Follow The Leader

I had an exciting day today, so I figured I’d jump back to an anecdotal blog post today.

BECAUSE I’M NARCISSISTIC AND LOVE TO TALK ABOUT MYSELF.

Haha. Just kidding. But really, though. 

Today, I met with the conductor for the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, and in four days, I’ll be performing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with them. Super exciting stuff! If only the date wasn’t so close.

Sometimes, when everyone has busy schedules that are hard to coordinate, we don’t have the luxury of having multiple rehearsals before a concert. I met with the orchestra’s conductor today, we have one rehearsal on Saturday, and then the concert is on Monday. I have half an hour on the day of the concert to run through my piece with the orchestra before the concert in the evening. 

If it were a different concerto I were playing that didn’t involve so much back-and-forth interaction between the orchestra and the soloist, I wouldn’t be as worried. But considering this concerto is so interactive, and I can’t even manage to get some variations to sync up with my single-person orchestra (my orchestral pianist), how do you expect me to feel about syncing up with about fifty or so other people who have never heard me play this piece before?!! Talk about stressful circumstances.

There’s something that needs to be said, though, when working with limited time in collaboration. Of course, when you’re collaborating with an orchestra, you’re dealing with a force of more than fifty people, but there is no reason for you to compromise the way you feel about a piece for someone else. 

“I want to take this variation faster,” the conductor said.

As a student, I know a lot of people who would just immediately say yes and just go with it. We, as students, are used to be told what to do. Our teacher tells us that we’re doing something wrong, and we practice to fix it. But at some point, we have to learn that collaboration isn’t just about going along with what everyone else is saying and playing Follow the Leader. Sometimes it’s important to take charge and do things the way you want them to go. You’re the soloist, after all. Put your ideas on the table, too. Discuss, and then come up with the best solution.

“Let’s give it a shot, see how it goes,” I replied.

After playing through that variation at the faster tempo, he looked at me expectantly. “I don’t really like it,” I said. “Can we go back to the tempo I originally started with?”

The point is that although we didn’t end up going with the new tempo, at least I was willing to try. That’s the beauty of collaboration. Everyone has different ideas; as long as everyone is willing to listen and try out different things, collaboration is a great experience and there’s something to be learned, and to be taught, in every session. Collaboration is about keeping an open mind, and being ready for anything.

Of course, things don’t always go the way you want them to. Be as it may that tempos might have been alright today, but I might end up taking something slower on the day of the concert. Some variations might end up being faster. Being in a concert situation changes the way our minds work, and sometimes it’s not always the best thing for us when we’ve gotten used to playing something a certain way. The best thing to do at this point is to practice the piece in a way that nothing will catch me off guard. Practice things at the tempo I want them to go at, of course, because in the best case scenario, everything will fall into place on the day of the concert. However, that’s not how things turn out in life sometimes. Sometimes, sh*t happens. I practiced the orchestra part so I know it inside and out, so I can catch onto any weird blips that might happen and potentially throw me off. I practiced each variation faster and slower than the tempo I’d like to take it at, so that if anything happens and the tempo doesn’t happen to be where I want it to be during the concert, I can still catch onto it and keep playing as though that was the tempo I wanted. Being ready for any circumstance is a skill that every performer needs to have. Adjusting on the spot to things that were not planned is something we have to always be ready for, and practicing for any possible situation is the only way to be fully prepared. The best the conductor and I can do is to listen actively and fit to each other. There is no leader in this context; we are equals, working together to create a piece of art. With that mentality, I could probably play my concert tomorrow and still feel pretty good about it. 

Four more days, and the stage is mine! (:

Until next week,

Dream big, music-makers!

Learning by Listening

As musicians, we love listening to music as much as we love playing it. But nowadays, there’s a growing fascination with an idea of digitally perfect music, where your fingers move like robots working to hit all the right notes at the right times.

Accuracy is important, of course, but what happened to musicality? What happened to emotion, to passion? As professional musicians, sometimes it’s easy to forget that we’re playing the music, not the notes. It’s easy to get lost in the flashiness that is virtuosity, but technique is more than just hitting the right notes at the right time.Good technique means getting the sound you want, getting the note you’re playing to have the color you want, whether it be a warm sound, a sparkling tone, a round richness to big chords, or a delicate whisper of running notes. Also, there is a facet to music that people sometimes forget these days, and it’s the idea of creativity in interpretation. How many times have you heard someone sternly tell you that you shouldn’t use pedal in Bach? How many people have told you that your classical sonata needs to be perfectly steady without any significant amount of rubato? How many people have told you that you’re using too much rubato in your Chopin? All these “restrictions” that we have these days are not necessarily wrong, but they definitely give the idea that there is a “correct” way to play a piece and an “incorrect” way to play it. We are so focused on following all the notes that are written on the page in front of us that we forget what the true purpose of music is. Music is a way of expression.

Of course, following all the notes and markings on your score to a tee is one way to deliver a performance. But there is so much more to music that we’ve lost over the years. In listening to historical recordings, one might be surprised by how far our current performance practices have deviated from the times in which the composers actually lived.

Today, I listened to some old recordings of Brahms played by pianists who knew the composer. Etelka Freund was a Hungarian pianist who knew both Bartok and Brahms. She had coachings from Brahms, and Brahms really liked her playing. From her playing, we can find a different sense of rhythm than we’re used to hearing; the rubato is different from what we’re used to, and actually more extreme than what people tend to say is “right” these days. I personally found it very organic and charming, the way her phrases never seemed to end, her sense of timing giving long lines that went on for pages and pages. Another pianist that Brahms loved was Ilona Eibenschütz, another Hungarian pianist. Clara Schumann actually didn’t like her playing; she always thought Eibenschütz played too fast. Listening to Eibenschütz play really gives a different perspective on how to interpret Brahms’s music; she played with extreme tempo choices (everything she played of Brahms’s is almost double the tempo of what we usually hear these days), very big contrasts in dynamics and character, and very extreme rubato. In knowing that Brahms loved Eibenschütz’s playing, we can use her playing to develop new ideas on how to approach Brahms’s music.

There are so many ways to learn and expand one’s musical knowledge, but listening to historical recordings is probably one of my top ways to improve my own playing. In finding musicians that knew the composers themselves, we gain more insight into how the composers actually intended for the piece to be played. Some pianists may play something differently than how a composer intended for it to sound, and actually end up having the composer love the performance for its creativity. It has been said that when Chopin played his Nocturnes for his students, there would be something different about it each time. He would improvise his own flourishes, insert new ideas here and there; no two performances would be the same. If the composers were all for improvising and exercising one’s creativity at the piano, why are we so uptight about following the score exactly as it is these days? Although we want to stay true to a composer’s words, we still need to infuse the music with our own personality, our own ideas. It’s the little things; the colors, the details, the voicing, the phrasing. All these little things add up to a big picture, and it’s up to us as performers to bring these things to life. Living through the notes on the page isn’t enough, we have to go beyond what’s on the page and live the music. Live the stories that these pieces tell, live the experiences that inspired the works.

On that note, I present to you two unbelievable recordings. Both are works by Brahms, as I’m in a rather Brahms-y mood today.

Here is a 1953 recording of the Paganini Variations, Op.35, recorded by Geza Anda. His tone is incredible; everything sparkles. The clarity is impeccable, and the warmth in his sound is to die for. And check out the octave glissandi he does; my first reaction when I first heard this recording was, “I think I’m just gonna go and quit life now.” INCREDIBLE.

I’m ending this rather long post with two incredible pianists playing together: Dinu Lipatti and Nadia Boulanger, playing some Waltzes from Op.39. The balance is seriously perfect! Their sense of timing is unbelievable; if only everyone played like these two legends.

Dream big, music-makers!