Gleanings from the February concert

An awesome turnout

I'm a worst-scenario kind of a guy. When I plan my budget, for example, I assume that the worst possible financial outcome will be the reality, and then I shave off a few hundred dollars off of that, just to be on the safe side. The result is that I am usually very pleased with the outcome, because I plan for the worst. A certain amount of pessimism can be healthy, and I proceeded with my plans for the February 10th concert with that same mentality. At least several people asked me how many people I was expecting to show at the concert, and the ball park figure I gave them was maybe 35 or so. It turned out to be about 64! Some people even showed up late and people had to scramble to find chairs. 

I could describe the event in many ways, but the best way would be to label it as a learning experience -- there were last-minute changes, hangups, mishaps, misunderstandings, etc., days before the performance, but the minute the performance started at 7:00pm, it was as if everything came together perfectly. I was nervous the first couple of songs, but I finally relaxed during the third song ("Snowfall on a Light Glissade"), maybe because so far nobody had booed or thrown tomatoes at me.

The Next Adventure: September 15th!

I have to say I was really fond of that venue. The Chico Women's Club is just small enough to fit 60 to 100 people or more, but not too large that it appears intimidating or makes the audience look too dispersed. So I booked another show at the same location, which will be September 15th. It's a ways away, but it's the earliest date I was able to book it. I'm in the process of deciding on the program, and at this point mainly debating whether I want to have 10-ish songs played all the way through to the end, or do 45 minutes followed by an intermission, followed by another 45 minutes.

I've posted a video below of "Snowfall on a Light Glissade". I had written an arrangement to the original piece and included a cello, and I was able to find a cellist in Chico who agreed to play. I had also planned to perform a piece with an opera singer (which Vince Chambers had agreed to help with) but we had to forego that particular song since he had a cold the entire time we needed to rehearse the piece. He was still able to host the event though, and I'm hoping he can do both next time.

There are too many other learning experiences to list in just a short blog post like this, but there's one that's worth mentioning, which is that I sold all nine CD's at the event, at $10.00 each. I had only brought the nine, so next time I'll be bringing more. Raising the ticket price slightly will also bring the profits into the "black" instead of the "red", although I was expecting to be a little in the red during my first major concert.

I have considered putting on more casual/informal shows somewhere between now and September, but this is hard only because I work so much (including my day job in Yuba City) and it's tricky to squeeze in the time to visit the venues and set it up. Either way, more updates will become available as the date gets closer.

Some of my trusty helpers/supporters! (Mandalyn, Dawn, Ashley and Mindy)

30 Days to Showtime!

I've secured a venue in Chico, at a place called Chico Women's Club, where I performed for the Baha'is several months ago. The decision to book this event was generally a result of me telling myself to stop making excuses for postponing it. I've been wanting to put on a concert like this for quite some time. More specifically, I chose this particular venue because the place is small enough for it not to be too intimidating, and the acoustics are fantastic.

A secret to success...

I carefully chose the article 'a' in the above heading, as opposed to 'the', because I don't intend to claim that I know "the secret" to being successful, as if there were only one. But I do know a method that can work wonders, and that's being able to network well with other people. If you're good at building professional relationships, acquiring colleagues, and just being a nice guy (or gal) your chances of success will be a lot higher -- guaranteed. .

The Chico Women's Club concert is only 30 days away and I've been delighted to see how many people stepped in to help. I have a sound guy, a tech guy, a host person ("MC"), a chair set-up person, two other musicians that will be performing at some point, a promo guy, a design guy, a ticket lady, a merchandise person and even a person who's going to sell food.  Some of these folks I'm paying, but even when you can't afford to pay people, building supportive networks goes a long way and it means that much more people will still step in to help you out when you happen to be strapped.


Everything I know I learned from George Winston (and others)

In one of my blog posts I talked about a time I went to see George Winston perform in Redding, California. Part of the reason I wanted to go (besides just that he's a great performer and a fantastic composer) is that I wanted to see how what a typical piano concert looked like. Questions kept coming up in my head, prior to watching him perform, like "Does the performer talk between songs?" "Does he introduce himself?" "Does he do anything else?"

George Winston played some of his most popular compositions on the piano, as expected, but during the show he also picked up his slack key guitar and played on that as well. He played the guitar for two of his pieces, and the rest were all on the piano. This was a nice change of pace and it added some variety, even though I loved everything he was doing on the piano.

Watching George put on a concert this way definitely helped inspire me to dig for ideas to add variety into my own piano concerts. As a result I've been able to find a professional cellist who will be playing "The Swan" by Camille Saint Saens, as well as a melodic version of "Snowfall on a Light Glissade". The person hosting the concert is also going to sing for one of the songs, and I'm extremely grateful that the host just happens to have an opera background. I've rehearsed twice with him and once with the cellist.

Yo-yo Ma performing Camille Saint-Saens' "The Swan"

Since it's my first self-organized concert, only time will tell how successful the attempt at variety will be. And at just a little over two weeks away I'll be squeezing in as much rehearsal time that I can.

Why being a music teacher in July is like being a talented circus clown

Wait, you mean being a piano teacher is "seasonal" work?

It's amazing to think that it's now been six years since I first started teaching piano lessons on a regular basis. The "lesson learned" part of this process (which I'll describe in more detail later) emerged towards the tail end of this six year period, mainly because it's during this tail end that my clientele flourished up to 20+ students. As most people would guess, the majority of my students are kids, which means my time slots would involve after-school hours, the 3-6pm range. Most of my mornings and early afternoons were free for me to do whatever, or, more accurately, to work at my other various jobs and multi-tasking duties that I've just realized has the potential to turn me into a complete basket case. 

Now, with regard to this concept of students somehow identifying themselves as "school children", I noticed an interesting pattern: they all seem to want "free time" over the summer. By the time June rolled around, I found myself having to juggle appointments around, re-schedule, cancel, re-cancel, re-appoint, post-pone, re-post-pone, and even pre-pone. I know "pre-pone" isn't a word, but I'm sure I did it at some point. What would a "pre-pone" be, anyway? Is it re-enacting an appointment from the past that didn't happen? 

I digress... so all through the summer I was juggling these students around, rescheduling appointments, etc. Apparently, the reasons for kids wanting to cancel or reschedule their lessons included the following:

1. They didn't want to go to the lesson.

2. But it's summer!

3. They were busy because they were going to be fishing crawdads out of the water with a paperclip. 

4. They were chasing lizards in the back yard. 

5. But why do I have to go to piano? It's summer!

6. They were camping.

7. They were "sick". 

8. They were sick and/or camping. 

9. They were sick from camping and couldn't come to piano lessons because they had stomach cramps from eating too many s'mores.

10. They were sick of piano lessons and just want to go camping. 

11. "I'm not going to school, why am I coming to piano lessons?"

12. It was too hot.

13. Yes, they know the music store had air conditioning, but they really just wanted to sleep in and not change out of their pajamas the rest of their day. 

14. All of the above. 

Unicycles and flying chainsaws don't intimidate me

At first I was pleased that I was able to handle everyone's request for time changes. This was before I realized that the juggling of these time slots was a full-time job in itself, which meant extra time, which also meant extra time I was not getting paid for. I then realized that this is why a lot of private music teachers just say "screw it" and take the entire month of July off, or even the entire summer off. That way they can tell the students to just return on a certain date in August. They're going to be camping in the dirt and chasing frogs, anyway--they're not thinking about the phrasing of notes and the chord progressions in Bach's two-part invention. 

First I thought, "Hey, it's still a little extra money, even though many students are out of town." Then I realized this was not just a "juggling act." It was a circus act that involved me on a 12-foot unicycle, on stilts, juggling a set of chainsaws while balancing a pole on my nose with flames on top of it -- and then having to jump through a flaming hula-hoop at the same time. If you like doing that sort of thing, and making a few bucks for those few students who are still sticking around during the summer, then that's great. I'm considering doing the whole take-off-July thing next year. That is what "lesson learned" means to me. 

How many W-2's does it take to make a guy realize he's a sucker?

I continued, of course, to work on my other projects and jobs throughout the summer, as expected. I've been helping Vince Chambers out at Apollo Piano a couple days a week, and was being paid with a 1099. Then the payroll system was given to an employment agency to handle, so I technically work for them now, and I'm on a W-4. But the new school that he bought, which is now called Apollo Academy of Music, is paying me via another 1099, and I've been teaching two new students there (who also contribute to my apparently-amazing juggling ability). On top of that, I somehow found the time to write articles for Klazema Communications, an online freelance writing company that hired me to write website content for their clients. Another 1099!

As far teaching ESL, I'll be going back to that next week and will be teaching at the Sutter County One-Stop program Mondays through Thursdays, until 11:30am. W-2! Not to mention that I'm on a W-2 for Chico Unified (substitute teaching) as well as, I think, the Tri-County Substitute Teacher Consortium. I actually forgot whether I'm still on a W-2 with that place or if that was in the past. 

Is this even legal? I heard that in Finland they give you a fine if they find out you're holding down more than one job. And I'm doing this while writing this blog (I'm actually at Apollo Piano right now) and still producing my CD, August in Bloom, which is only half-way done, and of course revising my novella, and rehearsing for a live performance at a wedding that is taking place next month. 

I'm not sure if I should be proud of the fact that, even last year when I filed my taxes, my CPA (who happens to do my taxes every year) actually got confused. And I mean genuinely confused, like he was actually furrowing his brow. And he's been a CPA for decades.

I'm going to use the remaining time in my shift here at the piano store to think about whether I should be proud of this, or if I've piled too much on my plate. After that, I'm going home and taking a nap. 

Updates: Accompaniment, August In Bloom, Apollo Academy

Excitement Builds for a September Wedding

I briefly mentioned in the News tab of my website that I was going to be playing a wedding gig in September. This will be a good opportunity to network with a couple of other musicians (two vocalists that I haven't met yet) and to gain more experience. I'll be accompanying the two singers, and one of the songs includes Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", one of my favorites (you can also read about the artist in another blog post I wrote last year, by clicking here). The only other time I did an accompaniment "gig" is when I played the piano for a vocalist who sang Christina Perri's "Lonely" at a talent show. It was enough experience for me to "catch the bug" and be more than willing to do an accompaniment again. There's something rewarding about collaborating in real-time with other musicians and having to get everything "just right".

I've only been able to reach one of the vocalists (by phone) so far, and will be meeting with both of them on Sunday morning to talk about the details--where we'll set up, the order of the songs to perform, and when we'll have our dress rehearsal. I've already begun practicing "Hallelujah" and the actual accompaniment is not difficult. I'm not used to only having to play the background, without having to worry about the melody, and I have to admit it's pretty nice.


Halfway to Completion 

August In Bloom (the piano album I'm producing) seems to have been more like a series of experiments rather than a straight-forward album project, and in a good way. I now feel like I understand ProTools 12 like the back of my hand, at least in the capacity that I need to in order to finish the project. I'm halfway done, for the most part (there are 10 tracks, and 5 of them have been successfully recorded). As luck would have it, the album just may be finished by some time in August, making the title quite appropriate for the timing ;)

I believe one of the best approaches is to originally record acoustically. The final recording ends up being digital. But yes, I can play acoustically first, and at the same time record that into the internal memory of the hybrid piano (Yamaha AvantGrande N2). All I have to do after that is play it back, but during the play back I have the piano plugged into the digital recording software. Playing acoustically requires me to get up early, because I have office neighbors and I need to be alone when I play out loud instead of playing with headphones. The bottom line with this issue is that playing acoustically just does something to me where I instantly get inspired to play way, way better, and with much fewer mistakes.


Official Transition to Chico's New Music School

What was once The Wright Keys Academy (the piano school on Vallombrosa Avenue, in Chico) is now owned by Vincent Chambers and bears the new name of Apollo Academy of Music, and soon to be a full-fledged music school that offers classes in a variety of different instruments, as well as music workshops and group lessons. There are package deals being offered right now (Fall and Spring tuition) and some word-of-mouth going on. So far, the folks I've talked to about this seem excited, and the first student I taught at the location seems thrilled.

A few people have asked me questions about the actual piano store itself (Apollo Piano) and yes, that location will stay. In fact, it has been upgraded! The beautiful pianos in there have been rearranged, and new furniture has been brought in to make guests more comfortable. Maybe they did a study showing that people who sit down to listen to piano music are more likely to buy one--who knows :D The store also has a new employee whose job is to keep the books and schedule all the appointments while she's there in the mornings. I'm there two days a week, and I think my job is to hold the floor down with my feet, and drool while I stare at the pianos. Okay, so maybe I've done a few other things while I'm there (print out price signs, answer phones, greet customers, and, you know, drool while I stare at the pianos).

The entire Apollo Piano staff had a meeting recently at a very quiet and work-conducive space (a rusty pizza joint, with beer) and we discussed a number of issues, including a problem having to do with Apollo Piano's moving service. When you sell pianos, you generally have to offer piano moving services, and this can be challenging for several reasons. Since this delves into something a little different than the issues I want to focus on, however, the piano moving plight will be a topic of another post.

In the mean time, I've finalized my routine for the rest of the summer, as well as the routine I'll start when I go back to teaching some of the ESL classes at Sutter County Schools. For now, maybe I'll shoot for having that album done in August-ish. Something has to bloom out of the hot month of August, so it may as well be a finished album :D

Finding the Sweet Spot

At last, I didn't respond with the word "meh"

In recent days I've been staying busy recording and editing for the upcoming album August In Bloom, and for a while it was an obsessive-compulsive game of finding the "acoustic sweet spot". I had to get into my mad scientist mentality (see my previous blog post) and I kept experimenting until I found something that was at least close to the sound I wanted. The phrase "acoustic sweet spot", by the way, is not an accurate technical term. I ripped it off from an episode of The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon "tests" the acoustics in a movie theater by making embarrassing noises while his friend Leonard is in there, trying to impress his date. But, I digress...

For me, the sweet spot is the ideal sound from the recording of August In Bloom. It took multiple sound tests and multiple recordings for me to finally say, "Okay, I think I can record a song with these settings and confidently hand someone a CD." The intricacies of ProTools 12, the software I've been using, are many. It has also been one set-back after another, even if some of them are more-or-less excuses. Now, however, barring my admittance to a hospital and ending up with no limbs (or something just as drastic) there is no excuse for me not to work on this album. I had the option of teaching a summer session at the Sutter County Superintendent of Schools in Yuba City (my part-time day job), but I declined the offer, specifically to give myself more time to work on this project. So, say it with me: "No excuses, Thor!" ;)


Doing things my way...

Summer is just about here, and while many folks warned me that it's common to lose a few music students during this time of year, my clientele has stayed about the same. I lost a few (or, I should say, they informed me that they're "taking a break" from piano lessons), and this caused my count to dwindle a bit, but then I gained more students after that, keeping the count about the same as it was in the first place!

My next focus is going to be my curriculum. I've been experimenting quite a bit because I listen to feedback from different students. One of them, a retired woman in her 60's, absolutely loves one of the lesson books I use (The Alfred Piano Library) but a lot of the kids hate it. In response to this I looked at other publications, and I've ordered a stack full of lesson books from Amazon, but every book and every publication always has something that seems to be missing, at least for my teaching style.


The solution? (Yes, there is one! :) ) I've been using Sibelius software, which is a program that lets me write and print out my own sheet music. This means, of course, that I can write and print out any song, whether it's a cover or one of my own, and I can use it to design my own exercises. So all that's necessary to fix this is to write
and print out my own exercises, and fill in the "holes" that I've found in the other books.

Here come supplemental materials, here come custom-made lessons, here come happier students, here come more phone calls from folks who want to take lessons :D  The fun part is that I found a way to increase the size of the print when I write the notes out on the program.

It's almost as if "technology" is a big thing nowadays...

Becoming a mad scientist

The importance of "Mad Scientist Syndrome"

Okay, I know that the title above is the item that appears last on the title of the actual blog post, but I don't care. That's the wonderful thing about having your own blog :D

That being said, I have something to say about productivity. As most people know, this is just a fancy word for "getting things done." All jobs, careers, duties, tasks, etc., whether it's writing a report, cleaning a toilet, repairing a pressure system on the International Space Station, wiping the snot off your 3-year-old's nose, or writing a symphony -- all of these "tasks" require productivity. If they didn't require productivity, they wouldn't be tasks.

Needless to say, composing and creating music is no exception to this. Different types of tasks also require different time frames, and this is where the "Mad Scientist Syndrome" plays a key role.

How long does it take to clean a toilet? Twenty minutes? That's not a particularly long time. But how long does it take to write a symphony?

The writing of a symphony, or any other task that requires a similar amount of effort (as well as training and talent) is one that obviously calls for a longer time frame. Jobs that require these lengthy time frames are the ones that require the Mad Scientist mentality. Wiping your kid's nose is easily done by dropping what you're doing and just doing it quickly. "Drop everything and just do it" can be tricky to pull off, however, when the task involves writing an opera, building a house from scratch, starting a business, sculpting a statue, or designing the blueprint for a new shopping mall. When it comes to lengthy tasks like these, where do you start? "Just drop everything and do it real quick" isn't a realistic answer, but "Drop everything and just start," is. Why not start now? It may take you three months, three years, or more than a decade, but there's no better time than the present.


If a tree fell in the woods...

No, I am not asking that old question about whether a tree makes a sound if it falls when no one's there to hear it. (This is an easy question, by the way: Yes, it makes a sound. It creates sound waves. The sound waves are still there, even if nobody is there to detect the them -- it's not exactly rocket science). What I do want to accomplish, however, is making a connection between a fallen tree and this Mad Scientist syndrome I mentioned.

In 1997 I worked at a private resort near Santa Cruz, where my job was to maintain and clean cabins for the guests. I remember on one of the days that I worked there when a tree had fallen over unexpectedly, and as a result the landscapers had to run out with chainsaws and spend a day and a half sawing up the tree and removing it, so that it wouldn't block the trails. I don't know why, but I distinctly remember talking to one of the landscapers.

"At least you're getting your exercise," I told him jokingly.

"Yeah," he replied. "Well, I was going to clean the pool, organize the shed, check up on the electrical, clean the gutters, AND take a trip to the city dump. But instead, THIS tree here just had to fall over, so we've gotta spend all day taking care of that instead."

Just like the fallen tree incident that day, there are some tasks that suddenly become necessary because of an unexpected event, and if the needed task is something that requires nearly all of your attention, and/or is overwhelming and time-consuming, then often times everything else has to be dropped.

This was similar to what happened when I decided to take on the task of making a 15-minute slideshow for my aunt and uncle of their trip to Antarctica -- and yes, I was like a mad scientist, wrapped up in the work and the recordings, even forgetting to eat lunch. I was like that landscaper guy who had to "drop everything" and get it done -- you get lost in the work and feel energized because there's so much to do and somewhat of a sense of urgency.

This mad scientist mentality is healthy, in my opinion, because it helps to maximize quality. I've seen a lot of people get into this mindset and thrive on it. When it comes to music, musicians and composers should try and get into this frame of mind when they're creating something. I had quite a few other things on my plate that I knew I had to get to, so I didn't spend quite as much time on the Antarctica project as I wanted, but I finished it nevertheless. Agreeing to take on that project was a lot like being a landscaper and having to deal with a fallen tree unexpectedly; I had to drop everything and focus on just that.




More Time Needed for the Album

The recording project August In Bloom, my next piano CD, is taking up so much more time than I anticipated that for a few days (or maybe a week or so) I was feeling frustrated and discouraged. I realized, however, that this feeling of pressure and angst was because of the deadline I had set for myself (April 29th). The recording process has not only been time-consuming, but it has been a series of experiments. I ended up upgrading my software, which in turn required me to buy a new (better) computer, which in turn also required me to install and learn how to use the new software. Basically it has ended up with me spending more time doing sound and recording tests rather than recording the actual tracks. So I submitted a request to myself and asked myself permission if it was okay to extend my own deadline, and I told myself "damn you Thor, what's your excuse this time?" and after explaining to myself how I wanted to find the right sound, I granted myself the extension. This clearly took a lot of convincing ;)

The background tracks (strings, percussion, etc.) are being included in most songs, so this also requires more of my time. There is no rest for the Mad Scientist.







 

Playing your music wrong... on purpose

Play the notes right. Okay, now play them differently...

I talked about something called "Controlled Imperfection" on the last edition of "Piano Thor'sday", so I figured I would cover the topic here as well. As I mentioned during the broadcast, not all musicians know how to read music (many of them don't), but those who do were probably taught, originally, to play the music exactly as it's written on the paper, in the most accurate and best manner possible. If you're playing a piece by some other composer, this is generally true (sort of). Well, at first anyway. I tell my students this at the early stages of my Beginner Course. Then, if the student ends up being with me for a number of months, I tell them not to.

Sheet music is perfect for showing you which notes to play, and what the beat is. It also gives you a general idea of what the tempo is (the speed of the song). But, as any seasoned musician knows, many things about how to perform a piece are subjective. These subjective elements about musical performance are, in my opinion, grossly understated by most music teachers. I'm one of those teachers who has no problem telling a kid a bunch of rules about note-reading, and then telling that same kid to bend those very rules, just for effect. If the kid knows which rules he or she is breaking, and knows why they're being broken, what's the harm? It's the good old Mark Twain effect. The famous author certainly knew the rules about English grammar when he wrote Huckleberry Finn, but he deliberately broke a variety of rules in order to use a dialect that was common in that geographic region.

As many people know, performers who play the correct notes in a piece but have their own "style" (they play it at a certain speed, they perform at a certain volume, they play certain parts gracefully and other parts aggressively, etc.), it's called a performer's interpretation of a piece. The fun part about learning music is how free you can be to interpret pieces in your own way.  During the broadcast last week I covered four ways that you can vary your interpretations of a piece, which I've summarized below.


Four ways to explore your interpretations 

1. Vary your tempo (a.k.a. change your speed)

Pianist Valentina Lisitsa concentrating on interpretation
while playing a Nocturne

When playing a song, speed up in some places and slow down in other places. There is a healthy balance between doing these two things at just the right time. This technique normally only applies to music that doesn't have a consistent drumbeat, like most rock and pop songs do, so if you're in a band and writing a song that involves a drummer, this might be an exception (but not necessarily). For any kind of solo performance, though, whether it's a flute, a guitar, a piano, a violin, etc., I typically suggest using this technique fairly regularly. The beautiful part is that you can actually master this to the point where the listener almost-sort-of doesn't know there's an actual beat, even though there is one. The listeners can hear the beat, but they can't. Or the beat (even the time signature) can just change completely during a song.


2. Create a delay

So, wait. You're playing certain pairs of notes together, just like the sheet music tells you to do? What are you, crazy? ;)

In printed sheet music, notes that are to be played simultaneously appear to "line up" so that if you took a ruler you could draw a line and the notes would both touch the line. It's generally good to play many of these pairs of notes together, but occasionally it's also very effective to play them so that there's a slight lag, or "delay," meaning you play the lower note a split-second before the higher note. I do this frequently and deliberately, and it creates a very nice sentimental effect, thus showing this so-called "controlled imperfection". It shows that you're human and not a robot, making the song sound far more emotional and touching. This is very common among soloists and vocalists alike, and again you can see examples of it on my broadcast from last week (you can watch a recording of it here).


3. Vary your dynamics

The musical notation for a crescendo (getting louder)
and a decrescendo (getting softer). The 'p' signals you
 to play quietly, while the 'f 'signals you to play loudly. 

One of the things I tell people often, especially students, is that playing music is one of the only times in life when it's acceptable to be a complete drama queen. In music, "dynamics" refers to the loudness or quietness of the notes during a piece. Most instruments allow for this, with some exceptions (i.e. the harpsichord apparently has a fixed volume level). The harder you bang on a piano, however, the louder the note will sound. The harder you dig your  bow into a string on a violin, the louder the sound will be that comes out. It's wonderful. This dynamism and variation in the volume of an instrument allows for a huge range of potential for emotional expression.

Sheet music does, actually, have symbols for changes in dynamics (i.e. there are symbols for a crescendo, meaning to "play louder", as shown above) but the measure by which how much louder you play and the decibel levels are not exact, so it's still pretty subjective. This subjectivity is what makes it fun to be a performer -- you can interpret the song how you want.


4. Let some of the notes linger

A fermata symbol, used in music to indicate
that a note needs to be held longer than its value.
A soloist can play the next note at his/her discretion,
whereas a musician must wait and play the next note
at the conductor's discretion.

Many pianists and other instrumentalists will occasionally play a note for a longer duration than what's written on the sheet music, causing a certain note to "linger" before playing the next note. I demonstrated this during my live stream last week, but you can certainly see more examples of it from other performers. There are symbols for this as well, such as the "grand pause" (two diagonal lines directly after the note that's supposed to linger) and the fermata, illustrated to the right.


Since I know that examples always help, I attached a video of world renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin below. He's playing a piece by Chopin (from memory, of course, hence he no longer needs the sheet music) but if you listen to it and watch him you can clearly seem him using the techniques of interpretation I mentioned above.

Hope this helps. Beethoven said it best in his famous quote, which I feel really pin-points this entire discussion: "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable."