# Do I have to have some emotional problems to understand Chopin?



## hesoner (Apr 22, 2021)

Whats with those faces, almost crying?


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## KevinJS (Sep 24, 2021)

Maybe he thinks the emotion will somehow be transmitted to the keys?

Here's a Chopin arrangement that will give you emotional problems. Watch at your own risk. Chopin must be spinning in his grave.

Just in case there's no preview, this is Serge and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with Lemon Incest, based on Etude op. 10, no. 3, and it is ghastly.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

No, but I do. He's fine when I hear a set at a piano recital (which I will normally go to to hear other things on the program), but I never put him on at home. For some reason, I keep thinking he's "about" pretty pianism, but lacks the intellectual weight I generally expect from music. I know it's just me, but that's the way it is. We just don't mesh.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Maybe he's channeling Oscar Wilde's character Gilbert: "After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."

Or else that's just his way of getting into the music. I know some players who do that kind of thing and aren't even aware they're doing it.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I think you probably need mental health problems to be on Talk Classical!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

hesoner said:


> Whats with those faces, almost crying?


What's your problem? His mannerisms and gestures were pretty tame.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

MarkW said:


> No, but I do. He's fine when I hear a set at a piano recital (which I will normally go to to hear other things on the program), but I never put him on at home. For some reason, I keep thinking he's "about" pretty pianism, but lacks the intellectual weight I generally expect from music.


The weight is emotional; intellectual weight is not a factor.


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

hesoner said:


> Whats with those faces, almost crying?


??????

What is it that you don't understand?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

*looks up at the ceiling* (0:25)




*makes a mistake* (0:27)


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

I don't see how looking at the ceiling is any different from looking at the score. Pianists aren't meant to always look at the keys. Quite a profound thread we have going here.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mossyembankment said:


> I don't see how looking at the ceiling is any different from looking at the score. Pianists aren't meant to always look at the keys. Quite a profound thread we have going here.


But it does look as though the mistake was caused by the "unnecessary action" of looking up at the ceiling (momentarily creating the effect of being "blindfolded"). With a piece involving a lot of leaps like that, it's a bit risky to do it, I guess. If you fix your gaze upon the score, you still have your fingers visible in the bottom part of your vision/sight.


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## hesoner (Apr 22, 2021)

I want to like Chopin as he likes but i dont feel all those emotions.
So I dont understand how he can do that, what he feels there, how its possible to be so emotional about it and how to learn it to be the same.

In 0:27 I hear that but did he really made mistake or this is on purpose? How to know that, only from score?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

hesoner said:


> In 0:27 I hear that but did he really made mistake or this is on purpose? How to know that, only from score?


It is a mistake (of hitting two adjacent keys with one finger), there isn't any clustered "major second" played in the top voice like that in the piece.




(But there is a passage in another piece where the performer is instructed to play two adjacent notes with one finger:




)


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## Endeavour (Sep 9, 2021)

hesoner said:


> I want to like Chopin as he likes but i dont feel all those emotions.
> So I dont understand how he can do that, what he feels there, how its possible to be so emotional about it and how to learn it to be the same.


So to sum up you aren't making fun of Szymon Nehring, you just don't understand how he can feel emotions about something that you don't? You would like to feel the same as he does but you don't...am I summing that up correctly?


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> But it does look as though the mistake was caused by the "unnecessary action" of looking up at the ceiling (momentarily creating the effect of being "blindfolded"). With a piece involving a lot of leaps like that, it's a bit risky to do it, I guess. If you fix your gaze upon the score, you still have your fingers visible in the bottom part of your vision/sight.


It's possible that that was the reason for the mistake. On the other hand, sometimes pianists make mistakes. And I think that connecting with the music emotionally (which for some musicians entails facial expressions and gestures) is as important, if not more important, than accuracy...


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

When, while performing Chopin in a concert, you remember you left your pet chihuahua, Fifi, in the car, in the parking lot, in Houston Texas, without rolling down the windows.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mossyembankment said:


> And I think that connecting with the music emotionally (which for some musicians entails facial expressions and gestures)


I'm really sceptical of this, for professionals at least. I think that pianists put on ecstatic body language for sales reasons. Here's an example -- Arthur Jussen -- who, along with his brother is milking an erotically based marketing strategy. That body language is designed to excite his target market sexually






Not a dry seat in the house!

Now contrast the gestures of a real pro -- Liberace here. He would never do what the Jussen brothers do!


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## vtpoet (Jan 17, 2019)

My God. Liberace. The ease with which that guy could play the piano. I can't even put on my pants without an unforced error. Hummel was said to have been just as much of a showman, wore gaudy rings just like Liberace, and could play the bark off a tree.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

It was once an important part of a pianists' training not to make excessive facial expressions in recital. That is why so many of the great pianists of the past kept it at a bare minimum. Such self-absorbed emoting on the pianist's part was viewed as a deterrent or distraction from allowing the audience to focus on the music instead. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli or Claudio Arrau wouldn't be caught dead doing what the Husson brothers & the like do. But then, these older pianists were the product of a less narcissistic age. Music making wasn't about gimmicks, or putting on a show. They were also better pianists. Though I don't think the Jussons are untalented.

My advice to the OP is, if a pianist is distracting you from listening more intently to the music, simply close you eyes and listen to the music instead. Obviously, it's not at all about what you see, rather it's about what you hear. So, focus on the music. Listen to the various different musical lines interacting as if they were a part of a dramatic, human conversation or dialogue.

The time to focus on what you see and not what you hear is when you visit an art gallery or art museum. That is the time when you don't want to be distracted by a lot of noise around you, but need silence & a sense of quietude instead.

With that said, I thought the pianist playing Chopin in the opening clip was very good, and not particularly distracting in the way that you claim. But I'm not you. Each of us responds differently.

Is it only Chopin's music that you don't respond to emotionally? or do you also feel shut off from the music of Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, etc., in the same way? There are people in this world that aren't moved by music in general, & don't get it that other people are moved. Could you be like that?

For instance, how do you respond to Claudio Arrau playing Chopin's 21 Nocturnes? I'm not suggesting that you should be crying when you listen to this music, or anything like that, but I do think that you should be able to hear & recognize that there is human feeling being expressed in this music, as well as a vital imagination: 



.


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I'm really sceptical of this, for professionals at least. I think that pianists put on ecstatic body language for sales reasons. Here's an example -- Arthur Jussen -- who, along with his brother is milking an erotically based marketing strategy. That body language is designed to excite his target market sexually
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Haha, yes I take your point. There are people who are hamming it up for non-musical reasons, so what I said doesn't apply universally. And many great players keep a pretty stoic composure. But, I think what I said is applicable in the case of this particular Chopin performance...


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## Livly_Station (Jan 8, 2014)

Josquin13 said:


> It was once an important part of a pianists' training not to make excessive facial expressions in recital. That is why so many of the great pianists of the past kept it at a bare minimum. Such self-absorbed emoting on the pianist's part was viewed as a deterrent or distraction from allowing the audience to focus on the music instead. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli or Claudio Arrau wouldn't be caught dead doing what the Husson brothers & the like do. But then, these older pianists were the product of a less narcissistic age. Music making wasn't about gimmicks, or putting on a show. They were also better pianists. Though I don't think the Jussons are untalented.


Quite honestly, I think there's something ironically narcissistic in the training of *not* making facial/corporal expressions, so much so that I've read quotes of some of these pianists taking pride of how stoic they look at the piano. It's an aesthetic choice of avoiding aesthetic showmanship, which is a cultural arbitrariety of a particular era for some sort of noble cause, as if the neutrality of visuals were actually somewhat linked to the ability of interpretation and right appreciation of music. Well, maybe they were right considering many of those pianists were the greatest ever, in my opinion and of many others.

However, if anything, I think it's much more natural for a performer to forget about his looks and let himself get lost into the interpretation, even if that means making faces and moving a lot. These are just physical reactions to the feelings you're trying to picture in your head in order to guide your interpretation. It takes a conscious effort to actually hide these expressions (a real training), and this effort can distract you from the piece.

Obviously, many pianists use these gestures as gimmicks and showmanship for their marketing instead of being simply a natural thing. I don't blame them, though, and if it's engaging the audience, good for them.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


>


[_edit: I don't actually understand that video and I think that criticism of Lang Lang sometimes comes across as pretty distasteful. That said,_] Lang Lang is a good example, as well as those two twin brothers that were referenced earlier in the thread, of what I see as distracting or inauthentic showboating. Some people might see Trifonov that way, too.

On the other hand, I think if someone sits like a statue, that is also distracting or at least out of synch with the activity they're engaged in.

I like a nice balance - when the musician appears to be surrendering themselves to the emotion that the music authentically evokes in them, no more and no less. I feel that way about these, e.g. (sorry that they're all Schumann):











This one is pushing the outer limits, maybe, but Kreisleriana pushes the outer limits itself:






In any case, OP wasn't actually complaining about the gestures, it seems like he was legitimately confused as to whether he should be feeling strong emotions from Chopin's music, which is a separate issue...


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

hesoner said:


> Whats with those faces, almost crying?





KevinJS said:


> Maybe he thinks the emotion will somehow be transmitted to the keys? . . .


I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion, when your heart and soul are connected to the instrument being played and the piece being performed. You can tell right at the beginning that he is quite happy about the piece ... then gets very serious at one point ... it's a time, imho, where the performer and the instrument become one, where your heart and soul are producing the music ... quite different than just playing the memorized notes.

When I am improvising at the organ console at church I become as one with the instrument ... my heart and soul are creating the music ... it can be a very moving and touching moment for the performer.

I say the above as I am a professional organist with decades of situations just like this one.

Kh


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## KevinJS (Sep 24, 2021)

Krummhorn said:


> I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion, when your heart and soul are connected to the instrument being played and the piece being performed. You can tell right at the beginning that he is quite happy about the piece ... then gets very serious at one point ... it's a time, imho, where the performer and the instrument become one, where your heart and soul are producing the music ... quite different than just playing the memorized notes.
> 
> When I am improvising at the organ console at church I become as one with the instrument ... my heart and soul are creating the music ... it can be a very moving and touching moment for the performer.
> 
> ...


Good point. Why else would you do it?

Actually, my initial post couldn't have been wider of the mark. The reality is probably a loop as the performer reacts to the music that he is creating.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

3:25~3:27


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

0:51~1:11


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## AaronSF (Sep 5, 2021)

Manxfeeder said:


> Maybe he's channeling Oscar Wilde's character Gilbert: "After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own."


Oh I do so love this quote! It continues: "Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears."


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

People have been making fun of a pianist's expressions and mannerisms since Liszt. 

Based on the pianists I know personally, many of these expressions are involuntary and not necessarily meant to "show" the audience anything. Some people simply cannot go without certain mannerisms, such as the humming by Gould and Zimerman. I would imagine facial expressions are much the same in that sense.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

It's just weird. And what are those fingerless gloves for anyway?


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## mossyembankment (Jul 28, 2020)

Maybe it's cold in there...


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

mossyembankment said:


> Maybe it's cold in there...


That explains all the shivering and teeth chattering...


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