Often a music critic will say that a pianist had nice colors, and teachers and pianists always talk about touch and tone. What does “colors” mean? How can an interpreter change colors? Doesn’t the composer decide the colors? Can you change the touch and tone without changing the dynamics, or is touch a myth? What is “voicing of textures”, “aural imagination”, and “orchestral sonorities”, for which Daniel Barenboim praised Radu Lupu’s playing in an article that I read recently?

—Simeon

Dear Simeon:

First of all, color, tone, tone quality, sound quality, sonority, and timbre are all essentially the same thing.

If someone says that a pianist has nice colors, it means that the pianist is using artistic ways of enhancing the basic sound of the piano.

The basic sound of the piano is what you get by simply pushing the keys down. Someone who is playing the piano just to hear notes—for example, while working on a theory exercise—simply pushes the keys down.

But pianists who study compositions written specifically for performance on the piano spend their lives developing the artistic enhancements that create colors, in order to convey nuances of musical expression.

The composer doesn’t decide the colors, unless the composer is writing for and combining the sounds of several instruments, and especially for an orchestra. Then the composer decides what the desired colors are. The composer for the piano can suggest colors by writing in a certain way or another, but it is the prerogative of the solo instrumentalist to create an interpretation according to his or her own sense of color.

In relation to this, I recently heard someone say that the advantage of the piano is that it can suggest many instruments other than itself. For example, a melody written in the range that a flute would play in, or that a cello would play in, can inspire the pianist to create sounds like those other instruments. This would account for the mention of “orchestral sonorities”.

How pianists create colors is to use touch, pedaling, overtones, and the balance of simultaneous layers of dynamics. A change in any of those categories will change the sound of the piano, and there are variables within each category. Their effects on sound are not a myth, but they are subtle and they can also depend on psychological states to some extent.

The variables of touch are: in what direction your arms, hands, and fingers move; how fast or how slowly they move; how heavy or how light they feel as you push down a piano key; whether they move from a position above, below, or level with the keys; and whether they push the key down from its surface or by landing on it from the air.

It also includes whether they are loose or firm and whether they are curved or straight, and it includes whether the finger slides on the key or stays on one point of contact.

Another variable is how far down you push the key. After you push it down enough to make sound, there is still a fraction of an inch farther that it can go. This is called the “aftertouch”.

To find the aftertouch, push down two adjacent white keys, such as A and B, with fingers of your left hand. Now leave your them there while pushing down the B with your right index finger as hard as you can. The B will go farther down than the A, into the aftertouch.

The most substantial piano sound is produced by getting the key all the way down into the aftertouch, even at soft dynamic levels.

This brings up the relation of touch to dynamics. Changing touch has to do with more than changing dynamics. But there is a side to this that is somewhat intangible. It has to do with having an imaginative concept of the sound that you want to produce.

I could ask you to play something louder. Or instead I could ask you to play it with a fuller sonority that is more projecting, perhaps emulating the sound of an opera singer. In that case, the loudness is the effect of an intention that isn’t really about playing louder. This would account for the mention of “aural imagination”.

The remaining points can be dealt with more briefly:

The primary use of the pedals is to enhance the sound color of the piano, and you can read more about this in the article “The Use of the Pedals” on this website.

You can become aware of activating overtones on the piano by putting down the pedal and repeating the same note several times slowly. Notice that there are slight differences in the sound quality with each strike of the hammer on the strings. Some strikes of the hammer reinforce lower overtones and have more of an “oo” sound; others reinforce higher overtones and have more of an “ee” sound. Experiment with reproducing these results to create different colors.

You can balance simultaneous sounds by having, for example,  the highest note of a texture be the loudest or instead have the lowest note of a texture be the loudest. Enhancing the high notes is said to give the sound a brighter color and enhancing the low notes is said to give the sound a darker color. This would account for your mention of “voicing of textures”.

Something not commonly realized about layers of different loudnesses is that in some cases, particularly with contrapuntal compositions like those of Bach, the assignment of a dynamic level to a melodic line has the effect of giving it an identity not of being loud or soft but of simply having a sound that is distinct from the other melodic lines. This allows for all of the simultaneous lines to be heard distinctly and as having equal importance. This is a different sonic concept from, for example, playing an accompaniment softly while playing a melody loudly, which produces a subordinate/dominating relationship between the parts.

Thanks for your question covering much of the subject of color in piano music.

—Jeffrey Chappell

I have learned my piano piece and I play all of it correctly, the way the composer asked for it to be played. What more is there for me to do? I feel like something is missing.

Dear Learner:

There is an aspect of playing music that I call “the intangibles”. These are the things that happen in your inner world that affect how people in the outer world perceive the music you play. These include things like freedom, attention, confidence, attitude, taking authority, feeling comfortable, and so on.

The standout among these is freedom. Freedom means that as you play music, you do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. It means that you drive the music, not the other way around, and that you only play the notes when you feel like it’s the right time to play them.

Freedom is what an audience wants to hear. True, hearing someone like Vladimir Horowitz play with breathtaking brilliance is exciting. But, in one sense, what is exciting is not the brilliance; it is hearing someone do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it. Someone who has captured this quality is equally compelling when playing slow, quiet music.

Freedom doesn’t mean that you don’t play the notes as they are written, or that you don’t play in strict time or with precise rhythm. It’s just that when you do, you are freely choosing to do so, as opposed to following the orders given to you by the page or by your metronome. The choice to conform is a free choice.

As long as you feel obligated by the page or by your metronome, and as long as you feel like you are trying to keep up with something that is running ahead of you as you play, you aren’t feeling right. And you aren’t free.

However, not only should things feel right but they should also be right. Feeling right is inner and subjective; it is about you. Being right is outer and objective; it is about what is on the page. Having one without the other—it feels right but it isn’t right, it is right but it doesn’t feel right—creates an unsatisfying experience.

At an early phase of study, the musician’s job is to be right: to identify what is on the page and to render it accurately. That is what you have done with your piano piece, and congratulations on that. The next step for you is to include the aspect of feeling right.

How can you take a step in the direction of feeling right? Start by listening to what you are playing. When you are counting beats and planning your next move, you are not listening.

How can you start to listen well? One method is to play a single note and listen to it until it fades away. That is the kind of listening that you should do all the time, no matter what you are playing. Sounds have a life of their own. Listen to how they evolve.

How can you practice the experience of freedom? One method is to elasticize a piece that you have learned. Play it all out of rhythm, exaggerating and lingering at your every whim. This will show you the extreme possibilities for feeling right without being right.

After you have experienced that side of freedom, re-introduce its other side, the side of being right. Play correctly. But retain your sense of freedom as you do.

Rudolf Serkin once said to me, “We are not metronomes.”

—Jeffrey Chappell

I have heard music teachers say, “Try to play this phrase with a different character.” How can a musician control the character of the phrase? What would be the variables one can use to control/paint/portray the character? Can the character change in each phrase, or change in the phrase itself? How does the interpretation change if the character changes? Do you breathe differently in each different character of phrases?

–Simeon

Dear Simeon:

Sometimes I describe music as the sound of feelings.

So we have two things: sound and feeling. Sound is the outer, objective aspect and feeling is the inner, subjective aspect.

“Character” means the quality of a feeling. For example, a feeling of happiness can have different qualities. It could be a profound, relaxed, serene quality of happiness; or an energetic, exuberant, bright quality of happiness. There are many, many shades of happiness, each having its own specific character and its own adjectives. See how many you can think of.

Character in music is expressed in sound by means of timbre (sound quality), dynamics (loudness), balance (relative simultaneous loudnesses), articulation (amount of connection between successive notes), tempo (speed), beat division (number of counts per measure), and the amount of rubato (rhythmic flexibility).

Let’s follow an example to see how character is put into action. The piece of music is the Prelude in C Major from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach.

Let’s give it a profound, relaxed, serene character.

Serene timbre would be one that is rounded and light.

Serene dynamics would have no sudden contrasts, no big contrasts, and no strongly accented notes, and the level would be generally quiet.

Serene balance would bring out more of the bass notes and less of the treble notes.

Serene articulation would be legato.

Serene tempo would be a slower tempo.

Serene beat division would have fewer beats per measure. In this example, there are sixteen notes in each measure, therefore you could feel sixteen, or eight, or four, or two beats, or one beat per measure. Let’s select two beats per measure because that is less agitated than the higher numbers.

Serene rhythm would feel flexible but not with a distracting amount of rubato.

Now play this Prelude with a light timbre, with generally quiet dynamics that change only gradually, with balance that favors the lower notes, with legato, with a slower tempo, feeling two beats per measure, and with an even but flexible rhythm. You are playing it with a serene character.

Now let’s give the same piece a different character, which is a quality of happiness that is energetic, exuberant, and bright.

Bright timbre would be one that is sharper and richer.

Bright dynamics could have obvious contrasts and the level would be generally loud.

Bright balance would bring out more of the treble notes and less of the bass notes.

Bright articulation would be less legato.

Bright tempo would be a faster tempo.

Bright beat division would have more beats per measure. Let’s select eight beats per measure because that is more active.

Bright rhythm would be very even and tight.

Now play this Prelude with a rich timbre, with generally loud dynamics but including some obvious contrasts, with balance that favors the higher notes, with an articulation that is less legato, with a faster tempo, feeling eight beats per measure, and with tight rhythm. You are playing it with a bright character.

Musicians talk about character, but actors also talk about character. To explore a more advanced level of focusing and defining the quality of feeling in a piece of music, think of it the way an actor would.

Here are some examples of questions an actor might ask about character: Who is feeling the happiness? How old is that person–is it a child, elderly person, or someone in between? What country and time period in history does this person live in? What kind of circumstance is causing the happiness–winning the lottery, getting a good grade in school, eating chocolate, something else? Is the happiness happening right now, or is a sad person remembering a happiness from the past? Is the happy person telling the world about this happiness, or telling an intimate friend, or experiencing it alone? See if you can imagine the quality of happiness that matches each different situation. Invent your own additional situations.

To address the other parts of your question, let me say that character changes when the variables change. Therefore, character can be sustained for any length of a musical statement: for part of a phrase, for an entire phrase, or even for an entire piece.

Also, the character that a musician chooses to assign to a piece of music is their interpretation of that piece. Therefore, changing the character is the same as changing the interpretation.

Finally, your breathing can change according to the character of a piece of music. And that could be just one physical manifestation of character. You might also change the way you position your body or change the expression on your face. From the point of view of piano technique, you will change the movements of your arms and hands, approaching the keys with differing amounts of speed, of heaviness in the arms, of height of the wrists, of flexibility in the wrists, and of curve in the fingers. Each way of doing things results in a different kind of sound. Each different kind of sound expresses a different kind of character.

To play a phrase with a different character means first to have a different quality of feeling and, as a result, to make a different kind of sound.

–Jeffrey Chappell

People who missed it: “How was your concert?”

Well, if this had been any other concert, I could briefly answer, “It went great,” and then we could move on to the next part of our conversation.

Not this time.

How was it? It was like putting a piece of pottery into a kiln. The pottery bakes in the hot fires and becomes finished. That’s how the concert was for me.

It made me feel that 44 years of being onstage had been spent doing things a certain way, with a certain goal in mind, a perfectly fine goal, one that had carried me up to this point, and that I could have spent the rest of my life serving: excellence. Except that it had now been replaced by a new goal and a new functioning.

The new goal was to deliver the spirit of the music above all else.

The new functioning was total freedom, supported by the force of awareness. It was born from the white-hot concentration that resulted from my resolve to do everything the way I wanted to, in resistance to anything else that was happening, and while doing the most difficult thing possible.

Here’s an e-mail quote from an audience member who had also heard me play this piece before: “I saw something break through your inner being: a controlled ferocity waiting to be unleashed. You seemed liberated in a sense. I don’t say this lightly, but I’ve never seen more connectedness between a musician and his instrument. Thank you with all of my heart for your years of hard work and dedication.”

That night, I was sure of one thing: I had maintained my calm during the slow, melodic sections of the piece, as if I were sitting home alone. Whenever I wanted to linger and shape a phrase, I had done so, and with no sense of hurry or hesitation whatsoever. As I keep telling my students to do it, I only played when it felt like the right time to play.

Was I happy with the performance? I had the usual nagging thoughts that perfectionism brings with it. I wished that I had played every note exactly as written, which I hadn’t. I was thinking that I’d like to do it again and do it better next time.

But the following morning, I listened to a recording of the concert and my perfectionism was smashed into the ground by the sweeping power of the musical message that Rachmaninoff had crafted, and which I had managed to deliver in spite of any doubts, and which superseded all other concerns. I was actually stunned. I hadn’t realized the success of the concert in this aspect.

This performance changed things. The next time I touched a piano, I felt a new power in the playing. And music was more beautiful to me. I knew that I could expect to carry that into all of my future concerts.

–Jeffrey Chappell

I don’t get nervous for a performance in the sense of being frantic or having the shakes or anything like that. But I do notice that I sometimes start behaving a little differently right before a concert. I’ll find something to do until the concert begins, like fiddling with my cuff links forever or adjusting my collar too many times. Then I’ll notice I’m doing it, and I’ll think, “This is my way of being nervous.”

On May 7, I was backstage pondering the huge weight of responsibility ahead of me and the fact that a moment was approaching when I would have to walk onstage and leave behind any further opportunity to get ready for the performance. Since there was about half an hour remaining, I left my dressing room and went for a stroll. And here is what happened:

After I had stopped studying Rachmaninoff’s recording of his Third Concerto, I was still curious to hear more of his playing. In the weeks before this concert, I started listening to a CD of him playing his own compositions.

This is a recording that I had owned for years and had listened to previously. One of the tracks is a short work entitled “Daisies”. I had never paid much attention to it before. It just seemed like a short, ephemeral work of lesser substance.

But now I fell in love with it and listened to it over and over again, like a found treasure. I finally got it: the slow, unusual key changes supporting the sinuous blending of melody and countermelody. And there are those four measures right in the middle of the piece that just luxuriate in a bath of D flat harmony. Miraculous.

Backstage on May 7, I returned to my dressing room after my stroll and found a bouquet of daisies on the table. The conductor had left them for me. No, I had not mentioned “Daisies” to her.

I just touched them with my two hands and thanked Rachmaninoff. I felt like this was the sign that the performance would go well.

–Jeffrey Chappell

(Here is a nice performance of “Daisies”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHO448q9Uns )

There is an unusual line down which interpreting musicians walk. On one side is feeling, on the other side is control. A performer has to hold a teetering balance between these two.

The composer’s score is like a playwright’s script, and the interpreting musician is like an actor. In “An Actor Prepares”, author Stanislawski tells his students to perform simple actions onstage rather than to emote. Instead, it is the actor’s job to create the conditions for the audience to feel emotion.

An elderly friend of mine in Frederick told me that he heard Rachmaninoff play in concert. He remarked that he had never seen anyone with such an aristocratic bearing as Rachmaninoff. “But he made such Romantic music!” he said. Maybe Rachmaninoff was using the Stanislawski method.

(You can read a lecture I gave at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting tracing connections between acting and performing music at http://jeffreychappell.com/march_7_lecture.php )

Being onstage, in itself, engenders heightened emotions and energy. If the music is exciting in the practice room, it will be twice as exciting in front of an audience. But a performer can forget this, be overwhelmed by feelings, lose control of the performance, and cheat the audience out of the full message of the piece. The trick onstage is to reduce one’s own excess emotional energy. (Unless, of course, you are improvising jazz or playing rock music. But that is different from portraying character in classical music.)

Cutting totally loose is perfectly fine when you are alone practicing the music; in fact, you should do that. You want to be carried away by inspiration, which then causes you to perform certain actions. Then you repeat those actions to portray the inspiration.

And yes, inspiration can visit you onstage at times, and things can take on a new meaning spontaneously. It is not something to resist. It is actually something to celebrate. Being prepared with a complete interpretation in advance is what allows that to happen.

I made every effort to stay on the side of being in control of simple actions during this performance, even at the explosive climax of the first movement cadenza. Apparently that worked. People commented afterwards on the sincerity of my playing and said that it was full of emotion. Which it was. It was full of emotion and of control as I walked the line between them.

–Jeffrey Chappell

Ideally, it is the soloist. The concerto was written to feature the soloist, and the conductor’s job is to shape the accompaniment to the soloist’s playing.

That is the ideal, but it doesn’t always happen that way. Some conductors see themselves as the leader at all times, even when they should be accompanying. Some orchestras don’t stay with the conductor, who may be faithfully following the soloist, and there results a breakdown of synchrony between orchestra and soloist.

Playing the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto with the Frederick Symphony Orchestra initially posed some ensemble challenges. The piece was new to their repertoire, and although the conductor, Elisa Koehler, was always right with me, the orchestra was still getting accustomed to playing it.

Elisa told me that I should totally just do my own thing during the performance. I was to make no adjustments to the orchestra whatsoever if there was ever a moment when we weren’t together. She said that she would always follow me exactly and that she wanted me to feel completely free to fulfill my vision of the interpretation.

This was a new premise for me. Instead of collaborating, I was supposed to sit at the piano as if it were a solo performance, as if there were no conductor and no orchestra, and to do things exactly as I wanted. But there was an orchestra, and I could hear them, and my best instincts were to alter my playing to match theirs.

Instead, I had to ignore my best instincts and to forge ahead without taking them into account, like a test of my will power. It required MORE concentration and determination than usual. It also allowed me total freedom. Thanks for the assignment, Elisa, because the combination helped to create an unanticipated effect on my playing.

–Jeffrey Chappell

Well, for most people, it is not an everyday experience. It feels out of the ordinary.

There you are in this huge room, sitting at the one end of a concert grand piano, staring down the shiny golden 9-foot length of its interior workings and often with a direct line of sight to the principal cellist sitting at the other end, a symphony orchestra on your left and an audience on your right. (If you do this often enough, you stop talking about the right and left sides of your body and instead refer to them as the “orchestra” side or the “audience” side.)

And actually, in this case, it was a 10-foot-long piano, a Bösendorfer Imperial Grand. Not only was it extra long, it was extra wide, with nine extra keys in the lower range, making the lowest note a C below the usual A. Considering the oversized concerto that I was playing, it was only natural that I should play it on an oversized piano.

Yes, there you sit, and time has run out. There is no more practicing, no more rehearsing, no more waiting in the dressing room for the minute hand to get to the starting time of the concert. People have paid money, everyone has gathered, and all other activities of daily living are on hold as a single responsibility comes sharply into focus.

In one way, that is a relief. There are no distractions from making music, and there is part of you that wants only that, and it is all that is expected of you by anyone else. In another way, it is a burden. You have to fend off all intruding thoughts of things that are everyday, or lightweight, or leisurely. There is a job to do.

–Jeffrey Chappell

The first time I performed the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto in 2007, I listened to a recording by Vladimir Horowitz as a model for the shape and the message of the piece as well as to study the interweaving of the piano and orchestral parts.

This time, I listened to Rachmaninoff’s recording instead. After all, he wrote the piece. I wanted to know: what did his own musicality bring to the playing of it?

Over the years, I used to find this recording to be unsatisfactorily stern and dry. It seemed that Rachmaninoff rushed through the piece, ignoring all of the luxurious harmonies and melodies and the abundant opportunities for highlighting them with rubato and lingering.  It reminded me of Gershwin’s fast, macho playing of the “Rhapsody in Blue” that similarly neglected to savor the beautiful moments.

But this time, close attention revealed that Rachmaninoff’s playing was anything but dry. He took plenty of liberties with timing and with dynamics to bring the piece to life. It’s just that what he did was done so naturally and done without making a point of it that I hadn’t noticed it before.

Now I was picking up some really astonishing details about his style of using pedaling, tempo, accentuation, phrasing, and dynamics to craft his performance of the piece. I noticed things he did that were different from the notation. I even heard him play a really wonderful wrong note in the last movement. Apart from that last item, I tested out these discoveries in my own playing of the concerto.

But as May 7 approached, I realized I had to finalize my own truthful reactions to the music and to instill them into my playing. No, it wouldn’t sound like Horowitz and it wouldn’t sound like Rachmaninoff, and it wasn’t supposed to. Insights, clues, and permissions—those could be gained from others. But stewardship of the interpretation could only be granted to myself by myself.

–Jeffrey Chappell

I owned the score as long ago as 1977. I would take it off the shelf and play through the parts of it that I liked the best at the time. I occasionally did that over the years. But I never thoroughly learned it either for a piano lesson or for a concert. By a strange roll of the dice, I was not invited to perform the Rachmaninoff Third until 2007, after several decades of concertizing. (See the complete list of concertos I have performed at http://jeffreychappell.com/orchestras.php )

The concerto is 78 pages long and takes 45 minutes to perform. There are other concertos that are 45 minutes long, but this one has three times as many notes in it as they do. In fact, there is an urban legend that a Juilliard student once counted the number of notes in the piece. The point is, there are a lot of them.

Because of that, there is no time to allow oneself any sort of careless practicing. When I learned and memorized the concerto for the 2007 Baton Rouge Symphony performance, I took care to center every finger on every piano key as I practiced only the right notes. It would take three times longer to correct the piece if I didn’t.

And I didn’t have that kind of time. As a full-time college professor with other teaching responsibilities as well, in addition to all of the other concerts I was involved in, I had to depend on summer months to learn the piece, and then on the January winter semester break for any sort of uninterrupted practicing. This was true in 2007 and also true in 2011 when I performed it with the Frederick Symphony Orchestra.

Fortunately, I learn quickly and can do a lot in a short time. When people ask me how much I practice, I answer that I practice as much as I need to. They imagine that, as a concert pianist, I spend several hours a day practicing. Well. There were some days, in fact, even as late in the game as during the month of April (before the May 7 performance) when I couldn’t get to the piano before 11 p.m. At that point, I could run through the piece once before going to bed.

–Jeffrey Chappell