How to Interpret a Piano Piece
A new piece starts with the notes. You learn them, they start to sit, and something is still missing. Notes aren't sound yet, and just the notes don't give you the full picture of what the piece should sound like.
To interpret a piano piece you need a sound picture: the sound you want, in your mind, while the fingers are still busy with the notes. It comes from listening, where there is something good to listen to, and from reading the score.
Recordings of the Great Pianists
Recordings of the great pianists are a real asset. Where good recordings exist, listen to the great ones, and you start to hear: I want more in that direction, and more in that direction.
Then go wider, to "any other piano music." It gives you "a musical sense of how music should sound and how the piano should sound."
Talking about hearing at once how different great pianists are, I said that when you listen to a great pianist, "you know you're listening to something great. You can hear the individuality."
So a direction is not a whole performance. You take what you want more of from each of them, and build your own reading.
Listening to young pianists in competitions, I sometimes hear the opposite: "It's all good; you cannot say anything is wrong… it's just good, it's decent, but it's not interesting."
Without a Good Recording
Sometimes there are no good recordings. In this case you're on your own.
It is still possible, because you can have a sound picture without a recording. Learn the notes and try the sounds: a phrase one way, then another, and listen for which one fits what is written. This takes more time and experience will be your friend.
How much more time depends on difficulty, and difficulty means difficulty for you, depending on experience. Your experience decides what's difficult.
(These are the moments a good teacher can be of help)
A mistake you don't hear yourself can stay a long time. You play it "for weeks and weeks and weeks, until someone comes and says: You play wrong notes there, this is not written, this not right, this even doesn't sound nice."
Interpreting the Score
The score is the other half. There you read what the composer wants: the markings, the tempo, and the rhythm counted exactly.
Only listening will not give you the rhythm. Beginners often follow their ear: I listen this piece and I know how it should sound. "I always have to disappoint my students too often. Too often I have to tell them that the rhythm is not correct and they should count."
Reading the score well also takes knowing the style. In Bach's Invention No. 1 in C major, I play the eighth notes broad, from the arm: "they are not legato, but non legato." Legato there is not in the style. The dynamics are terraced: "not gradually building up, but in steps."
In the manuscript, Bach writes an ornament "through the whole piece." For me that's too much. But to use it as an embellishment in the end: "Glenn Gould does that. Why not? I like it."
Editor's Markings and Pedal Markings
Not every marking in your score is from the composer.
In a live lesson a student played a little prelude by Bach, number two in the book. In the bass line: "We have this fortissimo forzando. Actually double forzando, we call that. So really, Bach. I don't know, it's not from Bach."
"Because Bach did not write expression markings in his scores. It was very rare, certainly not in such abundance. So it's from the editor." Still, I could understand the editor: "it's more like the organ pedal needs sound. And then it really needs to continue sounding."
With pedal it goes the other way. "Composers don't like to write pedal markings," because "on every piano it changes a little bit. And even in the space, different." With more echo in the room "you change sometimes more pedals than when you have a very dry room. Yeah, we have to use our ears also."
How to Play Piano Musically
With a direction in your ears and the score in front of you, you search at the piano for what is written, until you can say: hey, that works, that's nice. Listening and reading both run through the learning of a piece. Neither one waits for the other to finish.
Tchaikovsky's The Sick Doll, from the Album for the Young, Op. 39, came up in a live lesson too. On one phrase I said: "So this you could see as the gravity point. We write it like this. So everything from here, from here, goes to there. But with the diminuendo. But still forward, it wants to go."
"Thinking in the phrasings," I called it.
At the end of The New Doll, from the same album, the going forward is in the tempo. I make a small accelerando in the last bars: "I think it's on the right place there, to make a little bit of going forward to the last note."
While you search, check:
- Is the rhythm what is written, or what you remember from a recording?
- Is this marking the composer's or the editor's?
- Does the pedal fit this piano and this room?
- Is it only correct, or also interesting?
Once you have that sound in mind, the practice still has to find it with the arm movement and work it into the fingers. I go through that work in how the practice searches for the sound you have in mind.
Try this
Take a piece you are starting.
- Find two recordings of it, where they exist.
- Listen for what you want more of, and describe in your own words what it is.
- In the score, read the markings of one phrase.
- Count its rhythm exactly, away from the recording.
- Search at the piano until that phrase sounds the way you read it.
Let's say your phrase is like the one in The Sick Doll: it goes forward to its gravity point, even with a diminuendo. Which note does it want to reach? Do both recordings arrive there in the same way? Then play it, and listen whether yours gets there.
No recording to find? Start with the markings and the counting.
In short
Get the sound into your head early, while the notes are still new. Where good recordings exist, take a direction from them; from the score take what is written, and count it. At the keys, try one phrase at a time until you hear it working.
Where It Shows Up
Without your own reading, the piece stays somebody else's.
In the live lessons we go through what the score is asking for in your piece. You play it, and we search for the sound together. Pick the piece you are starting. Bring it.
