Gal Shalev wrote: >Gerardo wrote: > >>Well,it is true,in a composer,unfortunately the explanation for it is maybe >>too long (is a kind of psycological analisis). > >But in a performer it could be very easy. Are you sure? >>Even in the famous superstars (who are very discreet and >>sober),you can see,and ear it under an intuitive actitude. > >I agree. my piano teacher always tells me when I am playing Rachmaninoff >lazily, "play like a man"!!!!!!!! If you would have to play it as hard and good, and as style-matching, as my piano teacher, you would have a much harder load than just like you would have to play it "like a maaan..." And my teacher is definitively female, navigates i.e. through the entirety of Chopin Etudes, defining the hardest Etudes as "middle - heavy", and for her age (24) she is far beyond of many thousand men... not only technically. You are a victim of a clichee. Maybe a woman is in general not as strong as a man, but such things are not the point. Gal Shalev wrote: >You dont even see face expressions when he is tackling passages that are >technically hard for others: Prokofief 5th or Chopin etudes. he is >foreign to technical problems. So you see, it is not the way of moving matter, it is the question, how to move the matter. The spirit moves the matter, and decides, if the moving is succesfull, or not. And Richters spirit seemed to be created to make matter making music. And spirit is not a question of male or female. >Phisically man have more power and mass and therefore can play large and >difficult chords fuller and louder. Not at all. There is a point of hardness, at which the sound will grow more silent with a much harder "kick" to the string. The reason is, that if a string is hit too hard, it is deformed, and some energy is needed to correct the deformation of the string, and this energy would normally be transformed to oscillation. And this energy is lost. Another point is, that a sound has to bee ten times louder, to sound as duble as loud as it is. This has something to do with the attitude of our ear, to be covered with a logarhithmical sensitivity to sound. The ability to play loud is more a question of training, and knowledge of the instrument. But i have to admit, that male hands are often bigger than a females hands. But Josef Hofmann and Chopin had quite nice and cute fingers, a joke compared to the hands of Horowitz or maybe Richter. But even with small hands, there can be created very loud and very powerful music. >Also emotionaly and intellectualy there are many many differences that I >can't get into a mere letter. But it ould be interestening. There has indeed to be a difference, but i suppose, that the difference is finally not important. There are attributes, which have been linked to males: Ratio, power, logic, hard... And female: sensitive, intuitive, soft... It is just clichee...... I suppose, no pianist can live without beeing covered with both male/female-typical attributes. >i am not saying that I can always identify the sex of the performer but >I can many times. To which aspects are you listening identifying the sex? >I would like to emphasize again: Richter, my favorite pianist, Is the >most masculine of players and anyone who knows his playing knows this. >The modesty, the intellect, the power, power, power. His senstivity playing the instrument, his intuitive and imaginative power playing Schubert? I think, his benefit is, that he is the perfect combination of the best attitudes, which BOTH sex, male and female, have to give. And to be willed, to cultivate both side in ones self, the female and the male sides (in music), should lead to success. Because music demands for anything. Anything which a humang beeing is able to give. Not important, if (fe)male or not. Norman Reppingen, Ger(man)y.