Lessons from the Best Pianists of All Time
1. The Power of Perspective 🔎
It should come as no surprise that I believe that quotes can be a powerful tool. I include them at the start of each “Monday Music Tips” after all! Words (much like notes within music) are incredibly important and when presented with the right perspective at the right time, it can change your view of the world and perhaps even change how you operate within it.
So here are some lessons, quotes and important perspectives on music from some of the greatest pianists of all time!
2. A Fresh Outlook 🍹
Vladimir Horowitz
“Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.”
Ironically Horowitz was known as a technical wizard. He made even the most difficult of piano pieces look easy. Having said that he also had no shortage of musicality and his recording of Schubert Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3 is one of my favourites for this very reason. Many pianists find themselves focusing heavily on technique, yet technique is simply our ability to translate what is in our head to our hands. It is much more important to have something in your head to begin with - an idea or a feeling about what the music represents.
“False notes are human. Why does everything have to be perfect? You know, perfection itself is imperfection.”
The concept of perfection is a funny one. Nothing in the world is perfect, least of all anyones piano playing. However this is far from a bad thing! It is in the messy imperfections that we find value and something meaningful. We have to have the imperfect conflict in order to feel the relief of the resolution. In the same way we have to make the mistakes in order to find value in overcoming those mistakes.
Arthur Rubinstein
“I was born very, very lazy and I don’t always practice very long. But I must say, in my defence, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to over-practice. When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a feeling of ‘Oh, I know this’, you play without that little drop of fresh blood that is necessary - and the audience feels it.”
Similar to many endeavours there is such a thing as too much. In the case of practicing music, there comes a point where your concentration dwindles and not much is gained from carrying on. You may even resort to just playing things you can already play without any thought to the intention or meaning of the music! Whilst you don’t get to Rubinstein’s level of ability without putting in A LOT of time practicing, I think the important lesson here is that it’s ok to not practice for very long! Practicing for short amounts of time can not only build the habit of practicing but you will also be in a state of absorption, ready to learn something new and able to consider what the music is trying to say!
“When I sit in Paris in a cafe, surrounded by people, I don’t sit casually - I go over a certain sonata in my head and discover new things all the time.”
Through my videos on Youtube I often get asked how I know what a piece of music is trying to convey. What in the music tells me that it is supposed to feel a certain way? etc.. However, the truth is…it’s just my interpretation. Music has many depths of meaning and many players think about pieces in greatly different ways, in that respect it isn’t like any other language. The beauty of music is that we can intuitively feel the meaning and then work backwards to work out why, rather than the other way round. This means that many players return to pieces of music as they mature and the meaning completely changes for them. We have a tendency to meet the music from wherever we are at in life and let it take on a new meaning. This is exactly the same when learning a piece of music and attributing meaning to the notes, chords and other elements.
Martha Argerich
“Audiences are not important for me now and they never were.”
Martha Argerich has a very calm demeanour when performing some incredibly hard pieces. Her playing style is a little similar to Horowitz in that way (although much more expressive in body language). For many concert pianists this comes from applying more importance to the music than themselves. There is much less pressure when you are so involved in telling the story and feeling the impact that the music has to offer rather than concerning yourself with how good you look or whether you play the notes correctly. This is why I think Martha is such an incredible pianist, because it becomes very obvious with each performance that she cares very little about her surroundings and who is watching and much more about the story that is unfolding.
Glenn Gould
“We do not play the piano with our fingers, but with our minds.”
There are so many ways in which I agree with the sentiment of this quote from Glenn Gould. Similar to the quote from Horowitz, Gould is yet another pianist that clearly places much less emphasis on technique (although still important and Gould had impeccable technique). The entire experience of music is one that takes place in your mind, each instrument is just a way of conveying that of which is in your mind. It is easy to fall into the trap of learning to play the piano, rather than learning to play music through the piano. A subtle but distinct difference in approach.
“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
In the culture of today, it is easier than ever to seek the quick win and to some degree starting an instrument requires this state of mind. If we really did acknowledge the lifelong nature of learning music, no one would start! However, after many years of playing, most musicians come to terms with the fact that we will never finish learning and this is actually quite exciting! Approaching music with a sense of exploration and curiosity is much more fulfilling and it allows you to not have any expectations of yourself. It’s just fun to learn more about a piece, a composer, life experiences, emotions and yourself - without the added pressure of racing to the end.
Alfred Brendal
“The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent.”
This one is also pretty good life advice, however in the context of music this evokes two thoughts for me. Firstly, silence is a key part of music and it is often in the silences within music that we find the most impact. A good example of this is in Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings at the peak of the piece. However, it would require an entire article to really go into the impact of silence in music. The second thought that this quote evokes is much more about how music is performed. There have been many occasions when I have performed a piece of music waiting to hear that moment of silence from the audience as a finish the piece. This tells me that they have really taken in the music and really felt something. For Brendal, he believes that in order to listen and take in the music you have to first be silent.
Daniel Barenboim
“Every great work of art has two faces, one towards its own time and towards future, towards eternity.”
I love this quote because it really captures the difference between external and internal understanding of a piece. Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 was written at a time where music (like everything else) was heavily controlled by Stalin’s regime. If Shostakovich had written something that wasn’t approved of…he could very well “go missing” the following day. Having received criticism for his Symphony 4, Shostakovich needed to write something to essentially save his life. Yet burdened with that task and conflicted with his thoughts on the regime, he decided to straddle the border between rebellion and conforming to what would be approved of. The resulting music is incredibly visceral and meaningful! This is the external interpretation; what was happening at the time surrounding the piece of music. Much of the music, is shaped by this in style, instrumentation, structure etc. However the internal interpretation is eternal - the struggle between doing what is right for ourselves or right for others. This is the underlying meaning and how we relate to the music, it is also how the music will continue to be meaningful for generations to come.
Art Tatum
“There is no such thing as a wrong note. It just depends on how you resolve it.”
Contrary to popular belief, as stated by Art Tatum, there is actually no such thing as a wrong note in isolation. Playing any key on the piano isn’t inherently wrong. We actually understand music much more through context in the same way we understand meaning in language through context. If I said “Can you pass me a chip?”. If I were stood in the UK I might receive some French Fries (this is the correct use of the word chip - obviously). If I were stood in the USA I might receive a potato chip (a crisp). If I were stood in a casino, I might receive a poker chip. In each of these contexts I’ve used the same words but received something different. Music is much the same. If a play a C# in the key of D major, this sounds ok because a C# is a note that belongs to that key. However if I play a C# in the key of C major - it would sound less…”good”! The beauty of music is that as a listener we aren’t always sure about what key you are in or whether the notes are taking us somewhere new. This means that if you play a wrong note, if you resolve that note by giving it an appropriate context, it will sound perfectly fine!
Mitsuko Uchida
“You have to risk your life on stage.”
A little dramatic perhaps, but if you have seen Uchida play then it would not come as a surprise that this is her outlook on performing. Her performance of Mozart’s D minor Piano Concerto is indeed my favourite performance of that concerto because of her total commitment to the piece. However, it is the sentiment of this quote that is most important to me, which is something to the effect of; “give everything to the performance and risk looking stupid”. When performing, it is easy to let doubt creep in, or start worrying about unimportant aspects of the performance and this can restrict your willingness to express. As with Martha Argerich, if you devote your entire performance to feeling and telling the story then wrong notes are wholly unimportant, because they don’t interfere with the sentiment of the music to any great degree. The irony is, once you or ok with risking wrong notes or getting something wrong, you will be relaxed and likely get it right anyway!
Matthew Cawood
(This is from my “Monday Music Tips“ weekly email newsletter. Join my mailing list to be emailed with future posts.)