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In the pursuit of developing expressive music performance models using artificial intelligence, this paper introduces DExter, a new approach leveraging diffusion probabilistic models to render Western classical piano performances. The main challenge faced in performance rendering tasks is the continuous and sequential modeling of expressive timing and dynamics over time, which is critical for capturing the evolving nuances that characterize live musical performances. In this approach, performance parameters are represented in a continuous expression space, and a diffusion model is trained to predict these continuous parameters while being conditioned on a musical score. Furthermore, DExter also enables the generation of interpretations (expressive variations of a performance) guided by perceptually meaningful features by being jointly conditioned on score and perceptual-feature representations. Consequently, we find that our model is useful for learning expressive performance, generating perceptually steered performances, and transferring performance styles. We assess the model through quantitative and qualitative analyses, focusing on specific performance metrics regarding dimensions like asynchrony and articulation, as well as through listening tests that compare generated performances with different human interpretations. The results show that DExter is able to capture the time-varying correlation of the expressive parameters, and it compares well to existing rendering models in subjectively evaluated ratings. The perceptual-feature-conditioned generation and transferring capabilities of DExter are verified via a proxy model predicting perceptual characteristics of differently steered performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with Parkinson's disease often show deficits in dexterity, which, in turn, can lead to limitations in performing activities of daily life. Previous studies have suggested that training in playing the piano may improve or prevent a decline in dexterity in this population. In this pilot study, we tested three participants on a six-week, custom, piano-based training protocol, and quantified dexterity before and after the intervention using a sensor-enabled version of the nine-hole peg test, the box and block test, a test of finger synergies using unidimensional force sensors, and the Quantitative Digitography test using a digital piano, as well as selected relevant items from the motor parts of the MDS-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) and the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) quality of life questionnaire. The participants showed improved dexterity following the training program in several of the measures used. This pilot study proposes measures that can track changes in dexterity as a result of practice in people with Parkinson's disease and describes a potential protocol that needs to be tested in a larger cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The thalamus is the integrative hub of the brain with reciprocal connections throughout the cortex. This case report describes a right-handed 81-year-old male patient who experienced sudden onset cognitive impairment following a focal left anterior thalamic infarct. Methods With consent/assent, the patient was seen for a short neuropsychological assessment 6 weeks post stroke. Neuropsychological assessment included review of medical history, collateral intake, the Toronto Cognitive Assessment, Frontal Systems Behavior Scale-Family Rating Form, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire, and piano performance. Results The assessment revealed impaired performance on measures of orientation, memory, executive function, and language, as well as symptoms including hallucinations, apathy, and hypersomnolence, consistent with thalamic dementia. Remarkably, in this context, the patient maintained an ability to play piano and read music. Conclusions The case has implications for understanding the complex integrative functions of the thalamus, including how profound impairment can simultaneously present with cognitive strengths that may not be captured by performance on neuropsychological testing. This case also suggests that magnetic resonance imaging may be indicated in cases presenting with vascular risk factors and sudden onset cognitive impairment, given that computed tomography may not be sensitive to small subcortical infarcts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to find details about an excellent Spanish pianist from the beginning of the 20th century who starred when she was a little child: her name was Maria Vallès. Not many news are known about her brief biography since she had a short life and little could develop and become known as a pianist. Through a research work some press articles from the first decades of the 20th century were found, which highlight the excellence of her piano performances in Spain. The aim of this research is to analyze the pedagogical codes for the training of a musical talent in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the feminine cultural codes against a female prodigy artist, on the axis of Maria Vallès. This research was carried out according to the type of document analysis, which is one of the qualitative research types. Evidence documents regarding the prodigy phenomenon of the Spanish pianist were found. She played concerts basically in Catalonia, where she moved with her family when she was a little child. It should be also noted that she studied with one of the most prestigious pedagogues of the time, Molinari. He was her mentor and the one who introduced her to the Catalan cultural and musical life of the twenties, making her known among her peers who were also pedagogues and musicologists and the public attending her concerts. This research includes some codes for practitioners and pedagogues for the development of piano talent, in the example of Spanish pianist Maria Vallès, who was a prodigy child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which information dominates in evaluating performance in music? Both experts and laypeople consistently report believing that sound should be the most important domain when judging music competitions, but experimental studies of Western participants rating video-only vs. audio-only versions of 6-second excerpts of Western classical performances have shown that in at least some cases visual information can play a stronger role. However, whether this phenomenon applies generally to music competitions or is restricted to specific repertoires or contexts is disputed. In this Registered Report, we focus on testing the generalizability of sight vs. sound effects by replicating previous studies of classical piano competitions with Japanese participants, while also expanding the same paradigm using new examples from competitions of a traditional Japanese folk musical instrument: the Tsugaru shamisen. For both classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen, we ask participants to choose the winner between the 1stand 2nd-placing performers in 5 competitions and the 1st-place and low-ranking performers in 5 competitions (i.e., 40 performers total from 10 piano and 10 shamisen competitions). We tested the following three predictions twice each (once for piano and once for shamisen): 1) an interaction was predicted between domain (video-only vs. audio-only) and variance in quality (choosing between 1st and 2nd place vs. choosing between 1st and low-placing performers); 2) visuals were predicted to trump sound when variation in quality is low (1st vs. 2nd place); and 3) sound was predicted to trump visuals when variation in quality is high (1st vs. low-placing). Our experiments (n = 155 participants) confirmed our first predicted interaction between audio/visual domain and relative performer quality for both piano and shamisen conditions, suggesting that this interaction is cross-culturally general. In contrast, the second prediction was only supported for the piano stimuli and the third prediction was only supported for the shamisen condition, suggesting culturally dependent factors in the specific balance between sight and sound in the judgment of musical performance. Our results resolve discrepancies and debates from previous sight-vs-sound studies by replicating and extending them to include non-Western participants and musical traditions. Our findings may also have practical applications to evaluation criteria for performers, judges, and organizers of competitions, concerts, and auditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to determine if hues overlayed on a video recording of a piano performance would systematically influence perception of its emotional arousal level. The hues were artificially added to a series of four short video excerpts of different performances using video editing software. Over two experiments 106 participants were sorted into 4 conditions, with each viewing different combinations of musical excerpts (two excerpts with nominally high arousal and two excerpts with nominally low arousal) and hue (red or blue) combinations. Participants rated the emotional arousal depicted by each excerpt. Results indicated that the overall arousal ratings were consistent with the nominal arousal of the selected excerpts. However, hues added to video produced no significant effect on arousal ratings, contrary to predictions. This could be due to the domination of the combined effects of other channels of information (e.g., the music and player movement) over the emotional effects of the hypothesized influence of hue on perceived performance (red expected to enhance and blue to reduce arousal of the performance). To our knowledge this is the first study to investigate the impact of these hues upon perceived arousal of music performance, and has implications for musical performers and stage lighting. Further research that investigates reactions during live performance and manipulation of a wider range of lighting hues, saturation and brightness levels, and editing techniques, is recommended to further scrutinize the veracity of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anton Herzberg (1825-?) was sufficiently noted in his day to be included in the chronological table of famous pianists in Famous Pianists of To-day and Yesterday: Illustrated. He shares 1825 with Schulhoff and Charles Wehle (both born in Prague), and with Moritz Strakosch (born Lemburg/Lviv), all of them Jewish. There are good reasons to believe that Herzberg2 is Jewish as well. The basic details of Herzberg's early career are well established in the numerous brief biographies published between 1871, when he appears in the Kleines musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon of Julius Schuberth: Herzberg Ant, born June 4, 1825, in Tarnow, studied piano with Bocklet and theory with Preyer in Vienna; then went to Poland, Hungary, toured southern Russia, and has settled in Moscow as teacher since 1866. Then once more successfully toured Germany and France. He has published many piano pieces which show a routine approach. Virtually all other encyclopedias agree on Schuberth's details for Herzberg: (1) born in Tarnow on June 4, 1825; (2) studies with Bocklet (piano) and Preyer (theory, composition) in Vienna; (3) tours of Poland, Hungary, Russia; (4) settles in Moscow, 1866; and (5) subsequent tour of Germany and France in 1868. The article traces the details of Herzberg's career and provides an annotated list of works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Haidé: Estudis Maragallians is the property of Biblioteca de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Anadolu University Journal of Art & Design / Sanat & Tasarım is the property of Anadolu University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Virtual reality (VR) brings radical new possibilities to the empirical study of social music cognition and interaction. In the present article, we consider the role of VR as a research tool, based on its potential to create a sense of "social presence": the illusory feeling of being, and socially interacting, inside a virtual environment. This makes VR promising for bridging ecological validity ("research in the wild") and experimental control ("research in the lab") in empirical music research. A critical assumption however is the actual ability of VR to simulate real-life social interactions, either via human-embodied avatars or computer-controlled agents. The mediation of social musical interactions via VR is particularly challenging due to their embodied, complex, and emotionally delicate nature. In this article, we introduce a methodological framework to operationalize social presence by a combination of factors across interrelated layers, relating to the performance output, embodied co-regulation, and subjective experiences. This framework provides the basis for the proposal of a pragmatic approach to determine the level of social presence in virtual musical interactions, by comparing the outcomes across the multiple layers with the outcomes of corresponding real-life musical interactions. We applied and tested this pragmatic approach via a case-study of piano duet performances of the piece Piano Phase composed by Steve Reich. This case-study indicated that a piano duet performed in VR, in which the real-time interaction between pianists is mediated by embodied avatars, might lead to a strong feeling of social presence, as reflected in the measures of performance output, embodied co-regulation, and subjective experience. In contrast, although a piano duet in VR between an actual pianist and a computer-controlled agent led to a relatively successful performance output, it was inadequate in terms of both embodied co-regulation and subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to provide information about the physical problems/injuries that pianists in particular and instrumentalists, in general, can experience at any time in their career and how they should cope with these problems. The data of the research were obtained from the studies obtained as a result of the searches made in the Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center and Google Academic databases using various keywords about physical ailments encountered in pianists. The obtained data were determined from the perspectives of music-piano and physiology and subjected to descriptive analysis. As a result of the research, it was stated that musicians are exposed to many occupational stresses and dangers that can cause many health problems. Musicians' health problems, performance- related risk factors, and diseases differ according to their individual performance characteristics, the style of music they make, and the special instruments they play. The disabilities that pianists may encounter frequently are overuse syndrome, entrapment neuropathy, and focal dystonia. In addition to these, another most common ailment occurs as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Turkish Educational Sciences is the property of Journal of Turkish Educational Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Without any intention of comprehensiveness, this research discusses a few of the directions where the relationship between music and painting manifested itself at the beginning of the 20th century, with special reference to the works of Wassily Kandinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. During their epoch of creation, they witnessed the incessant tension between classic and modern, old and new, between tradition and innovation, but one could notice their aspiration towards an impersonal and conventional music, towards rationalism, objectivity and constructivism. Both of these artists, endowed with "dual artistic gifts", are supporters of Modernism and share the passion for artistic unity. The simultaneous discovery of the atonal music for Schoenberg and of the abstract art for Kandinsky is revealed through their long lasting friendship. While Schoenberg painted, exploring with self-portrait and exposing his works together with famous painters, Kandinsky, fascinated with the emotional power of music, played the cello and the piano as a talented musician, seeking the analogies between colour and sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mirror neurons (MNs) activate when performing an action and when an observer witnesses the same action performed by another individual. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and presentation of motion captured piano performances were used to identify differences in MN activation for musicians/non-musicians when viewing piano pieces played in a "Correct" mode (i.e., emphasis on technical correctness) or an "Enjoyment" mode (i.e., simply told to "enjoy" playing the piece). Results showed greater MN activation in a variety of brain regions for musicians, with these differences more pronounced in the "Enjoyment" mode. Our findings suggest that activation of MNs is not only initiated by the imagined action of an observed movement, but such activation is modulated by the level of musical expertise and knowledge of associated motor movements that the observer brings to the viewing situation. Enhanced MN activation in musicians may stem from imagining themselves actually playing the observed piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dexterous object manipulation in skilful behaviours such as surgery, craft making, and musical performance involves fast, precise, and efficient control of force with the fingers. A challenge in playing musical instruments is the requirement of independent control of the magnitude and rate of force production, which typically vary in relation to loudness and tempo. However, it is unknown how expert musicians skilfully control finger force to elicit tones with a wide range of loudness and tempi. Here, we addressed this issue by comparing the variation of spatiotemporal characteristics of force during repetitive and simultaneous piano keystrokes in relation to the loudness and tempo between pianists and musically untrained individuals. While the peak key-descending velocity varied with loudness but not with tempo in both groups, the peak and impulse of the key-depressing force were smaller in pianists than in the non-musicians, specifically when eliciting loud tones, suggesting superior energetic efficiency in the trained individuals. The key-depressing force was more consistent across strikes in pianists than in the non-musicians at all loudness levels but only at slow tempi, confirming expertise-dependency of precise force control. A regression analysis demonstrated that individual differences in the keystroke rates when playing at the fastest tempo across the trained pianists were negatively associated with the force impulse during the key depression but not with the peak force only at the loudest tone. This suggests that rapid reductions of force following the key depression plays a role in considerably fast performance of repetitive piano keystrokes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to determine the anxiety of prospective music teachers (N = 129) during piano exams and to examine the effects of peer and self-assessments on anxiety and exam achievement of individuals with high performance and test anxiety (n = 5). Female students were more anxious compared to males, students of the fourth class were the most anxious, and students who had graduated from fine arts high schools had lower anxiety levels. There was a positive and significant relation between test anxiety and music performance anxiety. No significant relation was determined between piano course achievement scores and test or performance anxiety. Despite awareness of coping recommendations, students with high levels of anxiety experienced anxiety that could influence performance during exams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Статья посвящена анализу роли информационных ресурсов, технологий и возможностей интернета в учебном процессе работы над музыкальным произведением в классе фортепиано, способствующих наиболее полному и разностороннему охвату материала и адекватному прочтению авторского текста студентами, педагогами и молодыми исполнителями. Отмечается усиление интереса к фортепианному наследию Дебюсси, исполнению и записи на диски ранее не столь популярных его произведений: Двенадцати этюдов и 13-го этюда, информация о котором стала доступна широкой аудитории в настоящее время благодаря развитию современных технологий. Отмечается также множественность интерпретаций, доступных в записи, и открывающиеся в этой связи возможности для развития творческой фантазии и аналитических способностей учащихся. Прослушивание записей пианистов, относящихся к разным исполнительским стилям, играющим одно и то же произведение, позволяет найти то общее, что характерно для интерпретации данной музыки. Приводится пример исследовательской работы музыковедов по анализу авторского исполнения Дебюсси, приведшей к корректировке печатного нотного текста и, как следствие, изменению традиции исполнения пианистами Прелюдии Дебюсси «Затонувший собор». В статье особо освещается, какому этапу работы над музыкальным произведением соответствуют какие возможности использования мультимедиа или библиотечных ресурсов.

This paper reports a preliminary study based on the theoretical assumption that continuous closed-loop audio-motor control could be disadvantageous for pianists. It is argued that the functional relationship between the intracerebral electrical activations in the auditory and premotor cortex should be rhythmically decreased and increased. To test this hypothesis, intracerebral electrical activations for the auditory and premotor cortex were estimated using scalp EEG and standardized low-resolution electrical tomography (sLORETA). The extracted times series were subjected to a Granger causality analysis, revealing a causal relationship from the auditory cortex to the premotor cortex that was considerably stronger during piano playing and weaker during rest. Importantly, this relationship varied rhythmically during the course of piano playing, with lags (obtained with cross-correlations) between 666 ms and 820 milliseconds. This study thus delivers evidence that the functional coupling between the auditory and premotor cortex varies during piano playing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The affinity with the piano which pervades André Gide's Journal is less apparent in his fiction, for characters who play the piano are few. Comparing references to the piano across his various writings can, however, offer an illuminating commentary on the symbiosis between music and the act of writing which is suggested by Gide's approach to these disciplines. Like the act of writing itself, his preference for private practice over performance or attending concerts points to a desire for a solitary creative command of the artistic material. Simultaneously a source of rigorous discipline, absorbing distraction and inspirational expression, Gide's self-indulgent piano-playing was in continuous yet ambivalent partnership with his writing. Gide's writer and musician figures, so often used to explore his personal ideas, enrich our understanding of these creative disciplines: he endows some with his views, constructs in others an antithetical stance, and uses characters to exemplify his criticism of these two art forms, their interpretation and reception. Gide expressed an ambivalence towards artistic success measured by popularity. His criticism of virtuoso pianists and passive audiences, both fictional and real, parallels that pertaining to authors of popular fiction and their mediocre readers. Whilst musical and literary characters in Gide's fiction often share his views in principle, they prove unable to sustain the same commitment or to nourish the same symbiosis between these art forms. Rather than seeking to resolve the counterpoint between music and writing which pervaded his life, Gide delights in perpetuating this ‘dissonant harmony’ in his œuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Expression in musical performance is largely communicated by the manner in which a piece is played; interpretive aspects that supplement the written score. In piano performance, timing and amplitude are the principal parameters the performer can vary. We examined the way in which such variation serves to communicate emotion by manipulating timing and amplitude in performances of classical piano pieces. Over three experiments, listeners rated the emotional expressivity of performances and their manipulated versions. In Experiments 1 and 2, timing and amplitude information were covaried; judgments were monotonically decreasing with performance variability, demonstrating that the rank ordering of acoustical manipulations was captured by participants responses. Further, participants' judgments formed an S-shaped (sigmoidal) function in which greater sensitivity was seen for musical manipulations in the middle of the range than at the extremes. In Experiment 3, timing and amplitude were manipulated independently; timing variation was found to provide more expressive information than did amplitude. Across all three experiments, listeners demonstrated sensitivity to the expressive cues we manipulated, with sensitivity increasing as a function of musical experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to elucidate the role of auditory feedback derived from one keystroke in the control of the rhythmicity and velocity of successive keystrokes during piano playing. We examined the effects of transient auditory perturbations with respect to the pitch, loudness, and timing of one tone on subsequent keystrokes while six pianists played short excerpts from three simple musical pieces having different tempi (“event rates”). Immediately after a delay in tone production, the inter-keystroke interval became shorter. This compensatory action depended on the tempo, being most prominent at the medium tempo. This indicates that temporal information provided by auditory feedback is utilized to regulate the timing of movement elements produced in a sequence. We also found that the keystroke velocity changed after the timing, pitch, or loudness of a tone was altered, although the response differed depending on the type of perturbation. While delaying the timing or altering the pitch led to an increase in the velocity, altering the loudness changed the velocity in an inconsistent manner. Furthermore, perturbing a tone elicited by the right hand also affected the rhythmicity and velocity of keystrokes with the left hand, indicating that bimanual coordination of tone production was maintained. Finally, altering the pitch sometimes resulted in striking an incorrect key, mostly in the slow piece, emphasizing the importance of pitch information for accurate planning and execution of sequential piano keystrokes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we show a novel application of string kernels: that is to the problem of recognising famous pianists from their style of playing. The characteristics of performers playing the same piece are obtained from changes in beat-level tempo and beat-level loudness, which over the time of the piece form a performance worm. From such worms, general performance alphabets can be derived, and pianists' performances can then be represented as strings. We show that when using the string kernel on this data, both kernel partial least squares and Support Vector Machines outperform the current best results. Furthermore we suggest a new method of obtaining feature directions from the Kernel Partial Least Squares algorithm and show that this can deliver better performance than methods previously used in the literature when used in conjunction with a Support Vector Machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic searches were performed to investigate the evolution of one-handed piano compositions and one-handed music techniques, and to identify individuals responsible for the development of music meant for playing with one hand. Particularly, composers such as Liszt, Ravel, Scriabin, and Prokofiev established a new model in music by writing works to meet the demands of a variety of pianist-amputees that included Count Géza Zichy (1849–1924), Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961), and Siegfried Rapp (b. 1915). Zichy was the first to amplify the scope of the repertoire to improve the variety of one-handed music; Wittgenstein developed and adapted specific and novel performance techniques to accommodate one-handedness; and Rapp sought to promote the stature of one-handed pianists among a musically sophisticated public able to appreciate the nuances of such maestros. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Learning a musical piece requires the development of a strong linkage between sensory and motor representations. Audition plays a central role and a tight cortical auditory–motor corepresentation is a characteristic feature of music processing. Recent works have indicated the establishment of a functional connection between auditory and motor cortices during the learning of a novel piece, although no causal relation has yet been demonstrated. Here transcranial magnetic stimulation of the cortical motor representation involved in musical performance was used to test excitability changes in piano players during auditory presentation of a rehearsed and a non-rehearsed piece. Results showed an increased motor excitability for the rehearsed but not for the non-rehearsed piece. Moreover, we observed an increase of excitability over time as intracortical facilitation was already present after 30 min of training whereas cortico-spinal facilitation increased after a longer training period (5 days). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lip reading is known to activate the planum temporale (PT), a brain region which may integrate visual and auditory information. To find out whether other types of learned audio-visual integration occur in the PT, we investigated “key-touch reading” using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As well-trained pianists are able to identify pieces of music by watching the key-touching movements of the hands, we hypothesised that the visual information of observed sequential finger movements is transformed into the auditory modality during “key-touch reading” as is the case during lip reading. We therefore predicted activation of the PT during key-touch reading. Twenty-six healthy right-handed volunteers were recruited for fMRI. Of these, 7 subjects had never experienced piano training (naïve group), 10 had a little experience of piano playing (less trained group), and the remaining 9 had been trained for more than 8 years (well trained group). During task periods, subjects were required to view the bimanual hand movements of a piano player making key presses. During control periods, subjects viewed the same hands sliding from side to side without tapping movements of the fingers. No sound was provided. Sequences of key presses during task periods consisted of pieces of familiar music, unfamiliar music, or random sequences. Well-trained subjects were able to identify the familiar music, whereas less-trained subjects were not. The left PT of the well-trained subjects was equally activated by observation of familiar music, unfamiliar music, and random sequences. The naïve and less trained groups did not show activation of the left PT during any of the tasks. These results suggest that PT activation reflects a learned process. As the activation was elicited by viewing key pressing actions regardless of whether they constituted a piece of music, the PT may be involved in processes that occur prior to the identification of a piece of music, that is, mapping the complex sequence structure of hand movements onto the sequence of sounds. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Provides various information related to music. Fair market value lease program for Steinway Vertical and Boston Upright pianos; Agreement of Carl Fischer company to represent and distribute the Ries & Erler catalog in North America; Details on the Guinness World Record set by Kawai piano players for the largest synchronized piano performance.

This systematic review aimed to evaluate whether muscle activity and playing-related musculoskeletal disorders are associated with musicians' anthropometrics and their instrument size or set-up during violin and piano performance. Studies were retrieved systematically from six databases on 1 April 2019 combined with hand searching results. The Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS tool) was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the included papers. A total of twenty articles were identified. Most included studies focussed on either the adjustment of the shoulder rest in violinists, or the hand size in pianists. However, methodological quality was inconsistent. The electromyography data reported by the included studies were not appropriately processed and interpreted. Studies generally reported the use of a shoulder rest changes muscle activity and smaller hand size is correlated to increased playing-related musculoskeletal disorders incidence. However, no conclusions can be drawn due to heterogeneity and low quality of methodology in the available literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offers information on two music competitions to be held in 2006. Corpus Christi International Competition; International Adilia Alieva Piano Competition.