The Cliburn: "Encore! with James Conlon"

Being it or playing it

Being: existing, incarnating, acting

Playing: pretending, simulating, recreating

Is it to be? Or to play?
Do I play the music? Or am I the music?
Do I become the music? Or do I just play the music?

As an interpreter, there is a constant dynamism between just identifying with the music, becoming spiritually at one with the music and at the same time just playing it, just doing it.
We need to feel identification, we do identify with the composition. We make it our own, we speak of it, making it our own. First of all you practice to a point where you have it "in your hands" and the time that it takes to do that you develop an emotional relationship, as if you had been conversing with that piece, as if that piece had been talking to you, and you're talking back to it.

So you have the illusion that that piece belongs to you, these are words, you hear these things said, "that's my piece", or "that's his piece" or "that's her piece".
I prefer to think of it as the interpreter, having surrenderred his or her ego to the piece, so that the piece can flow into your own person as fully as possible. So naturally, at that moment, you feel that you are a part of that piece, you are that piece and you feel yourself disappear into that piece.

Now, does that make a good performance, or does that make you a good performer?
The answer is no, it's not enough. Because at the same time, you have to have enough distance from your experience of the piece in order to actually execute it. You still have to play the notes, you may miss some, that's ok, but you still have to play them.

This is an illusion that we have, however, when we perform a piece of music to which we identify, because we have, at that moment, the impression that we are at one with the composition, at one with the composer, and in a way maybe that's necessary.

Just the way and actor could imagine to believe he's Hamlet. Certainly he makes us believe he's Hamlet .....