How to perform like a "Lang Lang" or a "Chopin"

[panolof]

Hello again
So, how does one perform extravagantly without losing musicality?
How does one perform so quitely yet so beautifully to captivates their audience?
What is the right balance?
Do you think I've struck the right balance?

[lostinidlewonder]

What does "perform extravagantly" mean and how does it reduce musicality? Quiet playing yet beautiful playing is not really different to louder and beautiful, most audience are captivated by good playng and excellent repertoire choice. Improvisations are more difficult to judge IMHO compared to playing compositions, they generally are more difficult to use to "captivate" an audience with, your improvs are nice but ramble along the same ideas.

[adodd81802]

I don't get it to be honest.

Lang Lang and Chopin are two very different people and I imagine 2 very different performers, the latter of which we have no true evidence of, to be honest I don't know how you think they could compare as pianists xD Nevermind...

2nd, there is no need to perform in anyway other than what the music requires, and with the perfect sound, no extravagance is required at all.

So the question is why? Not just why to your question, but why do some performers seems to be more extravagant than others? It is true it can captivate some members of the audience who are susceptible to visual stunts.

For me, Lang Lang is at the top of this list in terms of living performers (I would consider him a performer rather than a pianist), you could go back a few years and see videos of Liberace doing just the same thing. Liberace was a closet homosexual so maybe there you could say will flamboyancy was in his nature, or maybe the feeling of suppression caused him to overact when it came to expressing his motion at the piano.

Lang Lang also had huge suppression as a child being forced to play the piano, his father threatening to kill himself and the Chinese culture in general is very pressured towards children. But then another thought, when we think of German classical piano we could fire out names like Beethoven, Mozart, if we think of French classical piano we have Ravel or Debussy, we could keep going on with regards to western classical music.

These generations then passed down, technique, heritage, ways of playing, performance styles.

Now when I ask you to name any equally performed Chinese classical composers who could you think of?

So now imagine this - You're a piano star, you have no heritage, nothing but purely technical finger bashing passed down from your father through endless hours of Czerny and now you need to make some money, how do you sell yourself? It has to be in the performance and this is why Lang Lang over does it.

Every other Chinese prodigy and pianist we often see are very inanimate when it comes to playing the piano because they have nothing to follow.

So going back to your question, I don't think you can do both. Lang Lang often performs very different to other pianists and it sells because it's completely different, not necessarily because it's fantastically good, he's sold an image.

Whatever you do, it has to have reason and it has to be genuine. Lang Lang doesn't fool anybody with his movements.

[panolof]

What does "perform extravagantly" mean and how does it reduce musicality? Quiet playing yet beautiful playing is not really different to louder and beautiful, most audience are captivated by good playng and excellent repertoire choice. Improvisations are more difficult to judge IMHO compared to playing compositions, they generally are more difficult to use to "captivate" an audience with, your improvs are nice but ramble along the same ideas.

Hello lostinidlewonder
 A better comparison would have been to use Liszt and Chopin. There composing and playing was in almost a complete contrast. The only similarities being the amount of piano music both composed and the Romantic era they both fell under.
To perform "extravagantly" is as we see in almost every piano piece performed by Lang Lang. It's over the top and sometimes takes away from the beauty of the music. Another question I have is if performing as Lang Lang does, does it make it harder physically to perform the piece- with all the movements and what not?

"Ramble along the same ideas" - So far, I've done 10 improvs.
This one was successful in that I captured the emption I wanted to capture, it may have taken some tims, but eventually I got there - is that not in essence what improv is about
My other improvs, especially in "Mourning the loss of the World"(one of my favourite) -

--  which shows progress in terms of taking ideas and furthering them, or keeping the same theme throughout which "A Blue Day At the Sea" does --https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDPQkeTJy1A --
So experimentation is therefore necessary to find a voice. And maybe one day, it may actually be your voice singing in the music. I resepect you're view on improvs and there being no standard way to judge them. Thank you for your comment.
I will respond to the other person soon.
Have a great week 😉
Best Regards
Pano

[lostinidlewonder]

To perform "extravagantly" is as we see in almost every piano piece performed by Lang Lang. It's over the top and sometimes takes away from the beauty of the music. Another question I have is if performing as Lang Lang does, does it make it harder physically to perform the piece- with all the movements and what not?

Some people might do crazy movements because it helps them capture the sound they want to produce. When performing for an audience they might like to see some kind of reaction in the musician rather than a stone statue. Though I always think it is music playing the musician when I see them doing crazy movements, faces or sounds, I think it is always better for the musician to play the music in terms of control.

"Ramble along the same ideas" - So far, I've done 10 improvs.
This one was successful in that I captured the emption I wanted to capture, it may have taken some tims, but eventually I got there - is that not in essence what improv is about

In terms of what is beautiful and what will capture an audience I think improvisations are quite difficult to pull off convincingly. I love doing improvisations too but for me only a small % is good stuff where the rest is not so good. To captivate an audience I guess on the internet you will always satisfy some kind of niche but to captivate a greater audience you need to play more popular and exciting things or show us something we didn't know we needed.

[panolof]

To captivate an audience I guess on the internet you will always satisfy some kind of niche but to captivate a greater audience you need to play more popular and exciting things or show us something we didn't know we needed.

I've realised that improv works for me ... Even if the small niche on the internet exists, I improvise for myself. The tension that it releases is godsend alotnof the time. The perfect example where it helped me would be :

- I learnt about something horrible that happened to a friend, and this rage engulfed me over the last couple days. I have a feeling that the feelings I supressed when my father passed away last year came to light in the last few days.
Anyways, I resepect your comment and thank you for your insight 😉
Stay well lostinidlewonder