How to add spontaneous color and expression to a piece?

[dontcheeseme]

Does this take a lot of experimentation with dynamics and phrasing on a piece, and does the process get faster with practise and experience? I find that I stumble a helluva a lot more on being able to add the nuances/color/expression to different parts of a piece to achieve a coherent phrasing or story, and also find that it literally takes 10x as much time as actually memorizing the piece. This bothers me.

Most of my practise time is spent on experimenting and going through crappy-sounding dynamics and phrases just to achieve the desired expression on just a short part of a certain piece, not to mention rectifying the wrong notes due to the concentration needed to achieve the expression. Even then I often forget to play out that desired expression and tend to replace it spontaneously with an inferior one. Frustrating. Where does dynamics and phrasing truly come from?

[pianoplayer002]

10 000 hours, a deep intellectual understanding of phrasing, structure, style, harmony, music theory, the life of the composer, the history of the piece, psychology, a developed capacity to understand and express emotions, and having crafted an excellent piano technique.

[iansinclair]

I am fond of quoting Rubinstein in this regard: no one should ever play a Chopin Nocturne unless he has been in love.

Which is a shorthand and flippant way of saying that your can't fake colour and expression in a piece.  It must come from within the player.  It's not a matter of experimentation or practice or anything like that.  As pianolayer002 said -- many hours of playing, so your technique doesn't get in the way.  Understanding of the music in its place and time, and of the composer -- and above all, your own life and maturity.

[dontcheeseme]

Great answers! Thanks!

[bronnestam]

Play the piece in your head many, many times. Not as "mental practice" where you imagine your hand movements as well, but more like singing it to yourself. Sing it quietly in your head while you are talking a walk, making your bed, brushing your teeth. Get a grip what this music is about, without getting stressed over technical issues. If you can engage your feelings, and be sad, melancholic, mischievous or whatever the piece is expressing, you will find a natural flow within yourself.

Also analyze the piece thoroughly together with your teacher, with a pencil in hand, and discuss the phrasing, the dynamics and the phrases. If you don't have a teacher, now you know why you should have. If you cannot afford a teacher on a regular basis, you can try to afford single lessons with someone who is really good.

When you really has a clear "idea" in your mind how this piece is supposed to sound, your hands will play it too - provided, of course, that your are not still struggling with the technique. In that case, you must keep on practicing until you have total control. To do this without making the practice a mechanical routine (ever seen a pianist hacking her way through a difficult piece with the face of a punch machine operator? Yeah, me too) you can practice in very small sections.

[brogers70]

Play the piece in your head many, many times. Not as "mental practice" where you imagine your hand movements as well, but more like singing it to yourself. Sing it quietly in your head while you are talking a walk, making your bed, brushing your teeth. Get a grip what this music is about, without getting stressed over technical issues. If you can engage your feelings, and be sad, melancholic, mischievous or whatever the piece is expressing, you will find a natural flow within yourself.

Also analyze the piece thoroughly together with your teacher, with a pencil in hand, and discuss the phrasing, the dynamics and the phrases. If you don't have a teacher, now you know why you should have. If you cannot afford a teacher on a regular basis, you can try to afford single lessons with someone who is really good.

When you really has a clear "idea" in your mind how this piece is supposed to sound, your hands will play it too - provided, of course, that your are not still struggling with the technique. In that case, you must keep on practicing until you have total control. To do this without making the practice a mechanical routine (ever seen a pianist hacking her way through a difficult piece with the face of a punch machine operator? Yeah, me too) you can practice in very small sections.

Excellent advice. The mental practice where you imagine your hand movements has always eluded me; I just can't get my brain to do it. But thinking through a piece and imagining many different ways it might sound is very helpful.