During my modern piano studies, I always questioned why right and left hands should be played together. I unconsciously and instinctively had this habit, and although my
teachers often warned me about it in lessons, I never really understood why it was a problem.
In 2020, I was fortunate to start playing fortepiano by chance in Leipzig. The process of learning how to play the fortepiano, studying the performance practices of the
time, and rethinking my performance was a struggle but also an immeasurable pleasure for me. The situation with the problem surrounding playing both hands together
changed dramatically as well. In the lessons, my teacher—Eckhart Kuper—would draw arpeggio waves everywhere in my score, showing me with a twinkle in his eyes how to
play Chopin with dislocations by delaying either the right or left hands. Moreover, he introduced me to and encouraged me to listen to early piano rolls, including those
featuring Carl Reinecke (1824-1910). I was shocked at what I heard when I first listened to Reinecke's performances; there is extreme rubato, unnotated arpeggios everywhere,
and both hands are frequently not together. Although it sounded unnatural, I found it very fascinating, and I felt that I would like to explore more of those elements that make
his performance so flexible.
2 years ago, I chose Carl Reinecke's arrangement of the "Larghetto" from Mozart's Piano Concerto No.26 as my topic in a presentation at the Hochschule Theater and
Musik Leipzig. In the presentation, I demonstrated four different performance styles for this piano concerto. First, I played it as written in the score: perfectly synchronizing
both hands and at a steady tempo. Secondly, I played Reinecke's performance on a piano roll. Then, I attempted to imitate his performance. Finally, I tried to play freely as I
wanted in the moment. My conclusion in the presentation covered two points. First, the difference between performance and notation is significant, the difference is the
understanding of the implied performance practice of the time. Second, when we try to perform in a historically informed manner, we cannot ignore that we live in the present
and that our performance is the accumulation of everything that we have ever experienced, consciously and unconsciously. That is why it is important to try to imitate
Reinecke’s performances as a first step to understanding the implied practices and further applying these to my own performance.
These last three years in The Hague have been very productive, with many performance opportunities. I have been thinking and experimenting with how to be freer in my
performance, and I have often discussed this in the lessons with my professors, dear Bart van Oort and Petra Somlai; Richard Egarr and Bert Mooimann also greatly inspired me
and gave me insights from their own perspectives. I gradually recognized that I need to be more conscious of what I do in my performance. Through encountering Neal Peres
Da Costa's Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing1 and Richard Hudson's Stolen Time: The History of Tempo Rubato2 and gradually going through
various materials and recordings, I realized again that my instinctual feeling in performance is correct and is being further shaped by gained knowledge. I will continue to
perform, trusting my instinct and constantly refining it.
This research aims to clarify what makes flexibility in Carl Reinecke's performance guided primarily by Peres Da Costa and Hudson's work and the discrepancies between
Reinecke's performance, his score notation, and explanation in his Zur Wiederbelebung. Finally, I provide some experimental performance and discuss how we can emulate
Reinecke's performance expands our flexibility and interpretative possibilities and their significance.
1. Neal Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing. Illustrated Edition (New York: Oxford University Press Inc, 2012).
2. Richard Hudson, Stolen Time: The History of Tempo Rubato (Clarendon Press, 1994).
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