The Illusion of Power in Piano: Beethoven Moonlight Sonata

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource, and today it's the illusion of power. And I'm going to use the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata to demonstrate this. Now think about this. I'm going to use an analogy to start off. If you're just watching a fire and it's just glowing embers and a little flame, you feel the heat energy of it. But when you see a fire and it's somewhat damped and every now and then flames shoot out, it's like, whoa! Then you're afraid because you have no idea how much underlying power there is.

So it gives the illusion of infinite power when you have no idea how much is lurking beneath. Well, that's exactly what you can do with your piano playing. And I'm going to demonstrate with the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata. All too often people try to play it like this.

It sounds labored and they're struggling.

But you know, if you look at the score, it's all written piano except for one of the eighth notes, the first eighth note of that chord, and the next one in the next phrase.

So if you lighten up everything except those chords, it's the same thing like that flaring of the fire coming out.

So you see what I did there? Everything is underplayed.

And so when those chords come out, it's just like boom! Little bursts, little explosions.

And this is a trademark of so many great pianists. Listen to Horowitz, for example. And he doesn't play everything loud, but when loud chords come it's so shocking and you have no idea the reserve of power. So here's what you can do, not just in the Moonlight Sonata. Any piece you're struggling with to play loud, take every part of the piece that you could possibly come down in volume and minimize it and work on your piano and pianissimo. Get everything as quiet as possible so that the range of expression is so large that you have the illusion of power and you'll have the reserve because you don't wear yourself out trying to play too loud except what is really needed. And that range of expression and the reserve of power is what creates the illusion of power. It's not the sheer energy, it's the relationship between the soft and the loud and never struggling, never being to the limit of what you can do, making your power seem limitless.

Try this with your music and let me know how this works for you. And if you like videos like this, check out the description. There's tremendous resources just for you. I'm Living Piano's Robert Estrin, all here for you with thousands of videos and articles on livingpianos.com.

Thanks so much for joining me. We'll see you next time.

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