Most certainly not… and I am ok with that! Lol.

Yeah Steve; just last week I watched a female pianist play Chopin’s Concerto in E minor No 1, and I was thinking the exact same thing! The whole orchestra was reading music sheets, while the pianist was just playing by memory!! Amazing!!

I had a similar thought as Sal. It is very classical in nature, and I know classical pianists play from memory often. There is likely a structure to the piece that creates a framework, like the blues, but more complex. I took a music appreciation course in college and we learned a bit about that. I think they called it the Sonnet Structure. I don’t remember the details, but it was something like the first section establishes a theme, the next section develops it, the next section modulates… etc. This particular piece strikes me as a lot of variations on a main theme, so once you have the main theme, the rest, perhaps, is decorations and “licks”, in a sense. I’m guessing. In any case, it’s an accomplishment. She’s probably been playing since she was a small child.

I agree Michael, the only way to memorise that complicated melody is to think of it and practice it in sections. She will know each section’s detail backwards, it’s then a case of putting the sections in the right order.
I had a guitar teacher that taught me the same principle, but in a much simpler way than this young talent.

Richard

I agree with Michael and Richard.
Learning how to efficiently memorize long pieces is actually part of any serious formal music curriculum, and it uses many of the principles mentioned above (analysis, form, muscle memory, …), plus another one that hasn’t been mentioned yet: feelings!
When you learn a piece of music you associate it with various feelings that it creates in you: joy, angriness, sadness, … When performing the piece, you actually roll out that sequence of feelings. The treason this works is because a piece of music is actually a story that is meant to convey feelingsd.
Actors use a similar technique to remember their text.
That being said, it’s not an easy task and it requires training, like everything else…