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Every time you play a piece don't just play the notes perfectly - focus on interpretation as well and think about what the composer intended. Your interpretation is your creative process. As a performer, if you do that well, the listener may experience an emotional response to the music which should be your goal. Your pleasure will come from the satisfaction of creating your own interpretation and the response from the listener.
Interpretation isn't a rigid technically correct or incorrect function and is likely to be subtly different each time you play the same piece.

Spend some time away from it; that's the simplest advice I have to offer. When planning to perform a piece, I try not to play it the day of, and would go longer without playing it before a performance if I could manage to feel prepared ahead of time...

I think in general overexposure to anything can cause an indifferent reaction. If I see a Chopin Ballade programmed (and many many more works by many composers are also on this list,) I think *yawn*... but every time I go months or years without hearing one of them, if I do experience a great recording or performance, it's an incredibly refreshing and humbling experience to be reminded of Chopin's masterful compositions. And of course this happens all the time.

And yes, DO listen to Arrau's performance, so you know how to NOT play this piece. (Sorry buddy I couldn't resist... )

Good luck,
Daniel

Check out Kempff, too. Kempff is probably the best overall I've heard. He doesn't stop to smell the roses--much like Schiff--but unlike Schiff he weaves a touch of rubato in which makes it more interesting to listen to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6txOvK-mAk

I must admit to some confusion about the original post. To tell you the truth, I don't know what it means to 'bring out all the emotions.' Those are 'fine words that butter no parsnips.' They don't really contain any meaningful direction for how to translate what's on the page to another human mind in a way that produces an emotional response.

Putting 'emotion' into the music involves 1) thinking through the score, 2) determining how your understanding of the musical 'ideas' needs to be translated into phrasing, dynamic control and shading, and subtle variation in tempi, and then 3) working very hard to make sure that your 'understanding' is repeatable whenever you sit at the piano.

Putting emotion into the music does NOT involve sitting at the piano and randomly changing the dynamics willy nilly, or adding rubato at random as the spirit moves you. That's not musicality. That's chaos.

As people have already noted, technical mastery of the bare notes is but one step, and it's not necessarily the first one. Musicality involves the hard work of thinking, planning AND executing a precise game plan.

What follows is a rewrite of something I wrote in another thread some time ago that pertains to the question of emotion:

“I believe that playing with emotion and with personal feeling is an important pursuit. But we are trained to work in the shadow of the composer's intent, and too often, in the shadow of our teacher's intent as well. How do we break this? How do we get at a personal and emotional approach to our music within the constraints of our classical music tradition? I have some ideas that seem to work for me.

Being a singer before a pianist, I found myself on stage when I was younger as a singing/actor. Having no knowledge of acting, I decided to minor in theater—and there I learned about “method” acting, ala Stanislovski.

An important facet of the “method” is “emotional recall.” It is a viable and time tested technique, by which actors deliberately access their heart, their inner muse, and their individuality.

Many actors can attest that by employing emotional recall, an actor will come up with new and different line readings, different characterizations, and different physical attitudes, than would ever have been achieved by simply reading off the page. I see no reason why this can’t be applied to piano playing as well.

Here’s how I suggest you might go about it?

But first, it is important to try this without a teacher's supervision. They too often have interpretive/emotional ideas that are specific to them, or to their teachers, or are the expectations of the larger musical community. It is very difficult to arrive at a personal reading, or a personal style, if you are hobbled by this kind of tutelage.

You should be technically proficient with the piece: but hopefully, learning the piece technically well hasn't left you with specific retards, voiceings, tempos, pedalings, and so on. If so, you may have to have to spend some time just getting rid of them.

So practice playing the piece wrong. Don't be afraid to do this. You'll be able to play it right again. It's not addictive. It's not like that first shot of heroin. It'll be OK. So go ahead. Play it wrong in every way imaginable. Play way too fast--twice or three times as fast; play it too slow; too loud: try wrong pedalings; play legato passages staccato and vice versa. Every time you come to a retard, play faster. Break your "correct" playing habits.

If you have done this thoroughly, you should be prepared for the emotions you feel to come through your own arms and hands and fingers.

Now try this: Think of various cameos, or vignetted experiences that are emotional to you, and that seem appropriate to whatever piece you're working on. They must be specific memories, according to Stanislavski. It isn’t enough to generalize your emotions, and to be merely sad or happy. You must think of sad or happy experiences, and let the experience lead you to the emotion.

Do this repeatedly away from the piano. Practice it just like scales. Nurse it along until you can get to the emotion quickly. It’s just like practicing a new fiingering. It seems clumsy at first. But practice it ten times a day for a week or so, and you will become very facile with the new fingering. So it is with emotional recall.

Now practice emotional recall as you're playing, and see what happens to your tempos and phrasing and touch. Like the actor coming up with a new line reading, I believe you'll come up with new phrasing, a different touch, and new tempos: a new approach that is both emotional and specific to you.

I'm currently working on Brahms intermezzo #2, opus 118. It is a piece well within my ability. I have no problem playing the notes and the pedaling: I can play it three times as fast as it ought to go, I can play it staccato or legato, and with the wrong voicing to boot. No problem.

This particular Brahms is thought of as "autumnal." Brahms seems to be looking back on his long life, on his successes, losses, Clara Schumann, perhaps. He seems to be composing from an emotional place.

But what about me? Remember, an interpretation, certainly if we allow a personal and emotional interpretation, is just as much about me as it is about Brahms.

So count me in. Like Brahms, I'm an older person too, 63, and I too have experienced a life of meaningful events. Specifically, the death of my father, mother, the divorce of my first wife, the death of my second, and I recently euthanized my fifteen year old dog.

So as I play the Brahms intermezzo, I deliberately think of events surrounding these people and my dog. I try to think as specifically as possible: good times--my dog chasing a stick or his tail, my father encouraging me to play piano, my wedding day. Bad times: a spat with my wife, my dog in arthritic pain--unable to chase a stick; the last conversation I had with my wife on her deathbed.

The point is not to generalize the emotion. "Feeling sad" is too general to fire your emotions. But remembering a specific emotional event will drive you to the emotions associated with the event.

Using Stanislovski’s Method Acting technique, and "emotional recall," I believe I have been coming up with more meaningful, more personal, and yes, more emotional readings of the Brahms intermezzo.

You may need to be tough, though. My teacher hasn't always liked what I have come up with, and I have had to stand up to him, and simply say "this is what I believe in, and this is the tempo I'm going to play it. I need you to help me play well from my own instincts and my own muse--not yours." He agreed to this, respected me for it, and together we have brought the music back into compliance with the doctrine of composer's intent, while still maintaining some of my own individuality.

This is worth a try for anyone who feels their playing isn't emotional, or isn't personal.

I feel that performing artists have every right to meld their own life experiences into a composition. The idea that composer's intent is all that matters is like playing in handcuffs. Expressive artists need to exercise all componants of their beings, and certainly, emotions are part of who we are; we need to exercise our emotions just as much as our intellect, just as much as our fingers."

Why should pianists leave what is meaningful about music to everyone else?

Tomasino

This was posted in another thread recently, but it bears directly on this discussion. It's Abdras Schiff's lecture on the entire Moonlight Sonata and it's interesting and useful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW_Dv_GNQAo&NR=1

Quote-----It sounds as if you lack what it takes to be a performer if this is truly the case.

What an absolute toss pot you are!!!! Sounds like you need to work on you know exactly what it takes to be the best man!!! How do i salute you!!?


srry, rant!! but what a stupid comment

Tomasino - great post!

I've found that it is difficult sometimes to find an emotional connection with a piece based on past memories. It is much easier to go to the music with what I am currently experiencing, and then the next time I play the piece it is much easier to recall in detail what I need to play it again.

Two days ago in fact I was having difficulty making music (as opposed to playing notes) on the second movement of my Haydn sonata. I had tried to come up with some way to connect to it but nothing worked or made sense. Then yesterday I was extremely frustrated because I was told I can't play for a vocal recital. The result when I went to practice was music. I put that frustration into my playing so now I have that specific experience to recall, and I know how to recapture that experience when I play the music.

Tomasino - that is exactly what I do. I keep little vignettes in my head that correspond to the pieces I play, and think of them as I play, trying to recall the emotion. It can be a fairly simplistic image, but if it's got some emotional resonance, it works for this purpose. And yes, one does have to concentrate, and put oneself in the right frame of mind to be able to feel the emotion - it doesn't always come naturally. But when it does, it's magic.

It's amazing how well this works, by the way, even with beginners playing little five-finger pieces. When I had students, I would tell them to smile and think about something happy when they played a happy tune - and it sounded so much better that way.

Yep, "little vignettes" work wonders ... and I think of torturing little rodents in their cages with chopsticks whenever I play "Chopsticks."

But seriously, thus far, it's the most consistent method for me. Don't always work, but usually. I can't be thinking of a "sad" scene when I just strike the lottery.

Wordsworth has a line somewhere about "emotion recollected in tranquility."
By the time you're ready to perform the piece in front of an audience you should be in control of YOUR emotions well enough to be able to transmit your feelings about the piece to the listeners and, hopefully, to make THEM react with an emotional response similar to that you felt when you first discovered the piece. If you really want to emote all over the concert platform, it might be better to take up "Soul" singing where the uncontrolled screeching and shouting that these performances generally climax in usually results in an ecstatic response from the singer's adoring fans.
I recently read an article by Andre Previn in which he remembered being worked up about something and "taking it out" on a Brahms symphony later in the evening. Far from being an electrifying, emotional experience for the audience it proved to be one of the worst concerts he ever gave!

I don't advocate "emoting all over the concert platform." That can be just plainly embarrassing to an audience. But I do advocate that during the preparation of a piece, musicians come to terms with their personal and emotional reaction, and give that some weight in the interpretation, rather than accepting without question what is being handed down from teacher to teacher to student.

When it comes to the actual performance, I don't believe it is necessary to feel emotion in order to convey emotion. I believe it was Stanislovski himself who said something like "when it comes to expressing sadness, a tear will suffice." By this he meant, I believe, that if an actor can manifest a tear without going through all the internal stress of sadness, the audience will understand that the actor's character is sad.

Tomasino