Lessons Learned From Recitals
Reflecting on a lifetime of playing piano, playing recitals, and playing for fun.
It’s Springtime! The piano recital revival is in full swing at my house. It’s been a minute since I hosted an event for my students. Pandemic, need I say more? So four years! And tomorrow, ten pianists will play the pieces they’ve worked hard to perfect.
I’m proud of my beginners, who began playing in January and have only begun to grasp note reading and technique. And I have great respect for my older students with complex pieces they’ve been learning to master since last fall. I’m playing the Chopin Mazurka, Op. 17 No. 4. It’s not a hard piece, not for me anyway, but for the first time since I began teaching piano (twenty years?) I don’t feel the need to prove anything. And for the first time in my life, my performance anxiety is at bay.
I began playing the piano at age three. My grandmother, you may already know, was an accomplished soloist and duet performer. She had various partners over the years and recorded hundreds of hours of classical two-piano pieces with them. I’m grateful for all she taught me, but needless to say, I had so much to live up to. Although she loved me and wanted the best for me, she dealt criticisms with a wicked tongue. And recitals terrified me.
So I vowed to do things differently for my students.
When I began teaching piano around 2003, I discovered I loved helping others learn about music and find their voice. The awful side effect was a few stressful recitals each year. I told my students then, and I tell them now, I’ll never put them through something I’m not willing to do myself.
Music, like all art, is meant to be shared. I’ve played Chopin Etudes and Nocturns, I learned Beethoven Sonatas and Rhapsody in Blue. And found I could play beautifully in the comfort of my home. Behind closed doors. When no one else could judge me. Recitals used to bring out my anxiety monster. The more I practiced putting myself and my art in front of others, the better I got.
It’s important to note that each observer, each person experiencing the art (painting, sculpture, book…) infuses it with their own reflection, assumption, reasoning and emotions. Whether they love it or hate it is entirely irrelevant to the performer. To the artist. Because we artists are merely the conduit for emotions, experiences, insight, joy, trauma, humanness.
Life lessons I’ve learned from piano recitals:
Usually participants are grateful for the opportunity to grow and learn.
Most folks are more worried about their own performance.
You will make mistakes. The trick is to move through them with grace and finesse.
Art is fleeting.
We are our own worst critics.
Art, like life, takes practice.
Tomorrow, I’ll probably make a few mistakes. But will one or two wrong notes have a great impact on your experience? Not unless I make a big deal about it. Which I won’t. In fact, I bet you won’t even notice.
I too did recitals for classical guitar. They were nerve wracking. The one that convinced me to become a banker was when I was in my twenties and studying music for a year at San Jose State. At the recital I was supposed to play a Bach piece by memory and lost myself in the middle of it. I couldn't remember the rest and had to move on to Villa Lobos. The chairman of the music department was there. Afterword my guitar teacher told me that maybe I should consider a profession other than music. And so I went into banking.
I've shared this with a friend who is taking piano lessons and just had his first recital. Good insights!