Listening to Myself
From left to right: Four performances of the third movement of the Beethoven, Sonata No. 23 in F minor Op. 57 " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnqP6a9YDf0&list=RDxnqP6a9YDf0&start_radio=1 ", iii. Allegro ma non troppo: Claudio Arrau; Daniel Barenboim; Glenn Gould; Lang Lang
Today, I would like to talk about the importance of why listening to myself as I play is important for me as a performer.
In speaking with Mr. Alexander, he once said that a singer does not hear himself the same way an audience does. This was interesting to me, because for a singer they are their own instrument. For a pianist however, the feedback is immediate in terms of the sound from the piano.
My goal in performance is to always maintain an objective viewpoint, which means that I want to convey to the audience, as much and as best I can, what the music is saying to my mind and heart. To achieve this, while it is important to sit at the piano and play, checking the sound from the player's perspective, it is also crucial to consider the perspective of the audience. Therefore, I always try to listen to the sound produced by the piano, and my own initial response of the sound, to see if it accurately reflects my own feeling about the work being performed.
Having an objective focus while being fully engaged in the performance is challenging, but for me it is both helpful and necessary. I want an audience to have a sense of what the music means to me, and in order to make that happen I want to always make sure I have found the center story of a piece and why I find it inspiring. My goal then becomes to meet the audience where they are by sharing what is most essential about a work, because at that core, there is something universal—and very human—that has the capacity to make the piece as powerful and meaningful to an audience as it is to me.
For every pianist, once they have found that core, the way in which they respond to it and then share it will be different, in the same way that ten people looking at the same painting will notice different aspects of it based on their own perspective.
We don’t all laugh at the same jokes, and yet we all laugh. We don’t all like the same foods, and yet we all need to eat. We don’t all go to bed at the same time as everyone else, and yet we all sleep.
I listen to myself then not to make you feel the same things that I feel, but to help you discover aspects of a piece that I find meaningful so that you can then hear what might make it meaningful for you.
In order to best illustrate this point, in this post I have included four different performances of the third movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 23 in F minor Op. 57, the “Appassionata”. Notice how even though each pianist is playing the same work, what each of them emphasizes is very different.
Please let me know in the Comments which performance you relate to the most, and why. Thanks so much.
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