Am I just ignorant and biased?

[ranniks]

The lady is shattering my ears with her emotionless play.

Ray is absolutely epic here!

Now I have this biased opinion that a lot of asian pianists play without emotion......Now whenever I youtube a piano cover and see an asian artist I take extra care to notice how it is played.....In the first video it was really without emotion. In the second it was much better.

Am I just ignorant and biased? Both artists are asian and there are SOME FANTASTIC asian artists! Lang Lang for example. I consider myself asian since I was born in the middle-east (raised in Holland, thank you very much), but you know what I mean.

And there are some non-asian pianists on youtube that make my skin crawl......

Are they just bad pianists or just don't know how to express themselves?

Why is it that if you compare 2 pianists, the same piece and one plays with emotion while the other doesn't, but both play at the same speed and hit the right notes, that one can still notice the emotional difference?

Is it the way you hit the notes?

[j_menz]

Why is it that if you compare 2 pianists, the same piece and one plays with emotion while the other doesn't, but both play at the same speed and hit the right notes, that one can still notice the emotional difference?

Is it the way you hit the notes?

Playing a piece at speed and hitting all the right notes is where you start to work on a piece, not where you stop. Some pianists don't realise this, apparently.

[faulty_damper]

It's not simply how he hits the notes.  If you listen, he's accenting the downbeat and letting that downbeat carry the phrase through.  LupeFiasco is accenting almost everything so it sounds like a jackhammer (exaggeration); each note sounds like it's equally important within the phrase.

It is the same as some one e-nun-ci-a-ting each sy-la-ble in a sen-tence.  You'd sound like a robot, hence the emotionless tone.

Listen to how he accents the beat and how he makes the beat the important note that carries the melody over.  You feel the pulse of the music, the sway, the flow precisely because he knows what is important noticeable.  That's music.  That's also speech.

[edit]Oops, Lupe Fiasco is the composer, not the pianist in the first video.  Nice music.

[zezhyrule]

I think it's the way she creepily stares into the camera. Like she's staring into your soul.

[unholeee]

does it count if i feel emotion from both... (and if it is anger) what a nice song. *bites tongue*

i love the explanation though

[teran]

There are more amateur asian pianists out there because most kids over there are brought up playing piano. As we all know, almost anyone can be trained for technical tasks to an extent, but you can't really train a sensitivity for expression in music, which is why you don't see everyone touring the world in concert.

Being emotionless isn't more prevalent in asians imo, it's just due to law of averages and the greater number of them that are actually able to hit some notes, people think asians are just robots.

My teacher is Japanese and he is absolutely incredible not just in technique but in terms of musical sensitivity. He will pick out things that to me seem pretty much unnoticeable because he feels it wasn't quite right.

So yeah, your bias is understandable because of what you observe, but just take solace in the fact that there are in fact a great many truly magnificent asian pianists out there.

[iansinclair]

Playing a piece at speed and hitting all the right notes is where you start to work on a piece, not where you stop. Some pianists don't realise this, apparently.

So very and unfortunately true... I would add to faulty's comment, too: not only are subtle differences in accent critically important, but also variations in the loudness of all the notes or lines (particularly in counterpoint).  And furthermore... subtle differences in timing (I don't mean wild ritards and the like, but very slight differences in the exact timing of a note vs. the technically correct timing (something which working with a metronome can cause real problems with).  These timing variations are important even in baroque (e.g. Bach) and Renaissance music.

I heard once a comment, I believe by Rubinstein: nobody should be allowed to play a Chopin Nocturne until he or she has been deeply in love with someone.  He may have been right... !