much concentration style
    preparation....send a hypnotic vibe to settle the anticipation in the listener and refuse to
    give control to the listener, we know, they know , we know....theres an un-spoken qualifying process going on....UNBELIEVABLE....speed and so forth to settle the unconscious qualifying
question should be ignored.  Its your story...take control right from the get go....nice slow beautiful ....pick that first...shows good self confidence, allowing for learned confidence...people learn from the example in others, refuse to b e ignited by the broad social lean to prove yourself.
Thats what they want to hear....the inner true self.  Start right off the bat with  a kind of cautioned meek approach.  Stop the listeners racing mind before you set your hands down.

Its also beneficial in self practice, it should be enjoyable. Music is simply like a flowing river , sometimes swimming against the current ( virtuosity in content or speedy , loud agressive is part of the music because its part of life....but to return to the flow.

Anyway...somewhere lang lang was mentioned...he has a great technique, unbelievable, but...I think hes not being fair to his hands in the amount of FFFF fortes he seems to enjoy, plus other things which I won't get into...You all might enjoy Sunwook Kim the South korean ...Piano Concerto...part 1 and 2 on line....here is sheer virtuosity required in the piece but he does not over-state, and beautifully translates the quieter moments of the piece.....GREAT THREAD

[jmanpno]

Technique should be banned.