Why Two Pianists Never Play the Same Piece
Notation
I remember when I was 17, I was in a piano lesson and my teacher was trying to get me to play a piece of music (Beethoven Sonata No. 5, Op. 10 No. 1) in a way that showed that I understood it. She didn’t want me to “copy how someone else played it”, or just “play what was written on the page”. However, my immediate thought was, “Everything is written on the page. I don’t understand what extra things I’m supposed to add.”
For many pieces, it does seem like there is a lot of detail to try and include, and that there isn’t a lot of room to add anything else. The composer has already written the notes, the rhythm, the dynamics, the articulation, the tempo and the performance markings. So how is it that you can listen to ten of the world’s best pianists play the same piece and hear it in ten completely different ways?
Well, the music itself tends to tell us what to play rather than how to play it. Every marking that you see on a piece of music can be interpreted one level deeper, and that is on an emotional level. With every piece of music, there is a subtext, very much like in a conversation. If someone is shouting at you, the act of shouting itself could mean a range of things. It could be anger, excitement, or simply an attempt at getting your attention. To find out exactly what it means, you have to understand the contents of the message, the body language and the way in which the words are being articulated. Notation does an excellent job of telling us that we’re supposed to shout, and it can even suggest the type of emotion we’re going for. But in order to actually demonstrate that clearly, we need to express beyond what’s on the page.
Interpretation
Whether you realise it or not, when playing a piece of music, there are a lot of things that you are having to interpret without knowing it.
How loud is forte?
How quickly should a crescendo happen?
Which notes should sing out in a chord?
Where is the destination in the phrase?
How much rubato (stretching the time) should you use?
These are all questions that you find an answer to without realising it. Even not including these things at all is an interpretation.
What is forte in one piece may be different to forte in another piece, but most players will play what feels appropriately loud for that piece. A piece with big chords spread across the piano that’s marked forte will likely be louder than a piece with a single-line melody that’s marked forte. These two situations will also feel very different. The first would feel perhaps grand or aggressive, depending on the notes, whereas a single-line melody that’s marked forte might feel confident or defiant, like a solitary warrior showing strength.
All of these types of decisions are made much more deliberately by concert pianists. One pianist may use rubato to show a particular chord that they think is important to the story, whereas another pianist may press through that moment more and value the phrase feeling connected and the larger story.
These are the types of things that sheet music can never really tell you. Of course, there are composers that wrote much more specifically than others. For example, in Bach’s music there is very little on the page beyond the notes, whereas later composers were much more specific. However, notation is surprisingly approximate, and a lot of how music actually feels is left to interpretation.
Expression
What my teacher was really asking me when I was 17 is, in itself, somewhat of an example of exactly what music does. She asked me to play in a way that showed that I understood it. But underneath that, she was really asking me to make conscious decisions about the emotional intent of the music. Her question itself required interpretation to understand.
She really wanted me to decide how forte the forte should be, how short and spiky the staccatissimo should be in this context, whether the phrase should stay the same volume throughout or whether it should change. Why? How fast is Allegro? Are there any chords that need highlighting? Are the rests important to show here, and what does silence feel like?
And perhaps most importantly, what story am I trying to tell with all of those decisions together?
None of these questions can be answered by just reading the notes and the other various musical features in the piece. They rely not only on what the piece intends, but also on how I personally view that story. This is why two pianists never really play the same piece of music, because although they can be playing the same notes, the story that they’re trying to tell, the way they view those notes, and the way they shape the music can only ever be done by that one pianist.
So here are some questions that you can ask yourself next time you’re playing a piece to help you interpret it and develop a deeper understanding of the music you’re playing.
Where is the phrase travelling to?
Which notes matter the most?
What emotion are you trying to create?
Where should the listener’s focus be?
What do the markings on the page mean in this context?
While every pianist has the notes in common, the musical decisions they make between those notes are what make every performance unique. If you can answer these questions, your playing will be much closer to becoming a performance that is unique to you. Learning the piano begins with producing what’s on the page, but becoming a musician starts when you make decisions about what’s not on the page.
Matt