another view of the Chopin Piano Competition
TesTeq said:
In the "XV International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition Warsaw" (
http://www.konkurs.chopin.pl/index.php) in this year there were some exceptionally trained pianists from China, Japan and Korea. They were playing perfectly, no wrong note, perfect timing. They could play the music twice as fast with the same accuracy. But the winner was young Polish pianist Rafal Blechacz. Why? He simply feels the romantic soul of Chopin's music. He doesn't play notes. He plays stories, emotions, landscapes. Can it be acquired by practice?
You can learn the craft by practice but the real art and mastery requires talent.
I fully appreciate the difference between playing notes with technical mastery and playing with emotion and soul. But I see it more as a value judgment, not as a demonstration of talent. Most Western music lovers will share your value of the emotional expression (including me), but objectively I could just as easily say that the Asians' greater speed and perfect accuracy is evidence of
their greater talent.
As BigStory mentioned, the differences in cultural psychology between Asians and Europeans could account for much, if not all, of what you hear in their performances of Chopin. And along with their cultural differences, their training goals are also different. You get what you train for. The Asians practice for dazzling speed and accuracy, not for a creative or emotional interpretation. For the Europeans, though, the technical precision is just a requirement for the most important goal of the creative, expressive, emotional interpretation of a piece.
I once saw a review paper about the differences in cultural psychology of Asians versus Americans. I didn't read the whole thing, but the conclusion was that there were large and fundamental differences between the cultures, including
perceptual differences. For example, when both groups view the same scene, they see and remember different things. Even their eye movements (saccades) trace distinctly different patterns. The authors concluded that the findings of cultural psychology for the US could not be applied to Asians.
Coincidentally, I had lunch today with a friend of mine from Korea who is a proficient pianist. I asked her for details about her musical and piano training in Korea. Starting in early childhood, she attended piano school after regular school for 2 hours a day. School time and practice time increased as she got older. She said that none of her teachers ever talked about emotional expression as a musical goal; that speed and absolutely perfect accuracy were drilled into them; that they did a huge amount of just technical training; that there was a spirit of high-pressure competition for speed and accuracy. There was no learning about the historical context of the music, the composer's viewpoint, the theory, the analysis. The European music was new to them, and -- well, foreign. The students' goal was to master the technical difficulties so that they can play the music correctly and perfectly, exactly like the one perfect performance they are taught to imitate. They are strictly to imitate, never diverge or create.
It is hard for me to imagine piano lessons without a teacher working on the emotional expression of a piece, so I asked her if there were
any emotion attached to the music at all. Don't they feel
anything when they play Chopin? She said that for their own Korean music, they paid much more attention to the emotions it expressed. But learning European music was a competitive endeavor: it is prominent in world-level competitions; it is technically difficult; and the Koreans are determined to master the difficulty and perform it faster than anyone else.
My friend said that any original thinking is discouraged in Korea, in music as well as in the rest of their education and in their lives. They are not to think for themselves; they are to master skills with drill and respect their elders.
In the US, even in the more casual piano training I received (lessons once a week, rather than piano school every day), artistic expression was emphasized at every lesson.
And the Europeans view(ed) Americans as philistines (at least in some books I have read). From early childhood, the young European pianist has
daily lessons with master teachers. (One author ridiculed the American way of taking lessons once a week and asked how we could expect to improve without daily lessons. In a week, he said, the child would practice incorrectly and therefore learn the bad habits which would then be hard to unlearn. The "talented" child needs daily guidance to avoid developing "bad habits" between lessons. If a pianist has such special talent, why is so much daily correction needed? This is the same author who believes you either have the talent or you don't.)
Early in training, the young pianist is taught the goal of emotional expression. The Europeans believe that expression is learned by 1) broadly learning about the historical context, the theory, and the structure of the music; 2) listening to the masters and training the ear; and 3) explicit direction in playing the notes and phrases of the music. In one master class I observed, the master teacher spent a great deal of time relating the historical context of Mozart and the structure of the entire piece to the dynamics of the notes in
one phrase. For about an hour. On that one phrase. And in Europe, the student apparently listens, listens, listens to the masters, live in master classes, attending concerts, hearing recordings, etc.
But another explicit goal for the European (and American) pianist is a unique and creative interpretation. Chopin's music has been around a long time and has been interpreted hundreds or thousands of times; Europeans and Americans want to hear something different -- a unique viewpoint, a unique interpretation -- that is still consistent with the essence of Chopin. Koreans do not even know what you're talking about when you say that.
Although we are always impressed by a uniquely creative artistic viewpoint, it is never seen without a tremendous amount of work. So yes, it is most definitely acquired; and the artist's goal throughout training is to develop that artistry. It may not be achieved through a precise sequence of steps, but many, many hours of practice and training are most definitely required, not only for the more technical aspects but also the connection of the technique to the expression of emotions.
So Rafal, playing the music of his fellow European (Pole?), in his native culture, is at an advantage to play Chopin in a way that Europeans will most appreciate. But the large differences in training of Chopin between Europeans and Asians also account for the differences in how they play his music.
For me, seeing a source for the artistry heard in the playing of Rafal (goal-directed training) does not eliminate the magic. The source is not magic, but the effect is. To me, at least. Maybe I can get my Korean friend to hear it if I can get a recording of Rafal.
