Dr. Deanne Mohr, a music professor at Winona State University, held her annual faculty piano recital in the Dufresne Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, March 31. The recital hall was full of students, faculty, and community members who listened attentively to Dr. Mohr’s music. She played a few shorter pieces, but the culmination of her performance was her final eighteen movement piece composed by Robert Shumann called Davidsbundlertanze that was paired with a presentation on the tragic love story between the composer and his wife.   

“I like to think of it as an educational kind of recital. I always try to do things that maybe I think people maybe haven’t heard before, or I think that they really should hear,” Mohr says. She picks her music based on what she likes to play, what she is interested in, and what she wants her students to hear. “I have to admit—at this point, I have kind of a bucket list,” Mohr says. She picks songs to perform that she has always wanted to play, and this recital was no exception.  

Mohr has a busy schedule during the school year—she teaches, performs in concertos with orchestras, participates in chamber concerts, plays collaborative piano, and more. Because of this, she saves a lot of her solo work for the summer and then comes back to her recital pieces as her performance gets closer. “It’s nice to kind of get something learned and then leave it a bit, and then you come back to it and say, okay, have my opinions about this changed and how’s it feeling now? A lot of times, the things that we find difficult kind of magically disappear in the midst of time,” Mohr says.  

Mohr also hopes that students take something away from her recital. “I really hope that they want to hear more from the composers that I perform, and be interested in attending more live music…We have so many really great musicians on campus and in the area, and I think the more students listen, the more inspired they can be to find the thing that’s the right fit for them,” Mohr says. When students hear music they like, they become more engaged and interested in learning what else is out there.  

Second-year elementary education student, Brynn Semeizer, attended the recital to supplement her music class she is taking this semester. She notes that she enjoyed the performance, especially getting to read the love story while listening to the accompanying music. “At the end, I felt a lot of emotions. I felt sad. I felt happy. A lot was told in that ending,” Semeizer says. “I felt like I could visualize it…without the sound and music, I wouldn’t be able to know how the people were feeling.” 

Mohr says, “Music is something that really can speak to everyone and belongs to everyone, and I think that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy or do music in some way…it’s the thing that connects us all.”