Rubato in Piano Playing

[doowlehc]

Rubato in piano playing

When I listen to Horowitz or Cortot, I often hear their playing of romantic music has a rubato which the Left and Right hand are unsynchronized.  Usually the left hand base note got played first (as if in strict time) and then the Right hand melody come in split second later (as if delaying its entry for expressiveness)

I remember reading something about Chopin's and Mozart Rubato playing - they play this unsynchronized rubato.

However, it appears nowadays piano teacher always ask student to play hands-together rubtao - i.e. no matter how much rubato you want - always keep the 2 hands synchronized.

Any idea on this? 

[pseudopianist]

I heard that Chopin was very clear about the use of rubato. Strict left hand while a more free right. I myself am pretty synchronized in both hands when using rubato.

[lostinidlewonder]

I find rubato is closely connected to the phrasing of your music. Often we want to slow down a little as we reach the end of a phrase or speed up. Often the movement from one phrase to another causes an elasticity in the tempo, which needs to be controlled with your personal sense of the sound of the peice, not so much the tempo markings.

Excessive rubato can make a peice sound very different, so you have to strike the balance, make it sound different but for the better. Broaden chords leading to big climaxes which will slow down the tempo slightly, hold off the very top notes of big arpeggio runs and give the lowest note good length. Of course these things are generalisations and always depend on what the music calls for.

Often you hear Lh come in before Rh in lots of Debussy, Chopin, Liszt. That is because the long bass sounds are what are so important to their music. If you highlight the bass sounds even more by making it come just a little earlier you kill 2 birds with 1 stone. You draw out the bass more, and you detach thus bring out the melody of the RH, not making it sound like a slave to the LH notes and thus making your playing sometimes mechanical sounding. But this has to be controlled not only by this syncopation of notes (seperated quickly, rather than together as written on the score), but with a good sense of timing. How elastic can you make the syncopated part, how long can you hold the detachment before it distorts the flow of the piece? Chopin Nocturnes are one of the best indicators for rubato control imo

[doowlehc]

Has anyone heard Cortot's recording for Chopin's Ballade #4?  He played with so much rubato in the first part...  I am not sure if I like it.  It sounds like he is drunk...  I really wonder if anyone would like this type of playing?  Anyone has opinion on this?

[tds]

yes, it's the strict LH under freer RH is how chopin and mozart used their rubato. but anyone knows this kind of knowledge in itself has no flesh and blood to it. the best thing to learn rubato ( and rhythm in general ) is from NATURE. yep, nature out there: wind, falling leaves, ocean tides, seasonal changes, animal behaviour, et al. the second best is perhaps to listen to great many music, performed by great masters. tds

[bachmaninov]

I think rubatos are a very personal. It's a section where you must let the melody breath, and you almost have the freedom to do ANYTHING. Which is why we see less rubato in Bach, and other baroque era works. Baroque is more organized and technical, rather than musical.

[will]

Often you hear Lh come in before Rh in lots of Debussy, Chopin, Liszt. That is because the long bass sounds are what are so important to their music. If you highlight the bass sounds even more by making it come just a little earlier you kill 2 birds with 1 stone. You draw out the bass more, and you detach thus bring out the melody of the RH, not making it sound like a slave to the LH notes and thus making your playing sometimes mechanical sounding.

Yes, doing this delay also makes the melody more expressive for another reason - it makes the sound more similar to how a vocalist would sing the line. For example, imagine an melodic octave leap in the RH of a typical Chopin Nocturne. On piano it is very easy to play two notes an octave apart perfectly connected and in time. However a singer would have difficulty in singing notes in this manner and would probably ever so slightly delay the second note.

[steinwayguy]

Rubinstein said the way his rubato sounded so natural is because he subdivides the beat (16th notes become 32nds) and slows the subdivisions down.

[doowlehc]

Rubinstein said the way his rubato sounded so natural is because he subdivides the beat (16th notes become 32nds) and slows the subdivisions down.

sounds interesting.  can you perhaps explain more about it - how someone can actaully try to do this?  which book you read from it (I want to get that book too)

[rohansahai]

I wanted to discuss "rubato" in another thread titled "intonatsiia by john bell young". Intonatsiia is a concept very similar to rubato, and i shared an article written by John bell young, but nobody gave their comments on it. Here is the link:
https://pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,4340.msg40345.html#msg40345

[pianonut]

this is a cool thread!  i liked what everyone has contributed and just read the article mentioned above.  it says intonatsia is an articulated concept in russia (i would tend to agree, though my husband wasn't born there, that every russian musician seems to have that extra 'drama' if you want to call it that).  i didn't realize they talked about the concept. 

for theorists, it said that in compositional technique 'intonatsia' governs intervallic relationships.  and, that it is 'codified' (the musical tension that governs these relationships).  therefore, musicians can hear 'musical whispers, cajoles, rages, sighs, ponders, shouts, seduces.'  this is such an idea to musical memory.  i was impressed at the teacher who learned all the goldberg variations in one week!  so this is how they work...doing all together (not separated) memory work (hearing phrases and playing them like a picture of a face). interesting!  (maybe we tend to give students less credit than they are capable of - one thing at a time instead of the whole)>

in mozart, i was reading for my class ' four types of rubato were applied in mozart's time, the most common involving a natural flexibility of the prescribed melodic rhythm (very appropriate in russian music - since it is often folk tunish and rhythmic to the words or idea) within a constant tempo, chiefly in slow movements.  mozart was acclaimed for his exploitation of this technique.  other types of rubato commonly practiced included the modification of dynamics, the written-out displacement of natural accents, and the flexibility of actual tempo by introducing arbitrary, unwritten accelerandos or ritardandos to clarify phrase structure.'

my husband sang as a choirboy for many years.  by listening to the older people in the choir, he became aware of the audience (as mentioned in another thread on how pianos are heard in various concert halls) and what they hear and not just what he hears.  so everything is exaggerated (not too much).  he takes time when slowing down or speeding up so each note is heard.

[rohansahai]

i would tend to agree, though my husband wasn't born there

I always thought you to be a man, pianonut !!!!
Also, what i would like to add to the generalization of stretching larger intervals and "showing the distance" as Young says, is that, the same can also be done while approaching a long note. So, in anticipation of a long note, the approach to it itself can be  just a little stretched. A perfect example would be the middle section of the G minor prelude by rachmaninov. The 4th chord in the right hand is the long note..hence the interval between the 3rd and the 4th chord itself can be a little exaggerated as well.....i tried it and the effect was just excellent.. it just made playing seem so real and natural !

[doowlehc]

I find the most challenging thing is to find the right balance.  When i listen to Horowitz or Cherkassky, what I find amazing is they don't do rubato where I expect - like approaching certain long note , or when there is an interval leap... instead sometimes they would lessen the 'tension' by decrescendo (or in a subtle voice) while doing no rubato.  Listen to their playing of Schuman for example - say Kinderscenen... you would know what I am saying.  It appears to me they seem to be phrasing their lines longer - meaning instead of taking what is written in the score as grouped as 1 phrase, they may group 2-3 phrases together as 1 long one... so the climax is reached for the entire long phrase group, instead of individual phrases. 

mmm....does this make sense?  or am I confusing anyone? 

[rohansahai]

When i listen to Horowitz or Cherkassky, what I find amazing is they don't do rubato where I expect - like approaching certain long note , or when there is an interval leap... instead sometimes they would lessen the 'tension' by decrescendo (or in a subtle voice) while doing no rubato.  Listen to their playing of Schuman for example - say Kinderscenen... you would know what I am saying.  It appears to me they seem to be phrasing their lines longer - meaning instead of taking what is written in the score as grouped as 1 phrase, they may group 2-3 phrases together as 1 long one... so the climax is reached for the entire long phrase group, instead of individual phrases.

Doing unexpected things was horowitz's speciality......his personality was that type !!!

[pianonut]

my teacher tends to favor this type of playing, too, and it is very effective.  you have the smaller phrases sort of swallowed up by the whole.  it's like a ribbon dancer.  they don't stop at the point the first shape is made by the ribbon, but keep movement going so the next shape is made. (just thought of that myself). it makes the idea of the long phrases more kinetic.  you don't just stop start stop start.

the ideas of approach and all can still be within context.  maybe context is what we are talking about.  you know, a long time ago something was burned into my mind by my college piano prof.   i played a dynamic at ff (sfz) within a ppp setting.  he stared at me and said 'you're supposed to play in context!'  i immediately understood and never made that mistake (or tried to anyway).

to rohansahai --yes, i am female.  is it my name, pianonut?  i tried to explain this on the 'what does your name mean?'  i am nutty about music and piano --thinking for long extended periods about why something is so in music.  maybe i should change my name to wildflower or something?  i like nature, beethoven(basically all the composers, really), and poetry.

[guermantes]

Hello !
I know this thread has been lying dormant for some time but I have just come across a pdf file :
Boris Asaf'ev and the Soviet Musicology
Format de fichier: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Version HTML
“Intonatsiia and the Politics of Expresson. Towards and. Understanding of Russian Intonation in Theory and in Practice.” Paper presented at the ...
https://oa.doria.fi/dspace/bitstream/10024/1021/1/borisasa.pdf - Pages similaires

In case anyone wants to read English translations of some of Asaf'ev's works concerning intonatsiia.

Kind regards,
Guermantes

[counterpoint]

Has anyone heard Cortot's recording for Chopin's Ballade #4?  He played with so much rubato in the first part...  I am not sure if I like it.  It sounds like he is drunk...  I really wonder if anyone would like this type of playing?  Anyone has opinion on this?

It's a little bit too much - but it's interesting   

Oh, I see, this was a posting from March 2005 

[richard black]

That stuff on 'intonatsia' is interesting.

Rubato and hand synchronisation are two separate issues - you can have one without the other, though it's true that historically apt rubato does involve losing strict synch. But left hand before right was universal practice, pretty much, until we all got so conditioned by recordings that it died out. It works in concert halls - in fact it ought to be considered essential in concert halls - but not on normal recordings.

[prongated]

Rubato and hand synchronisation are two separate issues - you can have one without the other, though it's true that historically apt rubato does involve losing strict synch. But left hand before right was universal practice, pretty much, until we all got so conditioned by recordings that it died out. It works in concert halls - in fact it ought to be considered essential in concert halls - but not on normal recordings.

...sorry. These days, some consider such (un-synced) playing to be sentimental in a tacky sense that belongs to a bygone age. Piano playing's changed since Horowitz died. You can be just as expressive by rubato-ing without splitting LH and RH like that and working on the tone/sound.

[richard black]

You can be just as expressive by rubato-ing without splitting LH and RH like that and working on the tone/sound.

Maybe, maybe not, but splitting the hands is just another expressive device.

[alhimia]

I still use actually the LH before RH  approach to use the soft pedal for the LH note and release it when playing the RH note. This gives a very colourfull effect. I try to you use all pedals all the time.
Sometimes you play piano more with your feet dan with your hands