A piano student of mine, interested in the music of the late Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021) and aware that I had known him slightly, once asked me about my experiences with him. I mentioned that I had heard Rzewski perform live in Boston but hadn’t been too impressed. Rzewski was notorious for pounding on the piano, and as a devotee of the French School, this was not to my taste. My student didn’t say much at the time, but that evening emailed me the link to a recording—Rzewski playing the Hammerklavier live in Switzerland in the 1990s. It was, my student promised, a Hammerklavier I wouldn’t soon forget.

He wasn’t kidding. It was, for the classical music aficionado, transgressive to the point of sacrilege. Rzewski’s tempi fluctuated wildly, his playing replete with expressive gestures in dubious taste, and the kicker: he repeatedly indulged in extended improvised cadenzas that pushed the normal forty minute duration to well over an hour. I listened with mouth agape, my first thought afterwards: “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.” I wrote back, thanking my student and admitting that he was forcing his teacher to eat his words. Since then, when I’ve mentioned this recording to pianists, the response has been generally dismissive: “Well, what do you expect? Rzewski is a composer, after all.” But why should composers have all the fun? It’s become an aspirational model for me, a kind of “what I want to do when I grow up.”

For a classically-trained pianist, this is swimming upstream, and two incidents at a masterclass I gave drove this home in stark relief. Both involved an early Prokofiev sonata’s middle movement. In the first, outer melody and bassline frame a perpetual motion texture between. The texture’s notes are marked staccato and the student was struggling mightily to give each its own gesture (presumably for each to be short enough) while sufficiently voicing outer parts—all at breakneck speed. I suggested she take those staccato dots with more than a grain of salt, the important distinction being the impression of detachment rather than its literality. Far more important was not distracting from the tune above; consequently, resulting ease from potential concessions in background texture that improved the foreground tune was worth the exchange. Finally: “Whatever you do, don’t give each background note its own gesture or you’ll tire yourself out and it’ll sound too busy anyway.”

We tried several approaches, arrived at a much-improved texture, and had a productive session. So, I was surprised when a teacher came up afterwards telling me she found it interesting to hear another teacher endorse ignoring a marking because, “If I’m judging a competition and there’s a note with a [staccato] dot on it and it’s not short enough, I take points off.” It was on the tip of my tongue to reply, “Well, I’m glad we were able to reduce an artistic endeavor to an accounting exercise,” but, remembering to be on best behavior, I mumbled something anodyne.

The second incident involved repetitive three-note gestures in the middle section. Since the third note changed, she (logically) emphasized this note each time. I suggested that this third note, being the only thing changing, hardly needs our help. Furthermore, with simple figures the pianist can manipulate perception of speed based on emphasis—on the first note to give forward motion/momentum; on the last, weighing things down, like applying brakes in a vehicle. Here, I was inclined to emphasize the first to keep things moving. Again, we tried different versions and had a good session. Later, a different teacher excitedly told me she had a recording of Prokofiev playing it and would relisten, presumably to resolve this issue once and for all. By now, I had sufficiently recovered to be more assertive: Yes, that would be interesting to hear how the composer played it, but no, it wouldn’t necessarily change my approach (or advice), and as interpreter, I reserved the right to (ahem) interpret as I saw fit.

Some of this is unavoidable given the nature of our discipline. Learning the piano involves a lot of instruction—notes, rhythms, dynamics, articulation—to be followed faithfully, consistently, professionally, expeditiously. The notation itself demands this and so there’s inevitable conditioning involved, which can make us forget that the point might be something other than accuracy.

But there are things to mitigate this, and the first teacher’s reference to competitions was revealing. Competitions have a deservedly ugly reputation—Bartok once declared them “for horses, not artists”—but they are useful for young pianists to test skill under stress and receive feedback. At festival competitions I adjudicate, judging forms typically have helpful rubrics, and among categories of accuracy, memorization, rhythm, technique and the like is “musical expression.” And why not? Music should be “expressive.” My problem is not so much with the term, or its lazier cousin “musicality” (“So and so plays with such musicality,” to which I’m inclined to reply, “Well, it is music”). Rather, denoting as “expression” the single creative entity among a parade of non-negotiables (e.g., “accuracy”) implies that this is the one allowed place to exert interpretive powers, and thus robs the pianist of so much creative agency.

For expression, or musicality, implies something personal, spontaneous, subjective, innate, and, importantly, unconscious—don’t think, just feel. And you can draw a straight line from this kind of (un)thinking to the shallow, Liberace-like antics for which Lang Lang is so famous and has inspired legions of imitators. After all, if “expression” is the pianist’s one creative contribution, what else is there to do but close the eyes and emote vigorously? It’s logical, though I suspect it’s the pianist guiltily needing to contribute something, anything, but not knowing what. So, follow instructions to the letter and “play expressively.” And this is my biggest complaint of pianists’ training: we’re not taught to think about what we do and why. Instead, we fuss over the best editions to get the best instructions (read: closest to the proverbial horse’s mouth) that will translate into the best results—if only we do as we’re told. But it’s ok: we can still “play expressively.” And sure, there’s artistry in tricks of the trade—voicing, tone production, technique—but nothing that involves something so radical as making a decision.

Here's an alternative paradigm: interpretation. Unlike expression, interpretation is conscious, deliberate, considered. It implies choice: the reasoned choice of an artistic vision and the weighing of decisions based on that vision, or even mundane matters such as practical exigency (which is legitimate, too). Such decisions are still subjective—there is no “correct” interpretation—but they can be discussed, probed, defended, evaluated for effectiveness.

And interpretation means agency. Because taking it to its logical conclusion necessarily means accepting that not just articulation and dynamics and decisions at the margins are in play, but everything—looking at you, notes and rhythms—is on the table. Is this a formula for anarchy? Yes, but as the pop culture saying goes, with great power… With all this freedom, the pianist is singularly responsible for decisions, not to a composer long dead but to a living audience. And the basis for evaluation is not literal closeness to score or virtuous, self-effacing fidelity to an imagined artistic vision of the composer’s (and that feels as absurd to write as it must to read), but simple effectiveness—the result on the listeners and performers sharing in the experience. Just as a meal is judged not by the cook’s fidelity to the recipes but by the culinary experience of the diners partaking in it. The latter might follow from the former, but the point is the experience, not how closely the dishes adhere to specifics of the original recipes.

This inevitably runs into adaption versus interpretation—when does interpretation alter the work so fundamentally that what remains is something else? With work under copyright, this acquires legal implications; for work in the public domain, the question is academic. But what should not be in doubt is the interpreter’s right, legalities notwithstanding, to assert interpretive editorial rights—the decision to disregard a staccato treated and evaluated as artistic choice rather than error or omission. I would think this to be self-evident but for numerous experiences suggesting otherwise. Reclaiming the agency to interpret freely is critical for pianism to become something other than an athletic exercise and aspire to something like art.

I began with Fred Rzewski; let me give him the last word. The setting is again a masterclass, but this time I’m the student at the piano, my twenty-five-year-old-self inexperienced but absorbing the norms of this discipline. Rzewski could be challenging—mercurial, belligerent, prone to outbursts and long rants on politics. Finally, in frustration at not being able to satisfy him in one of his North American Ballads, I threw up my hands. “What is it you want here?”


He exploded in a deserved rebuke I’ve never forgotten.


“What I want? I want? Who cares what I want? It’s your piece now.”


Boy, was he right.