Observers’ effective engagement with music performing arts involves both cognitive and affective elements. Empathy is an important facet of how we engage in and navigate our social worlds, to which cognitive and affective elements are key. Cognitive empathic ability relies on embodiments, or neural representations that match those of the performer. In music, cognitive responses may therefore vary according to specialised musical and motor expertise. Multimodal performing arts experiences may crucially enhance the cognitive facet of empathy, particularly for observers without embodied knowledge of the observed action. Affective empathy, however, should be unaffected by specialist motor expertise or modality of presentation, according to recent research for expressive music performance. In an empathy framework, this study therefore investigates cognitive and affective responses to contemporary solo piano performance according to participants’ musical and motor expertise, and modality of presentation (audio-only, audio-visual). Musically trained pianists, musically trained non-pianists, and musically untrained individuals participated in a mixed methods study. Cognitive (action understanding – asking participants to put themselves in the performers’ shoes) and affective empathic responses (arousal and valence) were continuously self-reported. Liking and familiarity ratings were also recorded on Likert scales following each excerpt. While affective empathic responses appeared similar across expertise groups and modality of presentation, cognitive empathic responses varied according to musical, but not piano-playing motor expertise, and modality of presentation. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed; directions for future research are also considered. Results suggest that effective audience development for new classical music practices should focus on engaging cognitive elements of musically untrained observers.