Please, come home and practice the piano

Chapter 1137 397 Playing the Game with Mom [6]

Chapter 1137 397. Playing the game with my mother [Sixteen]

From curiosity to anticipation, from appreciation to love.

Contestant No. 01 on the stage did not know that he had gained a large number of fans from piano classroom No. .

Wiping the sweat from her palms, she adjusted her breathing, raised her left hand and played the next piece.

【Mazurkas, Op. 17:No. 4 in A Minor - Chopin】

"Ding-Ding-"

Chopin marked the last four bars of the introduction as being played softly, very softly, and the carriage was also played in the same way, very softly, very softly.

It's about speed. I can't say it's offensive, I can only say that at this moment more than half of the judges felt like they had been slapped in the face.

Novak is one of them.

The young man Mao had just finished scoring the results for contestant No. 01 when he came up and got hit.

However, Alex, the old Polish man sitting in front of Novak, seemed to nod.

The first moment the right-hand image appeared in the music, Novak seemed to recall something.

In just five seconds, he was slapped in the face twice.
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As the piano music sounded again, the speed at which information scrolled on the public screen slowed down.

Back to the competition, even the audience who had never heard this piece of music before almost memorized the previous tune.

Because this Mazurka is an officially designated compulsory piece, each of the eight contestants who have finished the competition has played it.

As for some professionals, they hope that the car can bring something different to everyone in this song.

Among these professionals is Lao Tang.

Lao Tang was not complaining, he was simply expressing his true feelings in his heart.

To paraphrase what a friend said on the public screen just now: This is not listening to the Mazurka in eight different ways, it is clearly listening to the Mazurka in one way eight times.

Lao Tang also felt the same way. The contestants who had already played, including Sun Wenjun and He Jiaming, also seemed too conservative in their handling of the Mazurka.

Lao Tang can understand this.

This is a normal game strategy.

If this competition is likened to an art exam, then this Mazurka is equivalent to the music theory test in the art exam.

What does this mean? If you take the music arts exam, you must also take the music theory exam.

And every art student takes the same music theory test paper.

It's not like taking a professional exam. You can choose the Black Key Etude, I can choose the Revolutionary Etude, and he can choose the Winter Wind Etude.

There is no choice in the music theory exam, it’s just this paper, with exactly the same questions, and everyone does it together.

Just like this Mazurka in A minor, every contestant has to play it.

As for why the official designated music genre for the competition is Mazurka rather than waltz or nocturne, this involves the issue of establishing and exporting cultural images between countries.

Because the status of Mazurka in Poland is roughly equivalent to that of Peking Opera in China.

No matter how much the French promote Chopin's half-French ancestry, it cannot change the status of the Paris Crazy Horse Show in France.

So if you want to come to Warsaw to participate in the global finals, no matter which country you are a genius from, you must play a designated Mazurka.

Actually, this is a bit embarrassing.

So what do you say?
Saying that nocturnes are not suitable for children to play is only from the perspective of understanding the emotions of music, not to say that children cannot play nocturnes.

This Mazurka is really amazing. It is not easy for adults to play it, let alone children. Even if you fully understand the piece, it is still difficult to play it well.

Its difficulty is like asking a Frenchman to play Yellow River or a Pole to sing Peking opera.

The rhythm of its music is so random that it is difficult for us foreigners to control it.

Just now, when contestant No. 7 was playing Mazurka, Mu Xin told everyone a story about her and Mazurka.
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In the second year of arriving in Vienna, one day Mu Xin’s professor, who was also a senior professor at the academy, was a Russian.

The old Russian arranged a mazurka for Mu Xin and demonstrated it to him.

A week later, Mu Xin came to class again. She swore that she practiced according to the professor's demonstration. However, after listening to her performance, the professor said it was wrong.

The professor demonstrated it to Mu Xin again in person. Mu Xin was dumbfounded when she heard it. This was not the way the professor played it when he taught her to play it last week. She had a recorder!
As a result, she tactfully expressed her doubts to the professor, who just smiled and told her to get used to it, and said to her: This is how my Polish teacher taught me to play Mazurka.

So this is the Mazurka, just follow your mood and play it however you like?
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Mu Xin is right. For the Poles, Mazurka is just like this.

Play it however you want.

But the problem is that the Polish people have this thing in their blood, and no matter how they play it, it will always remain essentially the same.

Or they are old guys who have thoroughly understood music, such as Mu Xin, the great professor in Vienna, who can play it almost all the time.

But what about our young contestants? They can’t just give up participating in the competition because they have to play a mazurka, right?
Of course not.

Our professors are all excellent teachers who lead teams in international competitions and have rich experience in leading students to participate in international competitions.

It's just a small mazurka, copy it!
That’s right, it’s copying!

How to copy?
Copy it.

Whose copy?

First, pull out the list of judges for this competition and find the key people.

I searched and searched and searched, and now I found it—

He is Alex Simon Serkiak!

As the artistic director of the China Small Xiao Competition Finals and International Trials, Alex has served as the chairman of the jury for the Big Xiao Competition for two consecutive years.

He is a thorough Chopin scholar and has recorded a complete collection of Chopin's works, which has been well received.

Then you can't go wrong by copying him.

With a template to copy, the rest is easy.

Because we have the most technically skilled piano students in the world.

It's neither a joke nor a meme. Most of the Mazurkas performed by the contestants in Group C were based on the versions by Alex and Novak.

It is worth mentioning here that Novak was originally Alex's student.

Alex's version is a standard answer for the contestants.

It’s as standard as the reference answers on a music theory test paper.

Friends who have taken art exams know that music theory is the basis of the total score.

It would be extremely unfortunate if there was a gap in music theory.

The answer is right there. It doesn't matter if you can't hear the auditory changes that occur when a triad is inverted. You just need to know what the inversion of a triad is to get this score.

Therefore, many art exam candidates do not actually know much about chord and modulation knowledge, but this does not affect their ability to achieve good results in music theory exams.

It’s just like today’s young contestants don’t have to really understand what kind of dance a Mazurka should be, but they can play it somewhat similarly.

The young contestants should thank their teachers because their teachers are responsible enough to provide them with a smart solution in order to help them achieve good results.

however.

Not all teachers are so responsible.

There was still a little over a week before the competition started. Grandpa Wei was waiting for his granddaughter to finish class on the first floor. During that time, he listened to contestant No. 01 practicing nocturne and mazurka in the piano exhibition hall.

Mr. Wei listened for a while and then asked when the car was resting.

Sure enough, Xiaoche said that the teacher hadn't finished the Mazurka for her yet. The competition was about to start, but the music hadn't been finished yet?

Mr. Wei will have to have a serious talk with Li An.

After listening to Li Ang's explanation, Mr. Wei didn't say anything else.

Ang Lee also wants the car to achieve good results!

Who said Ang Lee doesn’t want to!

But he himself didn't even fully understand how to play the Mazurka, so what could he hand over to Xiaoche?

Those are the things on the score. Just practice them yourself and he will just give a brief explanation at the end.

In fact, Ang Lee also handled it in the same way. In the competition preparation plan that Ang Lee made for Xiao Che, he put the Mazurka at the end and let Xiao Che practice it.

Because Xiao Che has limited time and energy, he hopes that Xiao Che can practice more songs that have room for improvement in his limited time and energy.

Who can have a perfect plan? No one can do it. We can only analyze it according to the specific situation.

Of course, Ang Lee is not that irresponsible.

He had discussed a lot about Mazurka with Xiaoche.

During the summer camp, the children's activity on the fourth morning was to learn the Mazurka dance, and Boss X also asked the children to write a learning experience.

Xiaoche practiced very seriously at the time and wrote a full page about his experience. The difference between him and other students who wrote a full page was that Xiaoche did not look up any information during the whole process.

I have truly written down my understanding and feelings from the perspective of my own learning.

This was also the key point that enabled the teacher and student to have an in-depth discussion in their later exchanges.

If Xiaoche doesn't have a personal experience, then no matter how much Ang Lee says, it will be meaningless.

So since it is a dance, just as Lao Tang introduced it to everyone in the live broadcast room at the beginning, how should he dance it?

How to dance the Mazurka?

First of all, it is a collective stage, which Xiaoche deeply experienced during the summer camp.

Secondly, male dancers take the lead in deciding the intensity and speed of the dance steps.

The female dancers need to cooperate with the male dancers.

Finally, there is a dance with a minimum number of two people, and the dance steps are mainly in the form of sliding, heel-to-heel, double rotation, etc.

"The key point is that the male dancers are the main ones, and the female dancers are the auxiliary ones."

In fact, you can find many videos of Mazurka dance on the Internet, but they just look so-so.

Maybe this thing really is not in the blood. In the end, in order to help Xiao Che find a more realistic sense of picture, Ang Lee found something in a literary work that might be able to help Xiao Che.

He recommended a novel excerpt for Ran Xiaoche.

The excerpt is from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

In old Tor's writing, Anna was dressed in a black evening dress, outshining all the other beauties, and the song she danced with Vronsky was Mazurka.

In the upper class society of Russia at that time, Mazurka was also the most solemn dance.

According to custom, everyone must dance waltz and other similar dances before dancing the Mazurka.

Therefore, everyone who attends the dance will reserve this dance for their sweetheart.

As a result, at this ball, a woman named Kitty rejected five men in a row just to dance this mazurka with Vronsky.

Lin could only say OMG, it really made her feel a little suffocated, just like the feeling when she first heard this song, it made her feel a little breathless.

After sitting down for some reading comprehension, Xiaoche certainly gained something, and the gain was huge.

Because it was the process of the teacher interpreting the Mazurka for her again that gave her new ideas on how to play it.

If this is destined to be a piece that cannot be danced solo, then wouldn't it be fine to just play it as if two people were dancing together?
In this piece, the left hand has a very heavy bass and controls the speed and rhythm, so just think of the left hand as a male dancer.

The female dancer is naturally the right hand.

During the practice, she found that she played more and more smoothly. She asked her teacher to listen. The teacher just told her some priorities and then said the same thing: just play however you think is best.

After playing for Master and Uncle Fang, Xiao Che became more convinced that there was no problem in playing it this way.

Because when she answered Uncle Fang's questions, the context of the piece became clearer in her mind.

Who is the hand that is suffocating her? Her right hand.

Why can't the right hand breathe? Because it has been chasing the left hand.

So in the four-bar introduction for the left hand at the beginning of the music, she chose to let the left hand dance faster, preferably faster, so fast that the right hand could not find the opportunity to join the dance.

But this is a duet, and the right hand must join in.

So when the right-hand melody sounded, Novak heard an extreme dissonance, as if the right hand missed the beat and snatched the beat from the left hand.

But in the next moment when the right hand took the beat, the left hand completed a silky slowing down, just like the male dancer completing a perfect slide, rebalancing the speed of this duet.

The moment that amazed Novak happened at this moment. Player No. 01 created a full musical image as soon as the music theme appeared, just like a magic trick, and also completed a clever change of speed in the process.

Isn't this Chopin's free tempo?
Then the music changes speed again and again in the lingering pursuit of each other, completing heel touches, double rotations, and so on.

However, the development of the music is always at the accompaniment speed dominated by the left hand, and the right-hand melody is almost out of breath.

It’s like the female dancer can never catch up with the male dancer and can only spin and jump around the male dancer continuously.

The extremely suppressed emotions were about to overflow from the music. At this moment, the left hand on the keyboard suddenly got stuck, as if it stumbled.

But unfortunately, the right hand still did not keep up.

The music now comes to an end and returns to the introduction at the beginning.

It’s still the same four bars that repeat.

But this time, the left hand seemed to be unable to move any faster.

Contestant No. 01 stared at her hands as she played one note at a time.

Her left hand played slower and slower, with more and more difficulty, and the stage seemed to be getting quieter and quieter.

Compared to the fast beginning, it seems that this is the opening speed that everyone is more familiar with.

But the music ends here.

Finally, in the last measure, the right hand fell uncontrollably beside the left hand.

Finally, I couldn't catch up with the speed of my left hand.

“Ding—”

A soft sound at the end.