Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Can you 'hear' a pianist's personality?

Schubertian... You are a deep thinker. What a wonderful thought provoking question. Are we not actors who are protraying the composer? How much of ourselves do we lend? One of the best questions for me on the forum yet and thank you Schubertian. I will have to ponder this for awhile. Do we become a Bach, Mozart, etc type personality by choice... blending with our own complex artisic self? Sandy B

my piano teacher claims i sound like "Michael Jordan on the piano..."

which is true; his point is that Michael Jordan doesn't play piano at all.

Another thought - People who are expert at interpreting handwriting can deduce pretty accurately personality traits which are certainly given off involutarily by the writer - certainly I have no idea what is being communicated in my almost illegible scrawls. Similarly when we 'enact' the music of a composer there must be subliminal aspect of our personality being given off. I think there are parts of the brain which react to these subliminal cues, just as we can subliminally read body language and have hunches about people which we cant rationally explain. So perhaps that level of communication also happens in a performance - but I think it gets communicated only if the performer is technically at complete ease and emotionally open.

I'm sure about my 'take' on Rubenstein - anyone know if it is accurate or not?

Originally posted by Schubertian:
Hmm, there must be some reasons why some musicians have the ability to touch you - every time, but others leave you totally indifferent.

But since people in the audience comes in many different personalities, one should expect us to like very different musicians (and to some extent we do, I don't want to kiss Argerich...). But even more there is a tendency that fame creates more fame and one single pianist becomes everybody's favourite one year, and then after a while there's somebody new.

In Norway we have at least 10 classical pianists at a very high level, (Håvatd Gimse, Håkon Austbø, Einar Steen Nøkleberg, Tot Espen Aspås........) but only Andsnes is a "star".

Are we just fooled, or are there a very few magical, magnetic personalities among musicians, that necessarily leaves the rest in the shadow ?

Or is it just like sports, youngest, fastest, most difficult repertoire....or like in pop world, most handsome and most sexy

Can we say anything about the personality of a person we don't know other than his/her professional side ?

Ragnhild

A topic on correlations between sensuality and musicianship could be interesting. I think most musicians are extremely sensual people, be it for action or for passion.

Because

All of those people have names with weird unpronouncable letters in them - that's why

hehehehe.. that is true.

all those zeros and dots over a's and such,

they must be a professional pianist

And you have been sitting there all that time Cultor waiting for the faintest clue to enable you to steer the conversation to that topic, eh? :p

It wasn’t me, Bassio, I swear! It was argerichfan sexual madness that tempted me to propose that topic. He’s a sinner!

Down with the devout Anglican!!

All right you guys, I'm lurking here...

A sinner and a devout Anglican... a bloody good combination if there ever was one...

If I had heard Argerich in the '70's -when she was really in her prime, before I was born- I might have had to don costumes and wigs like this and sing to her...

I'm out of words........

I will have to wait for you to post the new real topic, Cultor.
The mix of music, sex and a little religion, well, nothing really beats it (just ask Madonna).

Of course it's likely to be the å-æ-ø's, but I'm still towards that it's because Andsnes is the most attractive !

When you said you would wear a wig, Jason, I was thinking more like this :



Ragnhild