While I was eating Burger King in my car one night last summer I became intrigued by what I heard on the classical radio station. The announcer said the next selection was going to be Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 played by some kid, who was probably barely 12 years old, accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
“That’s really some gig for a 12-year-old,” I thought. At 12 years old, I was watching Walt Disney movies, not playing concertos in his concert hall.
Bite by bite through my specialized Whopper, I then listened to one of my favorite Tchaikovsky works being played by some pre-teen kid with a world-class orchestra behind him. And after the piece was finished, the announcer kept saying how impressive this kid was for playing such a mature work at such a young age, and at such a great venue, no less.
I was not impressed, however. In fact, I was downright horrified.
The entire rendition of Tchaikovsky lacked soul. It was soulless, a word that definitely does not describe anything by such a soulful and passionate composer as Tchaikovsky.
But I knew why it was soulless.
The playing of Piano Concerto No. 1 lacked spirit for one reason: It was played by a pre-pubescent kid who had not even begun the preliminary life stages of maturity and morality yet.
He did not truly understand the notes. He did not understand the adult concepts that Tchaikovsky surely was experiencing when he wrote them and how those adult concepts must have influenced his music.
The kid merely played those notes in the right order and at the right time. Unlike an older, more mature musician, the kid did not give those little touches to the little parts in the score, passages in such Romantic era music that good musicians romanticize by slowing down or speeding up the tempo ever so slightly.
There was no musicality in his music.
Here’s my point: Innocent kids who haven’t experienced adult life’s emotional torments (torment that often makes great music) cannot play very well musically. With enough talent and practice, however forced, they can play the notes but I doubt they can really make them sing.
And here’s my second, larger point: Kids should not be forced to play music at such young ages where they are emotionally incapable to understand what they are playing.
I don’t think it’s right to force a kid to learn piano at age five when he or she would rather be running around outside instead. It probably creates more resentment than appreciation or talent, things well-meaning parents are hoping for. Perhaps this is why so many of them quit.
Music is very emotional, and at a young age, kids really aren’t set up to understand the complexities of Beethoven and Chopin. Instead, they are geared with a childlike mind, a mind that in some ways is superior to a so-called “learned” adult one.
Why should parents break such innocence by making their kids play scales on a piano or sit down and blow through a clarinet at age six?
If I have children someday, I will have them listen and appreciate music at a young age just to know what it’s all about. But all the while I will know that their simple minds do not yet fully understand Beethoven’s genius. I will also realize all the practicing in the world will never help them re-create that genius until they are older.
But going back to the 12-year-old piano-playing kid on the radio, I’d love to hear him play that same piece at age 18, an age where he has developed a brain for complex musicality and morality. He’ll really be something then.
But before he reaches that point, there is no doubt in my mind that as a child who was forced into developing such talent at such a young age, he has lost something along the way.
Bradley Zint is a senior journalism and political science major and the managing editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
