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Playing by the book?

Joseph Laredo underlines the importance of trusting our instincts when interpreting music

Imagine you have a friend who is a composer, and she has just sent you a new piece and asked you to give its rst performance. She is not a pianist so she can’t make a recording of it herself. All she says is: ‘Everything you need to know is on the page’.

How do you feel? Excited at the prospect of giving a world premiere? Eager to start working out how you think the piece should go? Or daunted by the fact that there is no existing recording of it, that there is no one to tell you how to interpret the score?

I would guess the former. And yet, when we decide to perform a piece by Mozart or Chopin, or even Alkan or Zelenka, we are all too often inclined to go straight to a benchmark recording or a recognised teacher to nd out how it ‘should’ be played. Why?

Do we feel a weight of tradition bearing down on us, which we must somehow ‘absorb’ before daring to present our own interpretation? Do we think that professional pianists must know more about it or have greater insights into its ‘meaning’ than us? Or do we simply lack condence in our own ability to interpret the information that is in front of us, in our own experience of playing and listening to other music, in our own instincts and tastes?

Of course, there are people who can trace their pedagogical lineage to Ravel and even to Beethoven or Bach, but is this a reliable source of information about the ‘truth’ of their music? Do all of Teacher A’s students sound alike and play in a similar way? No. So where is the ‘truth’? Can we even say that it exists?

Contemporary accounts of the way music was performed in the composer’s day can provide fascinating insights (Malcolm Bilson’s Knowing the Score is essential reading in this regard), but are we performing on Recordings reveal that Ravel often approximated his own compositions

an instrument of the period, to an audience that knows nothing of music written subsequently? No. So we must nd a way of making the music meaningful to today’s listeners on today’s instruments, which may have little to do with period practice.

Can the composer’s own performances ever be taken as gospel? Judging from accounts of Beethoven’s and Brahms’ playing and recordings by composers such as Debussy and Ravel: no. In many cases, they only presented approximations of their own compositions.

As performers, we inevitably rely on what we see on the page – assuming that we have taken the trouble to obtain a reliable edition, ie one that makes clear distinctions between what the composer actually wrote (if known), what appeared in the rst edition and what subsequent editors have changed, enabling us to make informed decisions about what to observe and what to ignore. We must bear in mind everything we know about other music by the composer and their contemporaries, and of developments that came after the composer’s time, such as writing ppp or employing the sostenuto pedal. Finally, and crucially, we must trust our instincts. When the composer marked cresc, how much of a crescendo did they have in mind? How detached should that staccato be for the music to make sense? How much pedal sounds right here? Provided we are making a crescendo, playing staccato or using the pedal, as marked, we cannot be wrong. We may be criticised for any number of things – playing with too much or too little legato, giving too much or too little emphasis to a particular voice, playing too fast or too slow – but we cannot be accused of violating the composer’s intentions if we have given them due consideration and translated them into sound to the best of our ability. Most importantly, though, we will be giving a unique, personally felt performance, rather than a standard, imitative or studied one. No one expects or wants us to sound like Richter, Lipatti, Argerich or Trifonov; they want us to sound like ourselves, to give a fresh, expressive, impassioned, even surprising or provocative interpretation – especially of a piece that they (think they) know. We are not in the business of tribute performances: we are in the world of creativity, originality, spontaneity and integrity.

So next time you take out a Mozart sonata or a Chopin nocturne, make sure that what you play is your view of the music, your feelings about it, your response to it – not anyone else’s or some kind of dutiful continuation of a performing tradition. Make sure it sounds as if it has just been written for you and you are giving its world premiere. Won’t that be exciting? IP

16 years. 8 Prizewinners. 1 concert. Pianist summit 2020 Dec 12, 2020 telekom Forum

chopin - reklama 94x273 mm Piano 100