Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Has virtuosity overshadowed musicality?

I had an interesting conversation with my teacher today. He told me that when he studied with Dame Myra Hess, she told him that she felt that virtuosos of the time, namely Horowitz, had ruined two generations of potential musicians because many tried too hard to be flashy and virtuostic like him...what is your opinion? Has "showing off" become a goal for many rather than making music?

Whatever the answer may be, IMO Horowitz isn't a good example, because he was much more than "virtuosity." He had a wide and infinitely-nuanced palette of touch and color, he played with great charm and wit -- and he did original and creative things, which admittedly many people regarded as unmusical. But in any event, he's a bad example if you want to talk about "virtuosity" at the expense of all else.

Anyway, forgetting about Horowitz, I think the answer to your basic question is "yes," there was such a movement. I think that more recently -- I'd say in the last two to three decades -- it has been significantly reversed.

yep. Not only is there a greater emphasis on technicality than musicality, the emphasis on musicality that still exists has become incredibly rigid, mechanical and conservative. Performances by the old Romantic masters like Horowitz, Rachmaninov, Cortot, etc...would probably get failing grades in modern-day conservatory juries.

(Notice that Fledgehog is putting Horowitz in the opposite category from what Skorpius said!)

sshhhh... no one had noticed until you said so! :P

I think that our world is slowly (and I do mean slowly) becoming a shallower place... In every account. It appears to me that the values of today or very different of those in the 1960s... Not to mention that there is a very strong current to allienate people. The Internet has something to do and so does technology. You no longer need to have recitals, you can have a web cam and have many watch. You no longer need to go out to a studio, you can record yourself, or make it with a sampler. You no longer need to have a violinist, you can just use a computer. You no longer need to go out to the movies...

Sociality is declining, there's evidence of that in the pop world, as portraied bellow (both lovely):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x29l5eHHoXo

David Ford is great and lovely and he's using a looper to replicate whatever he's playing (like a canon perhaps), thus do music... on his own (and 1 single camera man).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPW6fKiilIc

UJAM. Sing on it and it will harmonize and orchestrate it in any style you want! With its own lovely instruments! No need to know about notes! No need to know about music. Although I would be curious to see how it deals with 12 tone stuff!

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On the opposite end, with technology we can avoid any difficult and technical stuff. We can simply keep recording them until we get the notes right... No hurry in making it faster.

And we don't even have to play them right:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFCjv4_jqAY

Melodyne DNA. Direct Note Access. Get a recording (Rachmaninov anyone?) and change the notes! THE NOTES! Sergey, missed a note? Not to worry... We'll fix it! Your student messed up? Not to worry too, the Spice Girls were fixing their voices, why not your student?

Darnit! I should've studied sociology along with composition! I'm SO interested in these stuff (not the technological stuff, the social stuff), but unable to grasp more than a mere of what's going on...

Off the subject, but......speaking of what the world is becoming, I hope you and your family are OK.....I'm talking about what's going on over there in Greece.

Well...

Health wise me and my immediate family are ok. Everyone else I know seems to be suffering though:
My sisters in law husband has a father. The father has a brain tumour and yesternight has a stroke.
Two of my friends are going to be married and with a child already on the way. both their fathers have cancer.
One of my students lost her mother due to cancer and last week her brother tried to kill himself (a doctor, btw. So he's very conscious of what he's doing, as you can understand).

Finance wise I'm doing VERY ok for a freelancer at this time. With 32 students (private and in a conservatory), and quite a few games and other things, it seems to be floating quite nicely. On the other hand my wife, an architect hasn't had a single job since last March (so more than a year and 1/4).

The country is in the ****... One of the main reasons is that nobody is willing to change their ways (which are part of why we're there in the first place, unlike Ireland, or Spain and Portugal and thus THEY got better terms in their financing), and noone, for good reason, has any trust to the politicians. The politicians, btw, are acting like shadow puppets I'm sorry to admit and they have no body, faith, or strong will in order to help. At least if they had strong will perhapst things would've been different, but right now?

Sorry for the rant. If a mod wants to move this and the above post in a new thread, by all means...

And thanks Mark! I appreciate your concern!

I'm not sure anymore what is "flash" or "virtuosity" When there is clean fast playing it sounds good. However can't someone be a virtuoso of other aspects like layers of dynamics? or that not considered virtuosity? Recently passed Vitaly Margulis was such a master.

Conspicuous virtuosity has been a problem (if that's the right term) since at least the start of the romantic era, and to a lesser extent since performances of art music became a public matter. The concert-going public liked, and still likes, displays of technical brilliance. In a way it's a bit like watching somebody doing cartwheels on a tightrope -- there's no particular reason to do it, but we're all amazed to see it done.

Understated virtuosity impresses me a whole lot more than the flashy kind. There are many pieces that I know from my own humble efforts are horribly difficult to play, and yet don't sound flashy. Nevertheless, they still require considerable skill to make a good performance of.

For better or worse, extravagent virtuosity is a phenomenon that I think we have to live with.

'To become more than a virtuoso, first you must become a virtuoso' - Horowitz's advice to Murray Perahia, after which Perahia went on to play some repertoire not normally associated with him (Liszt transcriptions, Rachmaninoff etc), and developed a more powerful sound. Some people regretted that, but there's no doubt that he expanded his repertoire and tonal palette, even if it might have been responsible for his subsequent injury problems.

IMO, the separation of (technical) virtuosity from so-called 'musicality' is a red herring: pianists who weren't technically well-endowed (or maybe just didn't practised hard enough) used to hide behind such a cloak - that they were 'musicians' rather than 'virtuosos'. But the new generation of pianists have shown such people up - pianists who can play as brilliantly as Horowitz (with far fewer wrong notes) and also do introspection and slow beautiful stuff and phrase long lines like the best divas. Pianists with individuality. Pianists like Yuja Wang and Benjamin Grosvenor, for example (sticking to the under-25s).

IMO most of the great pianists(those included in the Phillips series Great Pianists of the 20th Century, for example) have been both great technicians and great musicians. And quite a few of those pianists are still playing or at least played during the recent years from 1985-2000.

Similarly, if one looks at the recent list a British music magazine published of the 20 greatest pianists since 1900(as voted on by great contemporary pianists)virtually all were great technicians and great musicians. I think virtually all the winners in recent years of the biggest competitions also fall in that category.

No it hasn't.

It's a tough business. If certain pianists need to be more impressive than expressive in order to build a career, fill a venue, pay the bills, etc...... than so be it.

We - as listeners, consumers, whatever - have a choice whether we want to hear it or not.

We - as artists, musicians, teachers or students - are not going to accept
a lot of things that the general public (for lack of a better term) seems to embrace.

Without naming names, there seems to be a handful 'name' pianists in their 20's who have recording contracts whose playing sounds glossy, shallow and full of canned 'expression.' But that doesn't mean that they won't blossom into fully formed artists as time goes on.

Richter and Gilels were known as 'bangers' in their younger years, according to their teacher Neuhaus. What he meant was that they revelled in their virtuosity, and sometimes played fast and loud because they could. But as we all know, that doesn't preclude deep musicianship.

What's musicianship without the necessary technical equipment to bring your concept of the music to life? There're probably many great musicians who decided to become academics/teachers etc because they realized that they didn't possess a virtuoso technique. But they could pass on their wisdom to those that do, and thus enthrall audiences.

What pianoloverus said. Ditto for several pianists who were inexuseably left out of that series, including Horszowski and Petri.

It's also worth noting that Dame Myra herself was quite a virtuosa in her prime.

the 'ruining generations of pianists' by trying to be flashy and virtuostic started with criticisms of liszt.

Yes it has , imho. Absolutely. The trend now is to have megafast fingers and not that much of a personal touch. No need to give names ... a "boring" virtuoso deserves as much respect as a genius interpreter

Showing off has been a goal for many since music was invented.

That being said, I do feel that many pianists today ignore a lot of great repertoire that isn't showy. We see it here on the forums - there's a tremendous amount of interest in Alkan for example. He's a great composer, but much of the interest is because of the virtuosic nature of his work. Compare that with how often Mompou is mentioned here. NEVER! And I suspect it's because although Mompou is a fascinating composer of extremely beautiful works, they're just not virtuosic enough to capture people's attention. Even with a single composer - lots of people seem to be interested in the Carl Vine sonatas, but few realize he's written several works for piano that are equally fascinating. (Red Blues, the Anne Landa Preludes, and the Bagatelles) But the sonata is the most virtuosic, so it gets all the attention.

Yes. Kevin said at least since the Romantic era, and maybe it took off then, but.....well at least in Mozart's opinion ...what about Clementi?

And I imagine that Bach, writing his serious music, felt many musicians of his time were just slick technical show-offs.

Although I'd bet Bach did his share of showing off with his Toccatas and whatnot himself....

This topic reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"It's not virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity but virtuosity for the sake of the music," Evgeny Kissin

Oh and BTW, IMHO I think Lang Lang is a perfect example of virtuosity overshadowing musicality. Quite truly, his playing bores me. Yes, he has the fastest octaves and the fastest, clearest runs and the most accurate, fast hand crossings, but he doesn't say anything profound musically speaking...