Andrew Tyson on the old-school pianists, and why the score is only a starting point
The Géza Anda Competition winner on golden-age pianists, playing like a composer and why the best ideas are often the strangest ones.
Andrew Tyson is an American pianist who won first prize at the 2015 Géza Anda Competition in Zurich and received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. He teaches piano in the Pre-College Division of The Tianjin Juilliard School.
Here are thirteen of his best tips, from his Piano Star Masterclass on why early 20th century pianists still matter on Piano League.
1. Think about it, then don’t do any of it
My teacher Claude Frank, after lessons, would very often say to me, and I found it very puzzling when he said it at the time, but now I think I know what he meant: think about everything that I’ve told you and then don’t do any of it. The point was not that you don’t do any of it, but the point was that actually in the end you need to use your own imagination and find your own path.
Andrew Tyson
2. Try really weird things
Just try to play it differently every time. Don’t ever be satisfied with playing it one way, and see what comes out. Try really weird things. Try pedaling where you think there should be no pedal, or try playing no pedal where you think there needs to be a lot of pedal. Try playing soft when you think it should be loud, and just experiment. Try very wild and crazy things and see what you come up with, because sometimes the best ideas are the strangest ones.
Andrew Tyson
3. Read the score like a composer
They approached the scores of these great composers, often because I think most of these old pianists were composers themselves, not only as pianists but as composers. And so they had a way of bringing these scores to life from the perspective of one composer to another. So when they played, it was not like they were merely following a recipe.
Andrew Tyson
4. Professionals made the piece their own
As Robert Levin says, the difference between an amateur and a professional musician in Mozart’s day was that the amateur keyboard player would play exactly what was written in the score, and the professional would improvise and make the piece their own.
Andrew Tyson
5. The score is a starting point
Often the composers themselves were not necessarily set on what they wanted. Chopin famously published music in three countries, and often in three editions, and often these editions are quite different than one another. And then you also have student copies, which are in turn different. So I think what we can glean from it as musicians living now is that the score is just a sort of starting-off point.
Andrew Tyson
6. Remember that improvisation came first
I think it’s worth remembering as classical musicians, even though we’re playing music that’s already been composed, that improvisation is perhaps the most fundamental kind of music making.
Andrew Tyson
7. Copy the human voice
They were all trying to emulate the human voice in the way that they played. And so you’ll hear many kinds of pianistic techniques that they utilize in order to get there. So displacement of the hands: the hands are not always perfectly synchronized. You also hear interesting pedaling. Sometimes they love to blur harmonies together that maybe you wouldn’t expect would work so well together, or alternatively sometimes they would just lift their foot and play one passage very lightly, very dryly, for some variety.
Andrew Tyson
8. Give the music time to breathe
Music is always kind of imitating the human voice, and if you’re just sort of always running, a singer wouldn’t be able to always run. They need some time to take a breath and start again.
Andrew Tyson
9. Wait on the tense note, not before it
Sometimes also when we have a note with more tension, we want to take time before it, but paradoxically, actually sometimes it’s better to almost rush into that note and then wait.
Andrew Tyson
10. Let short notes lead in Hungarian music
As a general rule, in these Hungarian Rhapsodies, our instinct when we have a dotted rhythm is to play the longer notes louder. But actually in this music, in the Hungarian language, very often the stress is on the first syllable. So sometimes when you have those dotted rhythms, it’s actually very nice to play the short notes a little bit louder than the long notes. It can be very stylish.
Andrew Tyson
11. Play cadenzas as gestures
In general, when you have these long, sort of melismatic cadenzas in Liszt, you should kind of treat them more as gestures, as shapes, rather than 46 notes or 120 or however many notes it is.
Andrew Tyson
12. Give each voice in Bach its own character
Each voice kind of has its own distinctive shape and character, and so whatever tempo you choose, I think it’s important to have different characters in each hand, and also to explore when those characters are sort of working together and when they’re maybe in conflict, working against each other.
Andrew Tyson
13. Go find the old recordings
Young musicians are lucky in that they have full access to all of these old school recordings via YouTube, via Spotify, so many online avenues. Everything is at your fingertips now. You just have to have the curiosity and go out and find all this stuff for yourself.
Andrew Tyson
Quotes are lightly edited for length and clarity. They come from Andrew Tyson’s 2020 Piano Star Masterclass on why early 20th century pianists still matter. You can watch the full masterclass on the Piano League YouTube channel.
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