Great Music is Storytelling

This is livingpianos.com, and I'm Robert Estrin. The subject today is great music is storytelling.

Now, this has many ramifications. For example, a great piece of music sometimes evokes images and emotions that can tell a story, maybe not a story with words as much as with feeling and direction. And interestingly, this is also true of great improvisations. Listen to a great jazz pianist, for example, crafting a ballad, and as it unfolds, it can remind you of so many things in your life that you can't even put into words, and that's what's so great about music.

Well, what I'm going to talk about today is something a little bit off what I just mentioned, which is how even a musical interpretation, a performance can either tell a story or not tell a story so much. And I thought I'd challenge myself and play the beginning of Chopin's G Minor Ballade, and the first time, I'm to try to play it absolutely faithfully to the score. And the next time I'm going to do it and I'm going to try to tell a story, let the notes evoke something that you feel it's going somewhere and keeping you on the edge of your seat, hopefully, wondering where it's going next, which twists and turns. Can this really be done?

Well, this is an experiment because I just pressed record. I have not done this ever before. So you are now my guinea pigs in this experiment. I'm going to see if I can play this absolutely accurately the first time. Then, I'm going to go back and see if I can do something more than that and tell a story with the same exact notes and telling it with the same markings and the same rhythms and phrasing, just a subtlety of emotion that can somehow transcend the notes. Is this possible? This is what this experiment is about today.

So once again, this is the beginning of Chopin's First Ballade in G Minor. And the first time I'm going to do my darndest to play it absolutely faithfully to the score. The second time, I will be just as faithful to the score, but I'm going to do my best to try to add that extra element that I describe as storytelling in music.

So that's exactly what Chopin wrote. I'm going to play it again, and I'm going to play also exactly what Chopin wrote, but just like lines of a play that can be read, they can be read in so many different ways with the same exact words, with everything the playwright wrote in there. Yet, one actor has a completely different feeling, a different character and tells a different story, don't they? That's what I'm going to attempt to do now to see if I can take the same passage of music with all the same markings, the same notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression and see if I can tell more than what you heard there. Let's see if this is possible.

I wonder if you could hear a difference? I'm really interested in all of you and your opinions of those two different performances. They both were accurate from a technical standpoint, all the notes and everything that Chopin wrote was in both of them. And I'm wondering what your feeling is about them, if it evoked a different sense, if they told different stories and that's what music is all about. It's telling stories that can't be told with words, stories of emotion. That's what I believe, and I'm wondering how many of you feel the same way and what these two different snippets of the Chopin G Minor Ballade did for you. You can address them in the comments, on livingpianos.com, as well as on YouTube.

And thanks again for joining me and all you subscribers and Patreon subscribers. Thank you so much. Lots more to come. We'll see you next time. Once again, Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/great-music-is-storytelling/

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