pianoloverus Do you really feel there are pianists who are so concerned with not making mistakes that this anxiety or focus gets conveyed to the audience and interferes with the emotional meaning of the music or because of their focus on note perfect playing they simply cannot achieve the musical expressiveness they desire? I have never experienced this attending a concert.
I certainly have. There are times where it is clear to me that the pianist has "arranged" their interpretation to make certain passages safer to negotiate. They will take time at a point where the music does not dictate it, so that they can be sure of hitting all the notes. This means that I am not transported by the flow of the music, because it lacks the the quality of inevitability that for me is essential to a convincing performance. In the worst cases I am totally bored by a note-perfect performance of a piece which would have me riveted when played by someone who always puts the emotional discourse first.
pianoloverus What about the idea of simply practicing the piece more to attempt to reach a level of technical mastery where there would be no anxiety about wrong notes (not meaning every performance would be absolutely note perfect) or simply choosing pieces that did not contain passages that you felt were insurmountable?
Of course I work hard in order to master all the technical difficulties of the pieces I play, but however much I practice, I will never be 100% sure of playing all the correct notes in every possible situation. If, while performing, I find that the emotional momentum of the piece on that particular occasion has brought me to a particularly challenging passage at a tempo that is a bit too fast for my comfort, the question is: how do I manage the situation? Do I:
- Deviously relax the tempo to make sure I don't miss a note, or
- Go with the flow, keep the tempo and take the risk of messing up?
I choose the second solution. Sometimes I do mess up, sometimes not. If I've practiced as I should, the messing up will be minimal and won't detract from the emotional impact.
If, as a listener, I hear a pianist choose the first solution (sometimes it's really obvious) I am frustrated. When the tempo of some devilish coda is too slow in relation to what came before, either the pianist "arranged" the interpretation this way (see above), or they made an instant decision during the performance to put on the brakes. Either way, the audience will be left with the feeling that something is lacking.
pianoloverus Am I correct in assuming from your post that you are a professional pianist? Can you give an example or two from a performance where you took a chance in the sense you described? What was the result?
Yes, I'm a professional pianist. And as to taking risks, it happens often. Usually the worst consequences are a few dropped notes. In the last concert I gave, I completely made up the right hand of a bar in the last movement of Grande Sonate for violin and piano by Clémence de Grandval. The rest of the concert had gone well, the audience was receptive, we were full of the excitement of the moment and we were having fun. There was no way I was going to put a damper on that enthusiasm by trying to slow things down.
There's no doubt I would have preferred to have played all the right notes, and I will practice certain passages with a view to making them more secure for the next time we do that programme. But in the concert, I will always prioritise holding fast to the tempo dictated at each moment by the musical line, even if accuracy may suffer because of this.