This is the English translation of my Japanese article to appear in Nikkan San on March 20th, 2022, as a part of my bi-weekly column, “The Way of the Pianist.”
There are so many things about music that remain beyond proper description, or explanation, to me.
J.S. Bach was born in 1685, Beethoven in 1770, and Chopin in 1810. Most composers I play as a pianist are two to three hundred years old. But when I play their pieces, there are moments where I feel what they felt that motivated them to write that melody, that piece. Like an actor preparing a role, we research the historical backgrounds to the piece, and the composer’s life circumstances at the time when he wrote the piece. But these feelings are far beyond these understandings. It’s like being connected to them beyond time, or even like being them in their lives.
There are other things.
When I perform, there are moments when I feel what my audiences are feeling. A harmony change can shift the temperature in the hall – or so it feels. With the crescendo and accelerando toward a climax, sometimes I hear the audience breathing faster and faster with the music. After the last chord to a piece melts into the air, there are these few seconds sometimes, when no one moves, or breathes, like time has stopped. Then the applause starts slowly and grows into a roaring thunder. Usually, I don’t know many of these people in these audiences. But when we share these moments, I feel this desire to hug each one of them and cry.
Music induces the production of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone.” Mothers, after labor, are flooded with oxytocin. We get it when we sing together, and share musical experiences in any other way. It’s a naturally human phenomenon, a part of our humanity.
There are many videos of music coming from Ukraine these days: from underground shelters by pianists and violinists escaping the air raids. Ukrainian children singing from their hiding places. A woman playing her piano for the last time her bombed apartment, before she starts are life as a refugee.
It’s been almost a month since the first day of Russian invasion in Ukraine. I feel like these musicians in these videos are pleading with us to remember that each of them are just like us.
Thank you for this heartfelt message about what you feel when you perform and how your heart goes out to your audiences. Music has the power to heal beyond our understanding; even the hardest of hearts and coldest of human beings respond to music. Let all the earth pour out their songs of peace and love that those who have been given the task of destruction will be humbled and brought to their knees for whatever reasons may be. Keep playing, keep singing, and keep healing the world as you are doing.
Thank you so much for your comment. It means a lot to me that this article resonated with you.
Makiko