The majority of commercial recordings of classical pianists today are the product of the modern studio and its processes. This involves not only the pianist, but recording editors and producers who will often be deeply involved in the artistic decisions that are integral to recording. The pianist may or may not have the final say as to which takes are used, and will have limited input into issues such as microphone placement and the technical acceptability of particular takes. These are much more likely to be decisions taken on the basis of standard studio practice and the expectations of the recording industry than on the basis of artistic judgement alone.

Let us take a step back, however. Should the point of recording a solo pianist not be to capture the experience of their playing in as natural and unforced a manner as possible, as if he or she were in the room with us? How often does the commercial recording process succeed in capturing intimacy, or a sense of spontaneity? Why do old recordings seem to achieve these things far more successfully than modern ones?

The unfortunate fact is that far too many commercial piano recordings sound exactly the same; they share a standard approach to recording the piano and an interpretative approach that rarely creates any sense of surprise or of an unfolding musical experience born of head and heart rather than of industry expectations.

The first pianist that I am aware of who made extensive private recordings was the late Gunnar Johansen (1906-91), a Danish pianist who settled in the USA. Johansen taught himself how to edit tape, and as a result produced a remarkable and extensive series of LP and cassette recordings (including the collected works of Liszt, Busoni and Ignaz Friedman) for his own recording label, Artist Direct Recordings. Initially, he made recordings in his living room at home, and later built a home studio. Andres Segovia said of this, “Oh, I so wish I had a place like this! I sit there in the professional recording studios, play a work perfectly … and then they tell me, ‘We heard your chair creak at one point,” or” your shoe hit the floor” …  and we have to do it over again!’”

Segovia’s point is well-made. Johansen’s recordings do not sound like the clinical products of the studio, but create a very powerful sense of direct presence, as if he is playing directly for you. There are occasional noises off, and not every edit is imperceptible, but the result is honest, real, and a genuine musical experience of the playing of a master pianist. When artists such as Celibidache disdained the recording process as being unable to capture the essence of music-making, they might have paused at Johansen’s achievement.

Glenn Gould, too, foresaw a point where the pianist would also take charge of the studio side of recording. The key to doing so is that there is a unified vision behind the recording in question. No more is there the risk of clash between recording producer, sound engineer and pianist; no more the risk that the finished product might in fact be so far from the pianist’s own interpretation that it was unrecognizable to them. And there would, in all likelihood, be much less of the assembly of a collage-like performance from multiple unrelated takes. On a visit to a major studio, an acquaintance was told that they were also working on a recording of Beethoven’s last piano sonata by an extremely prominent pianist who is rightly esteemed to be among the greatest living today. The studio was littered with what appeared to be hundreds of labelled tape fragments taken from days of sessions. From this would eventually be constructed twenty-five minutes of recorded music that was subsequently released to enduring critical acclaim. Great recording it may have been, but it was the product of the studio and not of anything resembling live performance.

Having now edited many of my own recordings, I would maintain that the editing process involves important artistic choices that are integral to the interpretative process. They are choices that I would now be reluctant to concede to others, however expert they might be (and I certainly make no claims for my own technical expertise as a sound engineer). There are many electronic tricks that could be used to make a recorded performance appear to be something it is not, from the addition of acoustic effects that could make it sound as if it were in a large concert hall, to more subtle but insidious sonic alterations that would probably be imperceptible to most, but would produce a final product that would sound more like the output of a modern studio. My preference is to disdain them all.

There are times when my recordings are affected by factors such as the physical noise of the instrument (keys or pedals); the occasional sound of my children and cats playing (or arguing) in the background; the odd bumpy edit; or my piano not being perfectly in tune (though its colour and character more than compensate for any such deficiency in my view). But these are real performances, by a real pianist passionate about the music, and they aim at an artistic integrity that brings them into line with the experience of hearing the work played in a natural, intimate setting similar to that envisioned by the composers in question.

Likewise, each work is wherever possible recorded in a single session and a single microphone is used (because we as listeners only hear music from a single location in live performance). The recordings use the widest dynamic range possible, meaning that they will often benefit from playback at a slightly louder volume than is usual. And I hope that they succeed in capturing that indefinable quality that drew me to the music in the first place and that makes me want to share it with others; an emotional richness and warmth that creates intimacy and the human touch.

“In my early days I made the mistake of listening to what everyone said and therefore not following my own feelings about what I was playing. Now I know it’s my business to convince audiences that my view is the right one.” – Peter Katin, quoted in 1969

The pianist has a clear task; to interpret the work at hand in the way that best illuminates and communicates its meaning. Since a work of substance grows with you the more you know and play it, this means that interpretation deepens as our familiarity with the music increases and we perceive new aspects and insights, as well as new ways of communicating these.

The approach that I was raised in as a pianist emphasised considerably that interpretation is a process requiring the utmost integrity, honesty and to some extent humility, as the interpreter places him or herself at the service of the composer. Even in works that require a high degree of virtuosity, the musical message remains paramount – consider the virtuoso works of Liszt as interpreted with ideal balance by Claudio Arrau, for example. To display virtuosity for its own sake, to show off with speed or volume purely in order to excite an audience, or to play in a brash or shallow manner has been regarded rightly as being in poor taste. Towards the end of my student days I sat through a recital by a recent graduate consisting mainly of extrovert works of Liszt and Chopin played with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The technical accomplishment was on one level impressive. There was no want of speed, tonal command or power. On the other hand, it did the composers concerned a considerable disservice to be reduced to such a one-dimensional view.

Of course, most pianists are aware of the boundaries of accepted good taste. But in this lies a problem. Firstly, the audience for the classical pianist has grown less attuned to the subtle art of interpretation and, in the shallow spirit of the age, expects the easier option of simply being entertained. Most pianists today seem to play in order to please the audience, rather than developing interpretations that may prove more controversial but are equally more personal and possessing greater integrity. Moreover, because of the prevalence of piano competitions and auditions as gateways to a pianistic career, an orthodoxy is imposed. The pianist is told: this is what the competition jury and the agents want to hear. His or her choice is then between giving the jury and the agents what they want or not having a career. The integrity that should be at the heart of the process is gone, replaced by a consensus judgement born of commercial, not artistic, imperatives.

This is a symptom of the increasing blurred lines between the business worlds of classical and popular music. Both are now concerned with demotic commercialism. If the audience is not pleased, or has been made to work hard for their pleasure, the commercial reward is lessened. This is one reason why so many pianists now sound alike, and play similar repertoire. To play in a different or more personal style, or to choose repertoire that does not have instant audience appeal, is to separate oneself from the mainstream.

The popular musician is often just as intent on personal integrity and artistic expression as the classical musician. For the popular musician, the battle against the restrictions of record labels can take on an epic quality, as the artist struggles to place their creativity ahead of its commercial exploitation. Historically, the classical musician has not had to fight this battle to the same extent, because society has rightly held that high art is an end worthy in itself, and has supported the idealism that is required to achieve it. Now, with high art no longer valued, the non-mainstream classical musician finds him or herself in a similar position to the popular musician who does not find chart success or who fades from fashion; the choice is either between trying to find some form of lasting niche, capitulating to stylistic pressure in the hope of being re-absorbed into the mainstream, or giving up altogether.

Another aspect of this is that the focus is now far more on selling the performer than the music. This again borrows from popular music. It is far easier to sell a personality than it is to focus on the complexities of profound, often elusive music. Again, there is a great deal of conformity in the way pianists are presented today. The agents know what will sell to their audience and what in turn will keep them in business. It is rare that a pianist’s biography these days offers any kind of surprise, for they all follow a very similar formula. Above all, anything controversial or extra-musical is studiously avoided. The result is a blandness and a deliberate concealment of the pianist as a whole person, lest any aspect prove unpalatable to the audience. Gone are the days when Shura Cherkassky, that most individual of pianists, could say  “Some people like my playing and some don’t, but nobody can say that I’m boring.” And that recalls the late John Barstow, doyen of piano professors at the Royal College of Music, who opined “the only sin is to be boring.”

There may be no commercial reward for the pianist who prizes integrity above mainstream values that he or she disagrees with, but there is the knowledge that integrity is the more important artistic goal. My view is that the mature artist should concentrate not on what the audience wants but on repertoire that he or she believes in passionately and is capable of advocating to the full in a way that is not merely dutiful but promotes that mystical identification of composer and interpreter such that interpretation truly becomes a recreative activity. The result may challenge the listener, and provoke strong reactions for and against, but if it has integrity, it will ultimately also command respect.

The technical work of becoming a pianist of professional level is unremittingly hard. Most begin with some level of natural facility, but refining this into a flexible and reliable technique is work that demands great concentration and dedication. As a student, having been gifted with a considerable natural facility, I nevertheless usually put in four hours practice a day, which generally achieved what I needed to do without becoming stale or unduly fatigued.

It never occurred to me that there were any short cuts to the goal of a comprehensive technical command. There was no substitute for putting in the physical work, and above all you had to learn how to work not just hard but smart. Progress resulted, and eventually you reached the goal of being able to perform a work not only to a professional standard but in the way that you believed it should be played.

And yet there were always limitations. The most obvious is a natural limitation on the size of the hand and to some extent its flexibility. There are techniques that can be learned to overcome many problems in piano playing. Nevertheless, there are some works that will never lie entirely comfortably under the hands. It is a rare pianist who can, for example, play all of the Chopin Etudes to the same high standard, since they expose different facets of technique mercilessly. Differences in technical emphasis among composers is also a major factor that leads to pianists specializing in the repertoire that best suits them. I remember as a student some pianists whose physique and temperament best suited them for Mozart rather than for Rachmaninoff, and others for whom that position was reversed. What I was taught was that you accepted what nature had given you and did your best with the result, and that in the vast majority of the standard repertoire there were solutions at hand that were interpretatively satisfactory.

But some pianists cheat. It seems, at least according to the internet, that Beethoven and Chopin, as well as some famous pianists of the modern age, all underwent a physical operation in which the webbing between some or all of their fingers was cut. If successful, this meant that the stretch of the hand would increase dramatically as well as aiding its flexibility in certain figurations. If unsuccessful, I suspect it would damage the hands beyond repair.

According to Alan Walker’s biography of Liszt, this practice had become fashionable in the late 1860s. Writing to his student Johanna Wenzel in 1872, Liszt counselled strongly against it,

“My dear young lady,
In reply to your friendly lines I earnestly beg of you to think no more of having this barbarous finger operation. Better to play every octave and chord wrong throughout your life than to commit such a mad attack on your hands.”

Liszt was correct to think of such practices as entirely alien to the pianist’s art. Those who knew Liszt uniformly refer to the nobility and artistic integrity of his interpretations and his teaching. Subordinating such values to a diabolical (and medically risky) compromise would be an unforgivable interference with nature.

Walker also tells us that by 1885 the tendons themselves were being cut, and that a description of the procedure involved had appeared in the British Medical Journal. In the United States, surgeon William E. Forbes specialized in the procedure, which was completed in fifteen minutes, and by 1898 estimated that he had performed it 2,500 times.

What of today? I am not aware of any pianist who will admit publicly to having undergone this or a similar procedure. Yet the internet suggests it is rife, both in Europe and in Asia, and the contemporary classical piano world’s emphasis on shallow virtuosity would tend to provide an impetus for such things. Who are the surgeons who (presumably privately) are doing this? Is it ethical for them to do so? In the already mired and corrupt world of piano competitions, should we not be separating those who have given themselves an unfair technical advantage from their uncut peers in the same way as the sports world bans doping? Is it not time to reassert the position that piano playing depends for its very essence on the integrity of the interpreter, both musically and personally?