Characteristics of Professional Pianists’ Psychophysiological Responses and Playing Time during Concerts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of the psychophysiological responses and playing time of professional pianists during concerts. The participants were two female pianists. The Features of Agari Experience Questionnaire (FAEQ) was used to assess their negative psychological reactions during an actual performance and their heart rate (HR) was recorded to evaluate their physical reactions during a performance. The results suggested that, in 12 pieces of music played by the two pianists, the playing time in two pieces became longer during the actual performance than during practice, whereas it was similar for two other pieces during the actual performance and practice. The other eight pieces became shorter during the actual performance than during practice. We calculated how much the playing time changed during an actual performance compared to during practice (i.e., the playing time change rate; PTCR). A correlation analysis showed that there was no significant relationship between the PTCR and HR, but the PTCR was negatively correlated with the FAEQ (r = -.63, p< .05). These findings suggest that the playing time became shorter when negative psychological reactions were higher, although the playing time was not affected by the HR.