I was just practicing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto as I will be performing this work in a few weeks. The last time I played it was at least ten years ago. What a gift to rework one of Beethoven’s masterpieces—after all the notes return and the fingers know where they are going, a journey of discovery as well as self-evaluation can begin.
The reworking process tells me exactly where I’ve been, how much I have changed, and how I have grown. It also points out my weaknesses and allows me to be aware of the things I never dared to do at the piano years ago when I was a young performer. Now I can acknowledge the lack of boldness that I experienced so long ago as I tried to get everything “right.” As a student we learn how to behave properly at the instrument and to pay attention to every detail—every marking on the page. But that knowledge and focus can indeed be limiting and may even impede the discovery process. By only concentrating on minutiae, it is harder to grasp the entire picture, thus limiting our freedom to travel to the deeper places of this composer’s psyche. However, perhaps that larger picture can only come from the experience of our youthful mistakes as well as the gift of hindsight.
When I think of Beethoven, I think of his boldness—his courage to be himself and to journey where nobody dared to go before him. As a performer of his music—music that is so boldly written—I need to be bold as well. Ideally, I need to walk on that stage and play without fear and any sense of reticence or caution. That requires confidence—not only in oneself but a commitment to the music and its interpretation. I want to get as close as I can to what Beethoven himself would have done with this Concerto if he were seated at the 9-foot Steinway. Actually, he was the pianist who premiered his Fourth Concerto and what a virtuoso performer he was—quite a giant at the keyboard— head and shoulders above his contemporaries!
Remember all those sketches of Beethoven working at a piano with broken strings, probably playing as loudly as possible so he could hear its vibrations once his deafness had set in. I do believe that he would have loved our modern-day Steinway. Performers who go back to the instruments from the era when he was performing, place limits not only on themselves but on the musical possibilities as well. Beethoven always went beyond his instrument. As he said to that violinist who told him that it was impossible to play a certain passage in one of his symphonies, “Do you think I am aware of you and your puny instrument when I am writing my music?” is quite apt. He always stretched the possibilities to go beyond the status quo and venture into completely new territory. He does that at the piano, going beyond the instrument to challenge the performer to make sense of what he himself hears, in spite of the piano’s limitations. Beethoven hears symphonically and asks us to do the same at the piano.
It takes boldness and courage to play Beethoven’s music and capture his joy of freedom. Not to be shackled by fear should be the ideal of every performer.
And once fear is overcome, then the joy can be shared!