Mozart Effect?

What is a Mozart effect? Its amazing effect has been discussed by many pscychologists.
To me, I think listening to Mozart creates a kind of resilient quality in your thinking/mind/mood. It is like telling jokes to a dog using sound arrangement. Joke contains humor. Humor originally means fluidity. The bouncy, springy, quick wit, fluid quality in Mozart's music has a enhancing quality for rigid minds. It is like a gift from Mozart to all the depressed people to bounce back. If you let a very stubborn person listen to Mozart or learn Mozart's piece, he will be slightly lightened up or relaxed.

If you let a baby listen to Mozart since he/she is still a fetal or infant, chances are, that baby will become a relaxed, laid back, witty smart baby. It is like telling a lot of jokes to the baby before s/he even know how to speak or understand your language. Music is a more direct language because it is so simple and straight forward.

Reference to violin

Piano sound is not just piano sound. We can create a tone that resemble other instruments. By listening to other instruments, sometimes we can distance ourselves from our own instruments and thus be able to view a piece of music from a different angle and thus help us to breakthrough in interpretation.

Violinists and other string instrumentalists usually have very good phrasing. In general they have very spiritual quality. You can feel that especially when they play a baroque piece.

Here is one example, Julia Fischer contrasting her Paganini with the Bach.

Trois mouvements de Petrouchka

Listening to the piano arrangement of orchestral version Petrouchka composed by the amazing composer Igor Stravinsky, you can hear very lively, descriptive multi-levels of musical activity going on at the dimension of time. There is a special "clashed"chord named after the main character of the story "Petrouchka chord" where c major triad and F#major triad are "clashed" together.

The piece is highly challenging as you need a very acute sense of rigid rhythm to maintain the flow of the piece as well as big hands to reach all the big chords. Challenging, yet fun and exciting to listen to.

The story narrates about a russian puppet, Petrouchka who was merely made of straw and dust who came to alive by a special magic flute. He developed human emotions and fell in love with a ballerina but eventually went back to be a broken puppet at the end.

The music was originally composed by Stravinsky for a Ballet. He also made the piano arrangement for his pianist friend Artur Rubinstein. So, imagine playing all the orchestral instruments with your 10 fingers on the 88 keys.

Note in this one, the pianist has omitted some notes from the Petrouchka chord.

If interested in purchasing a recording of this piece, Maurizio Pollini recorded the same piece with Polygram Classics

www.pianopedia.com

Holding piano recitals is an important process for a pianist to grow professionally. If you ask any pianists about best way of becoming pianistically competence, the answer is always "perform more". While having a recital, careful selection of programs plays a big part in the success of the big show.

When it comes to the planning part of the piano recital program, Pianopedia is indeed a handy tool. Pianopedia is a website developed by my college professor, Dr Eric Brisson. The site is a very useful tool for pianists around the world whenever they want to estimate the performance time, decide possible repertoire combination for good listening experience and optimized performance.

The site has a complete database of piano repertoires ranging from Baroque, Classical, Romantic, to Contemporary piano music. The completeness of the data allows you to estimate the time needed to perform a certain piece you have in mind, find sites to purchase the specific music score, and have a glance at the beginning portion of the music. It allows you to search through the vast collection of repertoire by using the names of the composers. In addition to that, users are encouraged to submit any piano piece that are new and not listed. Also worth mentioning, there is a French version of the site.


About the webmaster, Dr. Eric Brisson-
He holds a Doctorate in Piano Interpretation from University of Montreal, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from McGill University. He is currently on faculty at Winona State University.