Featured Instrument Piano History By Sofia Shalotenko Now, I want to introduce you to… my pianos! This is a grand piano. This is a medium-sized piano. And this is a tiny little wee piano. They all live in my house. J An Italian name Bartolommeo Cristofori (1655-1731) made the first piano approximately in 1700.  However, there were many other attempts, though Cristofori’s Piano et forte had the design of having hammers strike the strings and not remain in contact.  Cristofori’s design was first introduced to public by an article written in 1711 by Sicipione Maffei.  After that, many others followed in Cristofori’s devise like Gottfried Silbermann who revolutionized it with the discovery of the damper pedal.  The famous musician Johan Sebastian Bach was not fond of Silbermann’s pianos in the 1730’s, but in 1747 became one of his selling agents after trying out the later version. The most dramatic change to pianos happened between the years 1790-1860.  The amount of octaves changed from five to seven and one-third, pianos had a more powerful and sustained sound, high quality steel was used for strings, iron frames were produced, and it became a more strenuous job to press the keys.  The first firm to introduce more than five octaves to the piano was Broadwood, which had a strong reputation of making harpsichords.  Over time, Broadwood harpsichords grew bigger, louder, and more robustly constructed.  Two of the people Broadwood sent its pianos to were Hyden and Beethoven.   By 1820, there were already seven octaves on the average piano.  Soon after, many other companies like Viennese followed this trend. Piano making flourished during the 18th century with the Veinnese-style pianos that had wooden frames, two strings per note, and leather hammers.  Mozart, particularly liking this brand, composed many of his concertos and sonatas for these instrument.  Some of the differences between those pianos, and the ones we have today are that the older version was softer, had a clearer tone, and had less sustaining power.  We use the term fortepiano to distinguish 18th century ones to the pianos we have today. During the 1820’s in Paris, the Erard firm manufactured pianos used by Chopin and Liszt.  Sebastion Erard had also invented the double escapement action in 1821, which let players repeat notes that have not yet risen to their maximum vertical position.  After being revised by Henri Hex, the invention became public and was a standard to grand pianos as it is now.  By the 19th century, all of the necessities of a piano were built and it became how it is today. The Violin By Fedor Ouspensky I love the violin.  It is said that the violin is the hardest instrument.  I agree, but it is worth all that hard work because in the beginning you have horrible sound and in the end you get the most beautiful sound you could ever imagine!  I like the violin because it is a solo instrument and I like to be a soloist, and the voice of it is very beautiful.  The only way to learn how to play an instrument is to practice, practice, and practice.  Some of you might not know what a violin is, so let’s find out.   A violin is a string instrument made out of wood.  It has lots of parts. Isn’t this amazing?!  Look at all those parts and every single one is suppose to be hand made! (all out of wood!) How do you actually hold this confusing instrument?  Left hand goes on the fingerboard and the right hand holds the bow. Then you practice moving the bow across the strings a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (gazillion times) and Voila!!!  You are Heifetz!	Featured Composer Fritz Kreisler By Sofia Shalotenko Last year, Fedor and I played Prelude and Allegro. This piece was a lot of fun, I like it a lot. At the begining, I usually don't know much about composers whose music I play, but my Mom always asks me questions: Who is that? What country is he from? When did he live? The parents are nosy, aren't they, hehe!   It was funny because it turned out that the composer of the Prelude and Allegro--Pugnani-Kreisler--was not one, but two people at once! Pugnani (you say it Puniani) is an old Italian composer and Kreisler was really a violinist like Fedor. Fritz Kreisler was born in Europe, in Austria, in 1875 and now would have been more than 130 years old! But then he came to the United States as a lot of great musicians did. Once, he got hit by a truck in New York, but he survived and continued playing and composing. He died in 1962, 4 days before his 87th birthday.