so glad you could take that one part out of context and omit an important word. of course you're forming your own take on things, but when you see/hear a piece of music the same way as someone else, that shouldn't be a reason not to go ahead with that way of playing.

Since when is interpretation about originality? I would hate to think that a performer would take into account whether or not someone else has done something when making choices.

Taking Pogo's example above - since Cliburn voices the Rachmaninoff sonata that way, now nobody is allowed to do it? And how do we know Cliburn was the first one to do that? Do we really believe that nobody in the history of the Rachmaninoff sonata before him had experimented with voicing in Rachmaninoff? Has Pogo listened to every recording of the piece ever made to be sure Cliburn has a true monopoly on that particular voicing?

Originality for originality's sake is ridiculous. That's like Mozart should've quit composing when he was 15 because he was basically copying J.C. Bach. But here's the thing - Mozart WAS copying J.C. Bach, and he learned an enormous amount from doing so.

And maybe Rachmaninoff should've thrown the second concerto in the trash. After all, it's pretty obvious he was influenced by Beethoven's third concerto (same key scheme, very similar formal structures, even the melodic contour of some parts.)

Somehow I don't think anyone will argue those last two points, which begs the question - why is copying and letting an influence show through okay in composition but not performance?

And should we ignore Gould because he was influenced heavily by his teacher's approach to articulation and Tureck's performances of Bach? That hack! That copycat! He even admits it! Glenn Gould exposed!!!

Well said !!!!

True enough, but at least for me, I got that message when I was younger from teachers, fellow students, and via what I call "general listening". I did not get there by deliberately listening to recordings of something I was working on, much less than by feeling a need to listen to multiple recording of every single thing I worked on.

Well, you've reached a level of maturity and confidence in your understanding of style. I, too, think there is often the "wrong" kind of listening going on. Performances are so available on youtube that students don't seem to want to wean themselves from heavy reliance on them. My biggest challenge in this regard as a teacher is to convince students that xyz performer has paid his dues; what he does he has a right to. More often than not, the student isn't really up to the task, technically or emotionally.

This reminds me of a piece of advice I'd come across in a jazz book: if you find a solo you particularly like, copy it. Transcribe it, analyse it, learn to imitate it down to the tiniest details - how much you will learn!

I've always thought that trying to develop a personal style was pointless... by the time we've practiced enough for the music to breathe, style will manifest on its own. Listen and listen widely, if you find a good idea TAKE IT!

Re cliburn, she did tell me she never thought of it until she heard it. And it didn't sound good the way she did it, it wasn't convincing. She was also the type of player who would take different things from different recordigs, and cut and paste. It was never hers. The cliburn was just one example...

The point is, you shouldn't have to jump to recordings for ideas. You can form your own, from the score - that's all you need. That's all people had before recordings were made, when pieces were freshly written so obviously it's not impossible. It's also more interesting. And if your ideas happen to match someone else, that's great. At least you thought about it first. And people wonder why pianists sound the same.. Nobody looks for the voice within themselves, why?

Often, I think they're too busy looking at the score.

Also, I think a lot of pianists are rather dull artisitcally, having spent too much time in a practice room and not enough time (as I've said before) exploring the arts: theater, art, literature, poetry, dance, and non-piano music.

It's depressing the number of people who play the Mephisto waltz who have no clue what Faust is, or the number of people who play Gaspard who don't know who Bertrand is (or if they do, have only read the poems Gaspard is based on because their teacher told them to.)

And when you say that the score is all you need, I think that's a huge problem, because hopefully you're going beyond the score, looking at the composer's culture and artistic point of view. Cultural starvation doesn't promote originality, it hinders it!

Don't get me wrong, I have a healthy respect for the score. I spent over an hour the other night going over different editions of Ravel's Alborada just to make sure I was really paying attention to what he wrote. (Since then, I've also listened to about a dozen recordings of the work, and it's amazing the number of things in the score that get ignored by some very good pianists, including Lipatti, Richter, and Thibaudet!)

Agreed! I'm trying to get better at that. When I go to Brevard, I'm going to try to go as many of the events as I can, regardless if they're piano or not.



Don't forget Andre Laplante!!!!

Oh no I completely agree with you. People need to do exactly as you said. And also live.

Don't worry I made sure I read Faust before learning the Liszt sonata.. And I listen to non piano music 90% of the time.

And William Kapell.

Interesting. So do I, though I'm not currently a piano student. I spend a lot of time listening to opera, symphonic, organ, and Anglican Church music. After reading Brenda Lucas's book on her husband John Ogdon, I've listened to quite a bit of Ogdon lately... Scriabin 4th, Rachmaninov Bb minor, Alkan Concerto, Busoni Chopin Variations, etc. Amazing pianist, which could qualify as the understatement of the year!

To be an all-round musician, one should absorb all the cultural aspects of the music. And that includes not just listening around the music you're playing - the operas of Bellini whose bel canto style so influenced Chopin, for example - as well as the composers' other outputs (for example, noone can understand what Mozart is about who haven't heard his three Da Ponte operas at the very least), but also visiting the relevant places where the composers lived and worked. My view of Sibelius's music changed when I visited Finland (and his home Ainola); similiarly Grieg and Norway; but in terms of piano music, Vienna, which is probably any budding musician's paradise. You can hear the landler-like lilt of a lot of Schubert's piano music, for example, in the cafe music at street corners, and understand where it's coming from; and also understand the Viennese tradition that so infuriated several composers who still chose to live there.....

In other words, one should absorb influences wherever one can find them, and apply them in one's music-making. Let's not forget that Richter was a repetiteur pianist in operas before he went on to greater things. Any pianist who shuts himself/herself in a vacuum and thinks that he/she should be able to form an all-round interpretation based solely on what's written in the score is sadly deluded. I remember watching a program where Ashkenazy visited China in its early years of opening up, and seeing lots of Chinese children rattling off Mozart and Chopin at high speed with no idea of bel canto singing style, phrasing etc. How could they, when they've never heard any classical music except what they're learning?

Art is a social and cultural activity. Music is a social and cultural activity. The notion that the creation or performance of art should be done without the study of and exposure to others' work in the same area is very strange to me.

Having played non-classical music most of my life, the notion of not listening to performers more skilled than me and learning from them and integrating their ideas into my own playing is very strange to me.

Jazz, rock and blues are almost exclusively based around a free exchange of ideas. techniques and styles. If you don't "copy" others, you never really learn the genre.

As for classical, the argument that it should all come from "inside" and from peripheral cultural knowledge may work for the most advanced players. For schlubs like me, I listen to many performances, admire them, pick the parts of each interpretation I enjoy the most, and emulate them if I'm able. Usually, there's no chance anyone would ever say to me "That's exactly like Horowitz's version," no matter how hard I try to make it so.

But what if it did sound good the way she played it? Would it still have been a bad idea?

Don't you think your thoughts about not listening to recordings of pieces you're learning might have influenced your view of how she sounded?

I think the line between copying another pianist's performance and learning from another pianist's performance and incorporating those ideas into your playing is not so clear.

For example, In an ealrier post I gave my experience about learning and listening to Jarrett's arrangement of "Be My Love".

"As an example of learning from listeing to a recording, I have recently been playing this Jarrett piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iENQgr0l2Qw
Since I think he plays ballads incredibly beautifully, I listened to his performance and noticed that he often starts a phrase loudly and ends softly. I'd put this in the category of learning another "suggested interpretation" because although I sometimes do this, I don't think I did so to such an extreme as Jarrett does."

I wonder how those with the "don't ever listen to a recording while learning a piece" viewpoint would regard this?

Do you always disagree for the sake of disagreeing? I know what I heard I'm not deaf..

I think in most fields people tend to study the masters and learn from them. You will see art students copying famous paintings, athletes studying tapes of great players, people watching cooking shows to learn how the experts prepare a dish. I was playing a soprano cornet solo (Vesti la Giubba from Pagliacci) with a brass band once. I had never heard it before, and the first time or two I read through it with the band I had no idea what it was "supposed" to sound like or what the words were. When I listened to a recording of Pavarotti singing it, learned to words and wrote them on my music, my performance improved immeasurably. Should I not have done that, but just tried to find my "own" interpretation? Of course not. I think it borders on arrogance to think that we cannot learn from the masters, or that somehow listening to other performers will "pollute" our virgin interpretation. Even hearing a bad performance on YouTube can point up things we do not want to do, or things we might be doing that we realize sound bad. To take it to the extreme, why even have a teacher? Why not just totally develop your own style of playing so you're not influenced by that pesky pedagogy? I played in a symphony orchestra once with Antonia Brico as a guest conductor, and was privileged to have a private voice lesson from a retired vocal coach from the New York Met. Those were two of the most amazing musical experiences I have ever had. I would love to have a private lesson with, say, Kissin or Lisitsa. Nothing would please me more than to be influenced by their performance, their knowledge of the piano and their interpretations of pieces.

I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that. It's not as if someone is saying you must be able to produce a good performance of a Beethoven sonata with absolutely no experience of his style or the Classical era style.

Art students do that to learn how to paint, not how to reproduce actual paintings (unless they are considering a career in art forgery)



The connection to preparing an interpretation of a classical piano piece is virtually nil. An analogy might be to a pianists studying slowed-down clips of famous pianists playing Chopin op. 10, no. 1 to gain an insight into their technique, which is not the same thing as listening to recordings as a crutch to figure out the musical aspects of the piece.



I don't really know the intent and expectations of people watching cooking shows, but somehow the nature and scale of the variables involved in cooking and those in playing classical music don't compare very well.



I don't think anyone is making the argument that if you are playing a transcription, you shouldn't listen to a performance of the music in the original format. But that also doesn't mean that you really must do that, either. After all, although there's a wonderful variation set by Chopin based on an operatic aria, there are no recordings of that aria available, to my knowledge. So, do you think that nobody can play that Chopin work decently, since they do not have access to how it sounds in original form? If you think they can play it well, how do you think they manage to do that, without example to draw on?



This seems to me to be an over-generalized response to a very specific issue about musicianship. I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't listen and learn as much as possible from whatever sources we can. However, attempting to imitate a recording because the pianist is unable or too lazy to come up with their own interpretation of a specific piece, is a whole different thing, IMO.