Growing Into My Music (June 25, 2025)

From left to right: Chopin, Étude in C major, Op. 10, No.1, performed by Seong-Jin Cho; Vladimir Ashkenazy;  Martha Argerich in 1965; Jan Lisiecki 

The weather in New York is very warm today, and this is the first time I remember the temperature  going above 100 degrees. 

Although my time in New York is coming to a close, there is still a lot of work ahead, as I have to  prepare for concerts I am having in Japan in just two weeks. I will play the same program I did at  Faust Harrison on May 9, but I am practicing even more than usual, as I want to perform the Liszt “La  Campanella” for the encore, so that it reflects how much I have grown in these last two months. 

One of the things that I find helps me as I continue to study a work is for me to sing the melody to  myself as a means of investigating the work even more. If I think about the melody in isolation I can  better understand how to make it stand out as a whole. When I sing it, I discover, for example, things  like how long some of Chopin’s phrases are. There is a beauty and grace to them that is almost like  an opera. This process then helps me to isolate the melody itself in order to better understand how it  is I want to accentuate and enhance it as I play. 

The singing of a melody also helps me to understand what kind of story is inside the work, and what  I want to say about it. It is fascinating to me that the more I learn about life, the more it changes how  I approach my music, even a piece I have been working on a long time. I believe that music should  be constantly evolving, so that you never really play the same piece in the same way twice no matter  how many times over a career you perform it, if only because you are not the same person today you  were yesterday, nor will you be the same person tomorrow you are now. 

I also think that everything I play should be a reflection of who I am as a person, where I am at a  particular point in my life, and what it is I have to say based on my own personal journey. 

There is an ongoing connection to the music that is deep and very personal for every performer. Don’t  believe me? Just listen to the same work being played by four different pianists, and notice how  different each version is. Their individual story comes through in their fingers. 

Please let me know in the Comments which version you like best, and why. Thanks!