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Analyzing Great Piano Playing - Horowitz Plays Schumann's Träumerei
How can we make our piano playing great?
One extremely helpful practice is to analyze the playing of great pianists. Just as filmmakers dissect great films to figure out what make them tick, we pianists should dissect great piano playing to learn what makes it come alive.
Take Horowitz's recording of Träumerei. Let's analyze what he does in the first 8 measures. Several things are worth discussing:
(1) Notice how loud the very first note is, even though Schumann marked it piano. You can tell how loud this middle C is by comparing it to the next middle C in measure 1, beat 2. Almost the whole melody is played at this volume. This loudness gives the melody a rich, singing tone; some would say the tone "is meaty" or "has body".
This is important because many pianists play melodies marked piano with a thin, airy sound. The sound stays inside the piano, so to speak, instead of going out toward the listeners. Some melodies marked piano demand this kind of tone, but many, perhaps the majority, don't!
Back to Horowitz--while the melody is loud, the accompanying voices are generally played quietly, and so the overall effect is still piano.
(2) Listen to how uneven his 8th notes are! The clearest way to hear this is to play the video at half-speed, and to try clapping strict 8th notes. For example, notice how delayed beat 1 of measure 3 is, and notice how early beat 2 is in the same measure. Try to find more of them yourself--you'll notice these deviations from strict time are all over the place. But because of this, the music doesn't sound robotic--it sounds like a living thing!
(3) Just as Horowitz's timing is uneven, his melody's volume is also uneven. Above, I said almost the whole melody is played loudly. There are exceptions. Listen to the G in measure 6--it's played very delicately, almost inaudibly in fact. Listen to the 2nd 8th note in measure 3. There are more examples throughout the piece. And again, these variations in loudness impart a sense of "aliveness" to the music.
(4) Horowitz doesn't always prioritize the melody, or the top as some call it. This is a special case of point (3) above. A clear example are the 4th and 5th 8th notes in measure 7--Horowitz brings out the alto voice here, the Ab and G. (As a side note, listen to his left hand here--he doesn't play the F and C together!) A subtler example starts beat 4 in measure 3, where the left hand is played louder than the right hand. Generally speaking, this is one way to create interesting colors in your piano playing--by mixing the balance between various layers of the music.
(5) Finally, notice how quiet the bass line generally is. Sometimes it's barely audible! This can make the melody sound like its floating. It's similar to how, if you listen to a pop song and take away the bass by fiddling with the EQ, the pop song will sound more ethereal. This doesn't work for all piano pieces obviously, but some pieces do demand a floating kind of sound. Keeping the bass very quiet helps produce this sound.
More can be said about the first 8 measures, but hopefully enough has been described to show how richly detailed great piano playing is, and to inspire others to experiment with integrating these details into their own playing. |
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发表于 2024-10-5 20:15:31