Book in Focus
A Taxonomical Framework for Evaluating Piano Performances"/>

07th September 2022

Book in Focus
A Taxonomical Framework for Evaluating Piano Performances

Tempo Styles beyond Fast and Slow

By Danny Zhou


There is a long-standing composer-centred tradition in musicology. In studies of music, the main focus of researchers has been almost exclusively on composers and their compositional styles. For example, many authoritative music dictionaries include highly obscured composers, but extremely limited entries for world-renowned performers.

Despite this, in the age of sound reproduction, performing and listening to canonical works have become standard. Famous performers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are perhaps better known than many, if not most, of their composer contemporaries. According to a survey carried out by a British radio station, Classic FM, only 65% of British children could name a single classical composer, whereas 98% could name at least one classical performer.

This limitation in music research has left many questions surrounding musical performances unanswered. What are the characteristics in Ivo Pogorelich’s rendition of Chopin that aroused fierce controversy in one of the most celebrated piano competitions? Why do Vladimir Horowitz’s performances, in Harold Schoenberg’s words, have infinite degrees of colour and a sonority that could well have been unparalleled? What are the distinctive features in Valentina Lisitsa’s interpretation that made her the most frequently viewed pianist on YouTube? Although some general answers to specific questions like these may be easily found in public discussions, they have gained little academic scrutiny. Perhaps since its inception, musicology has achieved much of its influence at the expense of the otherwise universally-shared sense of how music sounds while one hears it. It has isolated itself from the vast audience of music lovers who seek to understand what they experience and what they feel. This may explain why musicology has been peripheral to the interests of most practitioners and lovers of music.

This book is based on the belief that renowned performers of our time and their performances should be provided the same level of scholarly attention as is often received by composers and their compositions in musicology. In other words, our understanding of the best-known performers should by no means be inferior to that of the famous composers. Performing Western classical music requires significant creativity from performers. Any performance by a competent, well-trained performer is far more than a neutral realisation of the notations in a score. Since many sonic properties and sound effects cannot be specified in the notational system of Western classical music, these details need to be created by performers, producing sound from the instruments they are playing. Performers’ creative contributions differentiate performance from performance and performer from performer, resulting in listeners’ perceptions of personal styles of individual performers.

While musicology frequently examines performances in terms that seem too technical and specific, music practitioners and listeners, on the other hand, tend to go to the other extreme by being imprecise, inconsistent, and excessively general. When it comes to discussing features of a performance, we all lack an adequate vocabulary to describe what we hear and what we aim to convey. For example, when discussing tempo, it seems that performers and listeners can describe a performance by nothing more than “fast” and “slow” (and probably the more ambiguous synonyms of these two words).

To develop a more thorough understanding of musical performance, it is essential to describe performance features accurately, without, at the same time, compromising the appreciation of their musical significance. In addition, these features should also be interpreted cogently in the context of the holistic style of the performer and the general stylistic trends of their era. This book addresses these needs by constructing a taxonomical framework that enables both musicologists and musicians to discuss tempo features beyond “fast” and “slow”. It consists of six stylistic variables as the criteria for describing, evaluating, and comparing styles of tempo in solo piano performance of Romantic repertoire. The variables cover three dimensions of tempo features: basic tempo, global tempo variation, and local tempo variation. Altogether, they paint a fuller and clearer picture of the holistic style of a performance and a performer.

The book selects three complete solo piano pieces from the nineteenth century—Chopin’s First Ballade, Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat major, and Liszt’s Piano Sonata—for detailed analysis. This enables us to investigate how a performer consistently differs from the norm across repertoire, a way of demonstrating individuality in performance style. The selection of repertoire and the methods of analysis are specified in Chapter 2. Six stylistic variables, categorised into three dimensions of tempo and tempo variation, are proposed in Chapter 3. These provide a more specific and consistent language for describing similarities and differences in style of tempo. Two of the most celebrated pianists of our time—Valentina Lisitsa from Ukraine and Lars Vogt from Germany—are used as case studies to illustrate how the framework can achieve its goal, as shown in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively. The analysis empirically measures the extent to which they fit into each of the six theorised variables and hence deepens our knowledge about their styles. The two case studies show that the framework can precisely describe and accurately evaluate a performer’s style of tempo and tempo variation. Chapter 6 draws conclusions on the findings and discusses the directions that future research can and should take.

The proposed framework is based on a thorough review of existing musicological literature, but is far more than a set of theoretical precepts. Despite being theoretically-based, the framework, when applied to two case studies, produces findings that demonstrate a high extent of concordance between the results from empirical analysis of recordings and the opinions of music critics published in popular journals, magazines, and newspapers. It shows that the six variables can be used as a reliable set of indicators to reflect and describe our actual aesthetic experience of music. Although the methods I have used to analyse the selected recordings are mainly empirical, I have not abandoned―and have never thought of abandoning―qualitative descriptions and perceptual judgement, both my own and that of other experienced, knowledgeable listeners. The figures and graphs are not discussed solely in the statistical language that prevails in most “top-rated” research in this field, but also in the musically meaningful terms that music practitioners can also understand. The empirical results are mainly used to assist readers’ understanding and to support what I, both as an analyst and as a listener, perceived during my listening and analytic processes. Analysis of the commentaries by authoritative music critics is used to confirm the results from empirical analysis. On the one hand, this combination of methods can enhance our understanding of performance style from different perspectives; on the other, it can help readers with different backgrounds grasp the central ideas presented in this book.

In summary, this book offers new insights into the constituent features of tempo and deepens the knowledge of individuality and commonality in piano performance style. While the main aim of this book is to contribute to musicological scholarship, I hope that musicians and music lovers find the ways I—a musicological researcher, a piano player, and a music aficionado—describe and discuss performance features precise and comprehensible. I also hope that they find the examples I used to illustrate these features interesting to read. It is my aspiration that performance studies gain more respectability in the music arena and continue to prosper in the long run.


Danny Zhou is Professor of Musicology at Central Conservatory of Music and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Music of Southwest University, China. He obtained his MPhil degree at the University of Cambridge and his PhD degree at the University of New South Wales. He also holds an LTCL in Piano Recital and an ABRSM Diploma in Piano Performance. As a scholar, he specialises in the fields of musical performance studies, and has published in leading academic journals such as Musicae Scientiae and Nineteenth-century Music Review. As a music critic, he has written more than 100 articles for a range of influential media worldwide, reviewing concerts and recordings of some of the most celebrated musicians of our time.


A Taxonomical Framework for Evaluating Piano Performances is available now in Hardback at a 25% discount. Enter code PROMO25 at checkout to redeem.

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