Lang Lang's Mozart - Masterclass: Comedy, Character, and Storytelling

Pianist Noriko Ogawa says Mozart is difficult to pull off as his music "shows off every part and potential of you as a musician, your potential as a musician, how to turn trills, how soft and loud, every little thing has to be decided by the performer, that's why all musicians say Mozart is the most difficult composer to play as a performer*"

 So let's take a successful creative concert pianist, such as Lang Lang, and examine

his approach to Mozart. We'll do this by observing Lang Lang in action in a piano masterclass which took place in New Jersey in c2009 and  discover his musical thinking.  I summarise Lang Lang's main points from his masterclass videos below with clarification and elaboration.




The 'sound' of Mozart Lang Lang agrees that Mozart's music  is hard to play, especially to get the 'sound' of Mozart. What Lang Lang means is that you must have the character of Mozart's music when you play. How do we get this character, according to Lang Lang, "Mozart always goes up" with his phrases (in other words, your fingers become lighter and uplifting towards the end of a phrase), getting softer as you rise up the keyboard. Put simply, the end of the phrase is lighter. An important element is to note the music's cheerful character within the context of this piece.

Musical Storytelling
Lang Lang really brings music to life, through imaginative musical storytelling, He encourages the participants to create a story to suit the musical passage, he explains to his amused audience: "I'm lost, where I am?" "I'm in New Jersey, No wait, I'm in New York" and so forth.  By using musical imagination, one can spot certain motifs in Mozart's music and align them to emotional colours, and Lang Lang uses an example of a 'hope motif'. There are also unexpected surprises in Mozart's music, recognise those instances and convey that feeling.

 

Mozart's a lightweight?  
Ornaments, highly prevalent in baroque and classical music, here Lang Lang reminds the young pianist,
to play ornaments lightly, not so heavily in the fingers. 

Sing a Song
As we all know, Mozart wrote some great Operas, and the singing voice, is probably paramount in his composition, so therefore Lang Lang, utters the words, sing.  

Split Personality - a Comical Genius
Sing in combination with the character contrasts of a particular passage which alternates between seriousness and light heartedness, encourages Lang Lang, further adding that Mozart is ' a little bit crazy, that's why he's a genius' but not only that, a 'funny guy.' Now, Lang Lang really shows he shares Mozart's comic jest (cheek) by giving some ideas for a particular passage: perhaps Mozart is Crying, maybe he's begging for Ice cream, Vanilla, no, chocolate, No [perhaps] I don't want this [ice cream anymore].  Lang Lang brings the participant's attention to the effect Mozart conveys by alternating in rapid succession between Major Minor, Major Minor modes, perhaps, in essence playing a game.

So to conclude, let's hear Lang Lang perform Mozart's Sonata in B flat Major, K.333, 3rd Movement. Certainly from Lang Lang's facial expressions, he's definitely 'in character' with Mozart.
*Noriko Ogawa quote from Saturday Classics, BBC Radio 3, 07 April 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01fhy0q/Saturday_Classics_Noriko_Ogawa/

Tips and Analysis of Mozart's PIano Concerto 23 in A Major (K488) with further help from Lang Lang

Mozart Bust srce: (fotopedia.com)

I was asked my teacher which Piano Concerto in entirety should I learn - one of the suggestions is Mozart's Piano Concerto 23 in A Major K488. Here are some of the resources I found.

Origin of  K488 Piano Concerto in A, Plus Accompanying Sketches by Dennis Pajot. This article analyses the original manuscripts and differences of sketches as well as absence of documented first performances.  Mozart often improvised his cadenzas, so Pajot identifies an unusual written cadenza in the first movement of the autograph copy. Music histoiran, Robert Levin, suggests that the concerto was written for Mozart's favourite pupil, Barbara Ployer.

First Movement analysis by James Greeson of the themes and harmonic (chord) progressions of the exposition, development and recapitulation sections of the sonata form within the concerto. To get a broad overview of this movement read the Asiyclassical blog.

Second Movement - Adagio
Again, Asiyclassical analyses the second movement highlighting points that Adagio not only means slow but 'at ease', and watch out for the controlled disonance, in this movement where Mozart takes you from tension  to release, from 'unstability' to 'stability', an effect which Asiyclassical claims creates movement and emotion. 

Third Movement: Lang Lang's Masterclass - Articulate!
Lang Lang's masterclass on the  3rd movement of the concerto - and how to articulate and get into the character of Mozart! It features a young and talented Anna Larsen who is a beneficiary of Lang Lang's music foundation.

Index Part 2 (above)
00:00 - 01:40 Articulation
01:50 - 04:40 Character
04:50 - End    minor character; climax and swing

Overview of tips on Mozart's style and Piano Concerto's third movement from Lang Lang

• When switching from minor and major don't forget the colour change - Lang Lang describes as clouds (minor) and sunshine (major) .  
• Don't play too fast that you can't articulate the notes
• Feel the swing in some of the passages
• Know where the climax(es) are

Index Part 3

BBC's "Mad But Glad" -Pianist Nick Van Bloss, Tourette's Syndrome, and creativity!

Mad but Glad
The 2007 BBC Horizon documentary Mad But Glad explores creativity and tourette's syndrome.  It's popularly theorised that Mozart suffered from Tourette's syndrome due to his toilet humour in his letters & symptomatic uncontrollable use of profanity. Another symptom, would be uncontrollable muscular activity like a facial or vocal tic. This documentary features the pianist Nick Van Bloss who got his break from this documentary and is now a concert pianist, and  featured in International Piano magazine for his recent recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

In the course of the documentary,  a scan of of Nick's brain activity during a creative and non creative process revealed his tourette's syndrome brain showing an "endless flow of creativity" - "unstoppable" and in a sense "can't switch his creativity off."

Creative genius and the senses
Nick suffers from "low latent inhibition"; where everything is exaggerated beyond the norm; figuratively
everything on fire all the time,... sensory input is so high, it eventually overwhelms them. It was suggested in the programme that geniuses such as Picasso and Van Gogh suffered from similar mental states, and to me,  it's quite evident by Van Gogh's paintings.

There was a schizophrenic artist featured in the documentary that sees endless connections (symptomatic of schizophrenia), he is inspired by the very dissonant late Beethoven string quartets in his art. The levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine (as dopamine inhibitors are used to treat schizophrenia) demonstrate the link between creativity and schizophrenia; characterised by  loose association - capacity of a word to set off another idea and on and on.

Insight from Oliver Sachs
When talking to Oliver Sachs, Nick says he likes Bach because it has emotion behind it yet is very controlled.
Sachs discusses what may be happening with Nick's mental state: a hightening of emotion and perception, and for these to be translated into action (ideal for a pianist). He also reaffirms the role of the dopamine as regulating the flow of emotion, thought, and  perception. A fascinating documentary, perhaps some insight into  the madness that Schumann encountered! (although this is widely believed due to manic depression or even syphylis, or all the above perhaps?)

How to play Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca "Turkish March" - Piano Performance and Technique

Mozart is great for technique my previous teachers have told me. Why? Because getting good articulation in your playing requires a consistent touch and solid technique. Some of the scale runs are particularly challenging to keep the evenness whilst remaining minimal hand tension and to have a pearly lightness but yet voiced.  The last movement from the A Major K331 Piano Sonata is commonly known as Rondo alla Turca or "Turkish March". I've started relearning this piece. I played it for competitions when I was 13. I'm going to reflect on what I've learned in my lessons from this piece and share it with you! First let's look at it's influences. 

Ottoman Female musicians ( wikipedia)

Turkish Influence:  This movement is inspired by the Turkish Janissary Bands, which upon further research in Wikipedia reveal that these are Ottomon Empire Military Bands - hence the use of the term 'March'. Listen to some of the Janissary music below to get you into the flavour of the turkish inspiration.


 So we can definitely add the military character to the March section of the Rondo - the B section. This movement is so contrasting to the calm theme and variations of the first movement. In the 18th and early 19th Centuries, Turkish music was en vogue in Vienna, so much so that the fortepianos had an additional pedal which activated a drum and cymbal to give the rhythmic Turkish drumming effect. The Finchcock's keyboard museum in Kent, UK has such a piano - a Johann Fritz fortepiano dating from c1815.

Now let's hear a Swedish pianist perform this great Austrian Composer's piece with Turkish influence (how cosmopolitan!). This is one of my favourite Youtube recordings of Rondo Alla Turca performed by pianist Lars Roos, performed in Sweden. Lars also features the piece amongst his miniatures in his CD recording.


General tips for playing the Rondo Alla Turca

• Rondo form - the piece is a rondo, which means 'round' so therefore has a structure, a normal Rondo is ABACA (each letter represents a section), but in this case it's ABCBAB and so, you come round once again to ' section A' twice. If you know the structure you won't leave out a repeating section when you don't need to! I'm reminded of some Scott Joplin pieces with their repeated sections, where we must creatively think of colour changes to not make the repeats boring or played exactly the same way! 
• C Section Scale runs - to avoid rushing, use your left hand as a guide to set the tempo, let the left hand lead the right hand. 
• Articulation - watch out for the left hand articulation in the beginning, depending on edition (I'm using the Associated Board Royal Schools of Music) the second bar is slurred and the 3-4 bars aren't! 
• Focused sound - don't loose the bridge in your hand (collapsing). One of my previous teachers likened the action of a precision machine - such as a typewriter imprinting notes into the keyboard with precision, accuracy and equal spacing. 
• Play in to the key - one of my first mistakes, I was trying to be light so much that I wasn't producing a full bodied tone,  you can have a strong articulated tone yet relaxed! So play into the keybed while maintaining as relaxed hands and arms as you can.
• Harmonic progression - in the C section, there are some harmonic changes, or colour changes, F#m and C#m chords - bring out these colours. Be aware of them at least - do they have a more slightly darker contrast before the next A major scale run comes up?
• Tempo - it is marked Allegretto, so check these on your metronome. A lot of people will play the piece Allegretto Vivace (which is faster) 

Whatever you do, don't play like a robot, like the TEOTRONICO 010 

Further Resources Here are some excellent further resources that go into more detail on the Rondo Alla Turca.

1. Analysis Bar by Bay of Rondo Alla Turca (Musicteachers.co.uk)
2. Fundamentals of Piano Practice website 
3. Introduction to the Sonata K331 and the Turkish influence (Musicteachers.co.uk)

Dear Mozart...reading composers' private letters online

The Gutenburg project puts free out of copyright books in a digital format available to view online or download as an ebook (to your kindle perhaps). Books range from the works of Jane Austin, the Bible, Sun Tzu's Art of War, to Machiavelli's The Prince.

It is indeed a fabulous resource for the music scholar and student. A look at the music bookshelf of the Gutenburg project reveals many composers letters that have been translated into English.

Mozart's Signature

The following letters are available from the following composers:

• Beethoven
• Franz Liszt
• Mozart
• Haydn

Tips for your research

• Perhaps cross reference the year of the composition of the piece you are playing and look for any mentions of the piece by the composer himself.  
• If the composition was dedicated into someone in mind, are there mentions of that name? 
• What was he thinking at the time? 
• What major life events occur within the context of the piece in question?
• Is there an insight into the personality of the composer? 

This may help breathe some of his personality into your performance! Summon the presence of the composer in absentia.