Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Do we always have to play classical piano as the composer intended ...through linage?

"I have news for you. Your teacher has no idea of the "true art of the classical style" and neither do the judges of those competitions. It died out years ago, and we can only barely get a glimpse of what it was."

Seriously, you are the one who has no idea. My teacher is a world class famous piano teacher and pianists. Music schools every where are trying to give her jobs. She studied in Germany, London, U.S and Canada. You say she has no idea? I've never been so offended in my life.

You haven't even heard her play. There are many things that can be picked up when you hear Rachmaninoff's recording's etc. Oh really, all these are world class judges and teachers. Go learn more about what classical music is about.

well you can get a glimpse of it, go read up music history, go listen to Rachmaninoff, Chopin's real recordings etc.

maybe the recording of Grieg you listened to just was bad, meaning the quality was poor

and i'm not saying that my teacher has stuck to the old classical style, she plays with and has excellent knowledge of the classical style.

I will challenge you: Play the Chopin Etude in A-flat, from the three new etudes. It is a fairly simple piece, so it should not take you more than a couple of days to learn it adequately, you do not have to memorize it or anything like that, or even play it all the way through. Post a recording. Then we will compare it with an old recording, and we will see how well you know the old classical style.

BDB: Have you heard Carl Reineke's recordings? He was born in 1824, but at the end of his life he was asked to make a piano roll, and he was close friends with the Schumanns. There is a website you might be intrested in that has many recordings that help illustrate the way musci used ot be played:

http://www.musicalratio.com/heartechniques.html

Reineke plays a Mozart Concerto (his recording is 3/4 down the page), and you'll note that the left hand falls behind the RH (just as Mozart said in his letters), or sometimes the LH anticipates the RH, and rarely do all the notes of a chord occur at once.

Um...Chopin died 8 years before the phonautograph was invented. An early Brahms recording exists, but it is extremely distorted.

One of my favorite early recordings is Granados playing his "Valses Poeticos." It's notable because of the extreme deviation from the score. Some sections are completely rewritten. Interestingly enough, the pieces were written in 1887 and recorded in 1913, suggesting that Granados himself did not view the original score as definitive. How should we play it now? Follow the original score? Follow how Granados played it? Or follow the composer's spirit and reinvent the work our own way?

Eigeldinger's book on Chopin's instructions to his students shows that he interpreted his scores somewhat freely, and he even approved editions of his scores that differed from each other.

And then there's this story:

When I was playing the Brahms Handel variations, I had to figure out how the trill was done - start on the upper note or on the main note?

My teacher told me that Brahms was certainly aware of the Baroque convention of starting trills on the upper note and that he obviously would have played it that way.

Then I met an elderly pianist who studied with a student of Clara Schumann. By word of mouth, I discovered the opposite - that Brahms himself began the trill on the main note, explaining that it brought out the 1-2-3 thematic skeleton that permeates the work.

I mention this because I believe this is a complex topic with no black and white answers.

I even take issue with the idea that Rachmaninoff's recordings are definitive. They are interesting to be sure, but why might we assume that the way he played the 2nd concerto on the recording (in the 20's or 30's if I remember correctly) was the same way (better or worse) that he played it at the premiere in 1901? Every great pianist I know of developed a great deal - early Ashkenazy sounds quite different than late Ashkenazy. Same for Perahia, Arrau, Schnabel, etc... Why then do we assume that those Rachmaninoff recordings are "definitive?" Doesn't it do a great disservice to Rachmaninoff himself to assume that he never developed as a pianist and mechanically reproduced the same exact interpretation every time he stepped out on stage?

I would take your challenge but I already have so many pieces that I need to learn and practise and i'm already practising 4 and a half hrs almost everyday + I have a lots of studying to do although it's summer now.

Sandra, you posed in your original post, a question about playing close to the intention of the composer. My current teacher, N. Jane Tan, studied with MIECZYSLAW MUNZ (1900-1976). He along with Rubenstein were the whiz kids of the early part of the 20th century; both originally studied in Poland, then in Berlin.

"Munz was an important Polish pianist who briefly worked with Busoni, then went on to teach Emanuel Ax, Ann Schein and many others. He made only one commercial 78 (for Homocord in 1928). It may be found on two CDs: IPAM 1206 (“A Multitude of Pianists”) and AMERICUS 20021022. The latter is especially noteworthy for its inclusion of two broadcast transcriptions in which Munz plays the Mozart D Minor Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody."

see http://www.americuscd.com/cgi-bin/single.pl?id=AMR20021022 to hear Munz in a brief recording.

"Entering the Krakow Conservatory at the age of nine, Munz worked under the tutelage of Jerzy Lalewicz (1877-1951), who had studied in St. Petersburg with Leschetizky’s assistant (and second wife) Annette Essipova. Three years later, Munz made his debut in his native city playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto No.1. His teenage years were spent mostly in Vienna (where Lalewicz held a post at the Vienna Academy), and included a brief period of military service. The next stop was Berlin, home of Ferruccio Busoni. Munz soon became part of the famed Busoni “circle” and at the age of 20 he impressed the local audience by playing three concertos (the Liszt First, the Brahms First, and Franck’s Symphonic Variations) in one evening with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra."

Quoted from: http://www.lib.umd.edu/PAL/IPAM/IPAMmunz.html

Munz and others studied with the Greats of the 19th century, and certainly knew their style(s). As Munz dedicated himself to teaching, after injuring his hand, one would think he might teach his students how the masters played, not some other style.

Living both in Berlin and Vienna, the two musical centers of Europe, now and then, one can only imagine what and who he heard in performance.

I suspect that through great teachers, like Munz, we have a pretty fair idea of the 19th century playing style(s). How this coincided with or departed from the composers' intentions is subject to debate, and a lot of research.

besides Chopin is actually a romantic composer...

"Um...Chopin died 8 years before the phonautograph was invented."
thanks Kriesler, I think i made a mistake

I think that this is a very interesting observation that I have thought deeply about. By chance, earlier today I had thought about how people living in the 19th century and how whenever they heard something it was always amazing because it was always a live performance since there were no recording devices. Every performance had been personalized by the performer and unless you were able to round up a symphony or perform the music yourself on the instrument you wouldn't hear it again as often. Today with youtube and all the CDs, we've probably heard pieces 10x more than anyone had during that period. I would also like to add that I think it would be interesting to teach a student popular concert pieces that they had never heard because I do agree that with our knowledge of a performance that is considered great, we let that influence our interpretation to some degree. For the most part, i haven't played that much from the standard repertoire and actually have had to try and learn pieces I had never heard which is makes things harder. But once my teacher demonstrates the correct way, I shoot for mimicing it before I add my own spice to it.

Beethoven Fan, that's a good point about recordings.
I also think it is important to point out that most people hear music via recordings and not live, and so the standard of expectation is to sound like a recording. This not only means no mistakes, but playing the same way each time. And as a performer, it is so easy to be influenced by another's take on a piece, and you're right, we tend to imitate it that way. With a recording, one can listen over and over again to get the exact nuances down, whereas before, it was largely up to the performer to figure it out from the implications in the score, and trust their own musicality. But these days, it's almost as if we are taught we aren't musically adept enough to interpret for ourselves, so it's bes tot listen to what someone else did, and the closer to the line of students to a composer or great pianist of the past someone is, the more authentic their interpretation is. All of a sudden, we're not musicians, we're parrots.

Personally, I think we need to get back to teaching our students that they are valid interpreters, at *any* age and level of skill. Let them develop their own musicality, without us squashing every ounce of creativity they bring to a piece by insisting upon our own. If we dont' let them develop their own musicality, then we can hardly expect them to stand on their own as mature pianists. This, I feel, would be closer to a composer's expectation, and not mimicry.

Morodienne, I agree 100%. Too many teachers are happy for their pupils to parrot the teacher's interpretation. The student's interpretation must still be based on sound knowledge of the relevant performance practice.

I listened to Reineke. If Mozart is to be played like that, I shall go out and shoot myself.

keyboardklutz:
That was my reaction as well when I first heard Mozart's Sontata K332 played in much the same manner! But please don't . It is really not that far from where you are probably now, but it is taking what you most likely do now a step further. This is *not* the modern aesthetic, and so that is why it seems so foreign to us. But if you listen to that recording of Mozart with yoru eyes closed, all presuppositions taken away of what it "should" sound like, then compare to a modern recording of Mozart, which one would cause the audience to "swoon in the aisles" like Mozart himself was able to invoke?

I have since played Mozart for musicians and non-musicians alike in this same manner: the way Mozart played, and the way we play Mozart now. Non-musicians are a lot more receptive to the the old aesthetic, and they simply cannot believe I'm playing the same piece of music! Generally those musicians I play for (I've played it for a few teachers) would rather ignore or dismiss it simply because they are too vested in their own way of playing it, the modern aesthetic. But it all depends on whether or not you wish to play Mozart, Bach, Chopin, etc. the way they most likely played it (and probably intended it to be played), or if you'd rather apply the modern understanding of it.

As a side note, playing the way Reineke played creates much more room for interpretation of a piece than the modern aesthetic does.

Reinecke's interpretation is a product of his time. He probably uses more pedal than Mozart did, and his articulation is probably different. (Mozart's piano would have been tuned to some meantone, while the Reinecke is simply out of tune, but of course, that is not Reinecke's fault.)

We do not have many original performances of classical performances, just a few mechanical organs, so we have to rely on contemporary reports, which come in a variety of ways. There are things like Rosenthal's article on a concert given by Rubinstein with Liszt's reactions to it. From that we learn that Rachmaninov played like Rubinstein rather than Chopin from Liszt, who heard both of them.

We still do not have it all down. Even those people who play reproductions of period instruments do not break them during concerts like Beethoven or Rubinstein did. Nobody plays barnyard imitations on the violin upside down behind their back between movements of his violin concerto, even though that is authentic, too. We no longer sit on the keyboard to demonstrate the chord that opens the finale of the 9th Symphony, as Henselt was known to do. We live in a world of constant noise, which dulls our senses. Concerts do not last as long. All these change our experience of music in ways we cannot imagine.

Dear Piano Teacher Members ... Sandy B here ... Thank you so very much for your input. Very appreciated and I am printing now all of your comments, they will be treasured. Have view relaxed compared to when I studied classical piano 40 years ago? Thank you in advance for your input. Sandy B

Morodienne, there is simply NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that Mozart played like Reineke's recording. If you think you do have evidence post it please.

Agreed. Morodienne, you yourself said Reineke was born in 1824, 33 years after Mozart's death. It's much more likely that Reineke played in the style of his time, as BDB noted, not necessarily in the style of Mozart. I think this is especially likely given his friendship with the Schumanns (as you note).

before you post Moart's one comment on tempo rubato here is his dad:
pp 224 from Knocker's 1948 translation of Leopold's Treatise on Violin Playing. There is no indication here that tempo rubato is anything other than an occasional exception to playing in time. Mozart would have strictly adhered to this.

Dear Teachers, Sorry I spelled lineage wrong. Senior moment at 68 years old? Forgive my spelling mistakes,etc. please. Strokes and a brain operation... but... I try. You are all musicial angels... I printed 30 pages of answers from you and I am so grateful to all of you who posted for each and every word...I have a lovely file cabinet just for sheet music , method books etc. that I treasure and you will be filed for reference and conversations with my friends... Thank You Again, Sandy B