Piano Video Lesson: How to Play Expressively on the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin and today's subject is how to play expressively on the piano.

Sometimes you hear musical artists and it gives you chills listening to them and you wonder what is the secret? How are they able to evoke that kind of emotion in the playing? The expressiveness is really key to this. I'm going to talk about this today. Now there are many aspects to expressive playing. One thing is just the sheer sound that somebody gets out of their instrument.

You know, even on the piano where you wouldn't think there'd be such a connection, obviously a singer has their own quality of voice based upon their physiology. And wind instruments also, you can identify them just like that from the sound they get. If you're certainly, if you're a clarinet player, you know the sound of different clarinet players who are some of your favorites. Same thing as to a violinist. But even on the piano, there's a distinctive sound that different artists get the way they approach the keys.

Of course, the balance of the hands, which notes and lines are brought out, these will all enter into the equation. But we're going to talk about in depth today our three fundamental aspects of the art of expressive piano playing.

Dynamics, phrasing, and rubato.

Now think about the aspects. We're going to start with dynamics. What are dynamics? Dynamics in a nutshell are the louds and the softs in your piano playing.

Now think about this, the very origins of the piano going back to around the year 1700 was from a harpsichord builder by the name of Bartolomeo Cristofori. And he made a harpsichord with soft and loud cimbalo piano forte. And that's why we have the name piano, it was shortened over the time, to just the piano. Because it was the first keyboard instrument that really could play with a wide dynamic range due to having hammers striking strings and most importantly escaping those strings after they impacted them. And that is what planted the seeds for the evolution of the piano as we know it today.

So how do you achieve dynamic contrast on the piano? Well, there are many different ways and we're going to explore this. I'm going to play the beginning of Beethoven's Opus 10 No. 1 Sonata in C minor. And Beethoven certainly explored dynamic contrast in a big way, and this is even an early sonata of his, and listen to the amazing amount of dynamic contrast right in the few opening bars.

So you can hear tremendous delineation of fortes and pianos, rapid fire from one to the next. That's one type of dynamic, use of dynamics in piano playing, but there are more subtle uses of dynamics. Think about a Chopin Prelude, for example the B minor and the gorgeous lines that are created with the slow rising and falling of dynamics.

It's the use of bringing out different lines. Notice the melody starts in the left hand and then transitions to the right hand and back to the left hand. And it's the choice of the performer, being expressive, bringing the attention to the listener to different lines within the music.

So in a nutshell, the dynamics can be very well delineated where the louse and the soft come and almost to a shocking extent like in Beethoven and other composers or it can be more lyrical with rising and falling, the intertwining of lines and the beautiful sound that you can create by using the arm weight instead of just letting fingers percussively play each key, getting a sense of that singing line which I've talked about so much in these videos.

So that's one thing, the dynamics. Let's talk a bit about phrasing and its importance in musical interpretation. Well, you know, there's two aspects of phrasing. There's phrasing which in its very nutshell is the ways in which notes are connected or detached.

Staccatos, slurs, accents, sforzandi, well that kind of rides the line between phrasing and expression. But that's basically one definition of phrasing. But there's also what is a phrase. A phrase is like a musical sentence. Just like when I talk and the line goes up in the middle of the sentence, comes down at the end. That's kind of what a phrase is in music. Not to be confused with phrasing which as I said is the way in which notes are connected or detached. And there are many ways in which this can be from a simple Bach minuet with slurs and staccatos like in this G major minuet.

What would it sound like without having delineation of the phrasing in the music? It would be really lifeless like this.

So you can hear how delineating the phrasing makes a huge difference in the sound of music.

And the expressiveness that is brought to it. And then the idea of phrasing once again also encompasses how you articulate the architecture of a phrase of music. I want to demonstrate this with a little bit of the beginning of the Beethoven Opus 10 No. 3, the second movement. And listen to the rise and the fall of the musical line which are all written with slurs but that means that you want to create that line, the rise and the fall of the melody.

So even though it's all written with six note slurs, there is a rise and a fall to delineate the phrases.

So the slurs indicate the phrases which the musical sentences so that it's not just a whole series of random notes but there is an architecture and that makes it expressive, doesn't it? So we're going to go with a few more examples of well phrased piano passages before we go on to the next macro subject here today of rubato.

And so another idea of phrasing could be in a Chopin Nocturne where once again you have a rise and the fall of the phrase and the musical architecture with the slurs delineate the phrases with the phrasing.

The F sharp nocturne in the beginning.

Again, sorry, I don't know what's going on.

Oh my gosh.

So you can hear how expressive the music is when you make it clear where the phrases start and where they end and let them grow in the middle just like a singer would take a deep breath and towards the middle of the phrase towards the higher notes allow more energy and more beauty to emerge from the music.

Now one thing that helps us along was another incredibly expressive device which is rubato. Now rubato is something that is really not found until 19th century music.

rubato really was not a factor in for example Bach or even Mozart. rubato is a speeding up and a slowing down. So aside from the growing of the phrase and the energy towards the middle of the phrase and then a lack of kind of a less of sound towards the end of the phrase giving it a rise and a fall. You also have a little bit of a rushing head and a slowing down. Now this works so magnificently in Chopin which I'm going to demonstrate here. Then I'm going to show you how it doesn't work in Bach. So here it is in Chopin. Let's try the beginning of I'm going to do actually the middle section of the scherzo in B minor.

Now I'm going to play a little bit of a Bach set of bond and I'm going to play it first with rubato which is not called for in broke music. Then I'm going to play it straight the way it's intended to be played. Then I'm going to come back to the Chopin and play it for you again with rubato and without rubato so you can hear the difference for yourself. Here's first the Bach's Arrhythmon with rubato.

It really loses character. Listen to it when the beats are well defined with no rubato just a straight tempo.

There's a beauty and an expressiveness just with the architecture of the phrasing, the rise and the fall. Now I'm going to play for you again that middle section of the B minor scherzo and I'm going to play it with rubato. Then I'm going to play it actually first I'll play it without rubato section of the B minor scherzo of Chopin no rubato just absolutely straight.

It's a little bit lacking in expressiveness isn't it? Now listen to it with just a touch of rubato not excessive.

It just propels you forward to the phrase a little bit doesn't it? Now the secret to effective rubato is being right on the beat where it comes.

So the rise and the fall and the speeding up and the slowing down never gains or loses a beat and I'm going to demonstrate this in a very interesting way.

I'm going to play the little bit of the B flat minor nocturne and I'm going to do it without any rubato first then with rubato then I'm going to try an experiment I should have tried this before I started recording this video because I haven't tried this before but it should be a very interesting experiment which I'm going to show you so stay tuned because it's going to be a test for me and an interesting subject for you. So here's the beginning of the B flat minor nocturne of Chopin with no rubato then with rubato and I'm going to show you how I'm able to achieve this rubato where it can speed up and slow down but never gain or lose a beat. Here's with no rubato first.

It really is lifeless isn't it? Now listen to it with some rubato.

Now the secret is instead of thinking each quarter note like this you think instead a dotted half note which gives you all the freedom within the beat.

That is one of the secrets for being able to negotiate rubato without gaining or losing time. My father used to demonstrate this by having the metronome ticking at a more reasonable speed because this is lower than a physical metronome even goes. It's at 35 which is ridiculous and I don't recommend practicing this way. This is just a demonstration for the way you want to think of the beat. You can feel that slow beat. It gives you a lot of freedom within the beat instead of quantizing each quarter note. So what he would do is put the metronome on a reasonable tempo with the quarter notes ticking and get ahead and behind. Once again I haven't tried this before so I'm your guinea pig and you can try this too. I'm going to see if I can do it.

So that was getting off of the metronome one way or the other never gaining or losing time but being able to have some fluidity to not just the dynamic rise and fall but also with the speeding and slowing down. And that's what rubato is all about.

So we've covered a lot today with how to play expressively on the piano. There's an art to this isn't there. The balance of the hands, just the sound you get on the instrument. You know you can get a harsh sound or a beautiful sound by how you approach the keys. Striking from above you can get a harsh sound because you don't have the control. Like for example playing big chords. Listen to how ugly it can be if you don't support by being on the surface of the keys. This is striking from above and you get a harshness.

Now listen to it by dropping all the way to the arms from the surface of the keys.

That's one technique and there are so many. Playing melodies as I've explained so many times using the weight of the arm instead of just the fingers. This is just a little bit of Mozart K 332. His F major Sonata, the second movement. And I'm just going to use the limp fingers just articulating each note and trying to craft a phrase by calculating each note louder and then each note softer for the rise and the fall. Now this doesn't work as well as you think it should because it's by using the weight of the arm that you get the analog of the breath. So listen to this with not using the weight of the arm.

Now with the weight of the arm.

It's amazing the difference in the sound isn't it? Can you hear it? Let us know in the comments below here at LivingPianos .com and YouTube.

We've learned so much today about the use of rubato, the phrasing and delineating phrases as well as dynamic articulation. That along with your whole approach to the keyboard to get a beautiful sound out of the piano and being able to play expressively and that's what it's all about.

Eliciting emotion in the listener.

I hope you've enjoyed this. Again Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me and all you subscribers. Thumbs up and ringing the bell helps the channel to reach more piano lovers like yourself. See you next time. Bye bye.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-play-expressively-on-the-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---