opinions about my playing

[the green piano man]

Hello, I got my recording from the national piano competition two months ago. I got the first prize but I am curious what are your opinions about my playing, because it really divided the audience. I dont have a lot of experience, I started playing the piano at the age of 12(im 17)  and I can hear my playing is not as stable as it should be at some places. Love to hear some critics!
Rachmaninoff prelude  op.32 no.10

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Liszt tarantella:

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[lelle]

Congratulations, well done with the competition!

A lot of great things about your playing! Very nice control over and variety of color, very musical playing, full of personality and life. What were the audience divided about? Because I can't really see it. This sounds like playing I could have heard from fellow students back when I did a bachelor and master in piano.

I don't really think I can point out any technical mishaps that you aren't already aware of. Considering how far you've come in 5 short years I think you can just keep going and things will continue to improve. Trust the process. You should be proud of how far you've come in such a short time.

[the green piano man]

Thank u very much! Some teachers said i do 'too much things' in my pieces, its too artistic. They meant it in a negative form. Any opinions on that?

[lelle]

Listening to your Rachmaninoff again and I do not agree at all that you are "doing too much". I enjoy how musical and full of life it is. You did win first prize for a reason.

I think this is a matter of taste to a great deal.

Some pianists value keeping very close to the score and doing very little that is not explicitly in the score. And they have a point, sometimes a simple, straight forward approach is exactly what the music needs.

Other pianists (me for example) enjoy expressive devices that are not in the score, but which I know are part of the style and were used by pianists of that time. I like my music to have color and variety and life, to feel like it's being created in the moment - while also staying true to the composers intent as communicated by the score.

As an example, I love the romantic playing style where you play the melody out of sync with the base notes. My professor, on the other hand, preferred a much simpler, "classical" approach with more or less no such thing, and thought my constant breaking of melody and base was too much. Even though I in the end still prefer using more of this romantic device than he does, he also did have a point that I almost did it on autopilot, and wasn't consciously making a choice if it was the right thing for the music I was playing.

One thing you can play with when studying a piece is to
1) play it very close to the score, "doing very little" that's not explicitly in the score (but still with beautiful legato and musicality) so you practice really thouroughly reading a score and translating the composer's intentions to the letter
2) go crazy and do a ton of things that are not in the score, but could potentially be motivated by the musical expression / character you find in the music and want to communicate to the audience
3) find some kind of middle ground between the two

I think that it's valuable to experiment as much as possible, especially when you are such a young and rapidly developing artist. Even if you can't go crazy when playing in a competition, having experimented a lot ultimately gives you more musical colors, brushes, techniques, devices and other tools in your  "interpreter's toolbox", so you always have the option to choose, having thoroughly explored different approaches you can take. And, as my point was above, one way to experiment is experimenting with doing very little and seeing if and how that works. Ultimately, your honest evaluation of what emotion the music is communicating and how you could play the music to communicate that emotion as clearly, strongly and honestly as you can to the audience is what matters, in my opinion.

One of the few things I think could have benefited from a more straight forward approach is the part near the last page where you have a lot of small, fast notes in the right hand. I think these could have kept a more even tempo and direction so they become more connected into one long musical line, so you almost feel all those fast notes as one long musical gesture or flourish.

Woah this became very long, but this stuff is fun to write about, hope some of this helps

[essence]

one thing I noticed immediately - the chord in the second bar (after the rest) is not in time. So a rythm is not established from the start, and the flow is impaired. it also makes the whole piece start to drag.

Also hands not always together, which is distracting.