Do you think you play Mozart well?

[minnielala2]

I realize this question may sound idiotic, but I am under the impression that people think Mozart is easy, at least compared to Rachmaninov (for example). The technical skills required to play Mozart are much less complicated than Liszt (for example). Musically, Mozart's music is very deep, but on the surface it is easier to listen to, or "follow" for the average person. But I think it is very hard to capture the pure, honest emotions and humanity of Mozart's music without sounding saccharine or too light/heavy-handed. So do you think you can play Mozart well? How do you think Mozart's music should be played?

[opus10no2]

I think music is only ever really 'musically' difficult if you just don't like it.

Speaking for myself, I can only enjoy Mozart when I'm in the mood, and if I were made to perform it when not in the mood it would come off as exaggerated and eccentric because I'd be trying too hard to do something interesting with music I find relatively uninteresting.

[pianistimo]

i thought i played mozart well until i encountered my last teacher.  something about playing robotically or mechanically - came into focus.  so then, i tried really hard to make it more interesting.  but, the thing is - there is a fine line.  there is one artists interpretation and an amateurs sincere feelings about the work.  i mean - for me - when i play mozart i feel that i am connecting with the time period and mozart himself - whereas for a romantic player, they might want to speed up and slow down a lot more or bring in exaggerated dynamics in certain places.

i think it is all about audience, too.  i mean- who is going to listen to a whole hour of mozart and not fall alseep unless you do something drastic.  (i usually do not fall asleep - but i know my dad would.  he would probably start snoring, too). 

what i really appreciated of all the suggestions for playing mozart from my last teacher - was to connect the alberti bass by holding the first of the four notes (or however many) and allowing the music to meld.  just this one little trick did amazing things for the sound of my mozart.  was working the fantasy in c minor.  it just made it sound more musical and viennese.  i think i was playing peasant mozart before.

ps  i happen to love mozart- but i also have to be in the mood.  i often use my mozart to warm up because of the scalular passages and how much you have to listen to what you are doing.  it is definately alert type of music - vs let us dream and play according to every whim and feeling.  i think it typifies the reserved feelings of the period.  it is expressive - but not to the point of revealing intimate secrets unless you really listen closely to what you are doing and get some revelations of what do here and there that make it more along a romantic vein.  i am a romantic classicist and not a classic romanticist so i tend not to get as carried away with the emotions but to focus on the form of the piece and to play things as i see it as a whole.  as a piece of architecture.  this might sound dry - but i really try hard now to put in as much feeling as i can without feeling syruppy.

[teresa_b]

I have been told I play Mozart pretty well    I think I have decent feel for him, but of course there's always room for improvement!  I love Mozart and I have played many of his works, always learning something with every one of them.  (Indeed, pianistimo, in Mozart's day holding down the first note of an Alberti accompaniment was customary.)

The challenge is to stay within reasonable performance practices for the 18th century, but also make it interesting and beautiful.  You can vary agogics a bit, for example, stretching and contracting melodies a bit in the RH, but you should not waver significantly from an even, steady tempo in the LH. 

Listening to the "whole" is a good insight, something that student musicians often forget as they try to perfect passages. 

Teresa

[Mozartian]

what i really appreciated of all the suggestions for playing mozart from my last teacher - was to connect the alberti bass by holding the first of the four notes (or however many) and allowing the music to meld. 

heh I did that automatically.

I play Mozart well sometimes, but it's very hard to gain the technical perfection needed for a great performance of Mozart while at the same time retaining the fresh spontanity which is also critical for performance. Mozart is indeed difficult to play well.

[elisianna]

Mozart is difficult to play well...  My teacher was actually discussing this just a little while ago.  He too mentioned Rachmaninov and Liszt.

I haven't played a lot of Mozart.  But my teacher said I had very good touch for Mozart.  One of the three best in his 15 years of teaching. 

I think that's bogus and his way of making me practice >.>

[andyd]

The question is far from idiotic.

Recently there was a 3 hour programme on TV (it's now on youtube...naturally) called 'The Enigma of Richter' in which the great man comments just how difficult Mozart's phrasing is compared to Beethoven etc. saying something like "What is it about Mozart? Does anyone play him well? What’s his secret?"

Regards

Andy

[pianistimo]

now that you mention it, i think the secret is to think opera.  to think 'various characters' in your piece.  at least with the fantasy this worked wonders for me.  it opened up a 'door' to my understanding of what i was actually doing.  talking back and forth using various characters.   othertimes it's a unison in happiness.  this was also a point brought out to me - and one that i hadn't thought deeply about.  i mean, usually a teacher says 'bring out the voices.'  but, they don't mention several (2-3-4) DIFFERENT voices and DIFFERENT characters to each voice.  now with bach - they're all yellow pencil voices but different (sop, alto, tenor, bass).  but, in mozart's opera - each of these voices has a character.

it's like you're doing a 'voice over' and changing voices AND characters in the call and responses sometimes.  just pretend you're mozart and you've gone half mad. the starling in the background. 

[teresa_b]

The question is far from idiotic.

Recently there was a 3 hour programme on TV (it's now on youtube...naturally) called 'The Enigma of Richter' in which the great man comments just how difficult Mozart's phrasing is compared to Beethoven etc. saying something like "What is it about Mozart? Does anyone play him well? What’s his secret?"

Regards

Andy

The key may be in Schnabel's (was it Schnabel?) famed comment "The sonatas of Mozart are too easy for children and too difficult for artists."  There is a tendency, once one has the technique of a concert artist, to over-romanticize, over-interpret or in some way try to do "too much" with Mozart, to the detriment of the crystalline nature of the music.  

So you either have to BE pure and innocent as a child, or somehow get back to that zone as a jaded adult.  Not so easy!

Teresa

[franz_]

I play Rachmaninoff a lot better than Mozart, it may be the most difficult composer to play correctly.

[comma]

now that you mention it, i think the secret is to think opera.  to think 'various characters' in your piece. 

Excellent, pianistimo! I remember a music expert who said Mozart had written nothing else but operas. I thought a lot about this statement and came to the same conclusions as you did.

--------------------

https://www.pianistenschule.de

[pianistimo]

dear comma,

i wish i read german.  this site seems quality.  is there a place it can be translated?  or can you just cull the parts that you wanted to tell me about? 

something else i've been thinking is that mozart and his sister heard a lot of violin playing in their house.  they were probably more familiar with that instrument to start - and always, it seems, mozart puts instrumentation into his music - as well as voice and bird calls and whatever other genius impetuse noises he wanted to turn into music.  probably spoken voice as well. 

one thing i will never fully understand is how he wrote SO MUCH happy music when some of his life was pure hell.  he had this very agressive and demanding father, married young and had 1/2 his children die, various money problems, landlords, audiences that didn't appreciate his genius, getting booted out by the aristocracy at one point ( can't remember name?) - - so much humiliation and all.  and then, it doesn't even end when he gets buried - as he's dumped into a pauper's grave.  then, a few years later - he's celebrated as genius.  poor guy! he should have been a millionaire by the end.

[elspeth]

I can make a good attempt at Mozart on flute, but have a long way to go before I can make his piano music sing as it ought to. The trick is getting the technicalities right while still making it delicate and graceful. Mozart ought to sparkle, and therefore needs an awful lot of polishing! I love the opera analogy, I'd never thought of it that way...

[arensky]

Yes. 


Although others may not agree. I play him with a full tone and rather romantically, as if he were Schubert. 

[pita bread]

I think music is only ever really 'musically' difficult if you just don't like it.

Negative. How often have you heard fools playing Rachmaninoff making facial expressions suggesting that they feel the emotion when all they convey to the audience are messes of lifeless notes?

[arensky]

Negative. How often have you heard fools playing Rachmaninoff making facial expressions suggesting that they feel the emotion when all they convey to the audience are messes of lifeless notes?

All too often.... 

[opus10no2]

Negative. How often have you heard fools playing Rachmaninoff making facial expressions suggesting that they feel the emotion when all they convey to the audience are messes of lifeless notes?

How does this relate to musical difficulty?

If there is no attempt at music making, this is not indicative of the musical difficult, only the laziness and woeful attitude of the performer.

[pita bread]

How does this relate to musical difficulty?

If there is no attempt at music making, this is not indicative of the musical difficult, only the laziness and woeful attitude of the performer.

Your original quote was:

I think music is only ever really 'musically' difficult if you just don't like it.

My point was that just because you like a piece and can feel the music (as with the Rachmaninoff example) doesn't mean you can successfully convey the emotion to an audience, and this is where musical difficulty comes in.

[opus10no2]

That's what being a good pianist is about.

Comparing the 'musical' difficulty of pieces is mostly just down to the tastes and musical comprehension of the pianist.

[elevateme]

i thought i played mozart well until i encountered my last teacher.  something about playing robotically or mechanically - came into focus.  so then, i tried really hard to make it more interesting.  but, the thing is - there is a fine line.  there is one artists interpretation and an amateurs sincere feelings about the work.  i mean - for me - when i play mozart i feel that i am connecting with the time period and mozart himself - whereas for a romantic player, they might want to speed up and slow down a lot more or bring in exaggerated dynamics in certain places.

i think it is all about audience, too.  i mean- who is going to listen to a whole hour of mozart and not fall alseep unless you do something drastic.  (i usually do not fall asleep - but i know my dad would.  he would probably start snoring, too). 

what i really appreciated of all the suggestions for playing mozart from my last teacher - was to connect the alberti bass by holding the first of the four notes (or however many) and allowing the music to meld.  just this one little trick did amazing things for the sound of my mozart.  was working the fantasy in c minor.  it just made it sound more musical and viennese.  i think i was playing peasant mozart before.

ps  i happen to love mozart- but i also have to be in the mood.  i often use my mozart to warm up because of the scalular passages and how much you have to listen to what you are doing.  it is definately alert type of music - vs let us dream and play according to every whim and feeling.  i think it typifies the reserved feelings of the period.  it is expressive - but not to the point of revealing intimate secrets unless you really listen closely to what you are doing and get some revelations of what do here and there that make it more along a romantic vein.  i am a romantic classicist and not a classic romanticist so i tend not to get as carried away with the emotions but to focus on the form of the piece and to play things as i see it as a whole.  as a piece of architecture.  this might sound dry - but i really try hard now to put in as much feeling as i can without feeling syruppy.

i dont think you have to do anything drastic to keep interest

[pianistimo]

well, in the c minor fantasy i really tried to do what my teacher suggested - but just couldn't at the end.  what he wanted in one place was to extend the crescendo beyond where i thought it left off (at the peak note).  he was going with the speed part - and thought that the end of the speed area was where the peak ended.

in the end - he's probably right.  but, i couldn't do it.  i mean i physically could do it - but it didn't sound right to my ears.  so i continued to play this pathetic crescendo to the exact peak note and subside as one would if one was listening to background music at a tea party.

his way of playing brought definate romance.  but, it makes me blush.  i mean - i don't want to be orgasmic on stage. 

[rc]

What it is with Mozart is that I get a clear idea of exactly what would be ideal for the piece, and because the ideal is so clear it's very difficult for me to pull it off to the right effect.  Any little dynamic flaw ruins the expression (to me anyways).  It really IS about the economy of notes in the composition.

My teacher is the same with me - I tend to the more conservative side while he's pushing me to add more juicyness.  I prefer the more subtle expression, that the music doesn't need so much accentuation, it speaks for itself...  But I wonder about the effect on a listener, maybe the extra 'romanticism' is useful to make an impact on the listner.  I'm undecided on this.

edit:  Oh I forgot to answer the question - no I'm not entirely happy with my Mozart.  I'd call it 'acceptable' but not good.

[thaicheow]

HI, all,

I really happy to see so many people discussing about Mozart.

I think it is not a well nor fair to compare Mozart with, Beethovan, Rach, Liszt, or Chopin, or other great composers. These composers' great work has the difficulty in itself.

I have been loving Mozart music since I was kids. My brother played  a lot of Mozart and Hadyn, and gosh, how well he can play.

I myself struggle through a Mozart's sonata for my grade 8 exam. At that time, we have to do the whole 3 movements. Definitely, then I wasn't facilitated to play Mozart well. My teacher and friends actually suggested me to stop playing his music after I barely passed the exam.

I still do Mozart. I just finish a ATCL with Mozart's sonata K 311 as part of my programme. Strictly speaking, it took me almost more than two years (I am counting the time since I start learning this sonata) to come a rather satisfactory state. I am still playing this sonata, while currently learning other music.

I think one of my friend is right. Mozart does sound easy. I suppose this is the way a true genius look things, which is very different from how a normal people do. I suppose to Mozart, certain passage is just "easy" for him, but actually is difficult to others. The true genius about him is that he can insert such a rich statement, sophisticated expression, depth, in just a seemingly simple passage. Simple arpeggios, running notes, just as one thinks that he has exhaustedly exploit a theme, he surprise you again with the same theme with more twists and turns.

I am currently doing Mozart's K310 and Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody no 6. I keep coming back to mozart. Liszt though technically difficult, but there's lack of depth and insight in his music. He lack of talent, like Mozart, Beethovan, or even his peers like Chopin, in developing a theme, especially those musical theme by himself. What he can do is by pouring more technically hurdles to the players, by adding octave, thicker chords, blazing speed etc. However, I feel refreshing every time I do the same songs by Mozart. Each time with different experience, new insight, even though it is a passage I have been doing for years.

I know a lot of here don't like Mozart. But as one grow older, one starts to appreciate more on this kind of music.

[ramibarniv]

Yes, I do.
You can listen/watch here:

Best wishes,
Rami (who's giving a concert and master class in the DC area Feb 24-25)
rrpcrrpc@yahoo.com
https://ramisrhapsody.tripod.com/

[cygnusdei]

Yes, I do.
You can listen/watch here:

Best wishes,
Rami (who's giving a concert and master class in the DC area Feb 24-25)
rrpcrrpc@yahoo.com
https://ramisrhapsody.tripod.com/

These are a fine display of sensitive touch and grasp of Mozart's musical idiom. That said, the smorzandos are probably unwarranted, some articulations are inconsistent, and pedaling could be more discreet. Another thing that bugs me is the bench position: it is extremely low compared to what I'm used too.