AND SO TO FIND A /

PIECE THAT IS A CHALLENGE/   

ONE THAT'S RE-A-LIS-TIC

TAKE YOUR TIME AND LET THE/

MU-SIC TAKE YOU ON A/

JOUR-NEY THROUGH THE YEARS AND/

YOU WILL FIND GREAT_/JOY

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

 

There is such a huge repertoire of music for the piano that it is important to be realistic about what you decide to tackle. If you are determined to learn all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas then you are not going to have much time for anything else in life unless you have a really exceptional talent. On the other hand if you pick a few of the sonatas out - maybe with the help of a teacher or musical mentor - and stay with them for a long enough while - then you are being realistic. Idealism may have its place in the grand scheme of things but in the area of choosing repertoire realism is more likely to result in a joyful and fulfilling experience. The great piano works of the Western tradition continue to bring joy and insight throughout life. If you have learnt Beethoven’s Op 110 as a teenager - as I did - then re-visiting it in later decades brings new joy and new insight because the whole experience of life has grown deeper as well as broader. On the other hand some other pieces - like for example the Chopin Fantaise-Impromptu - seem to be young person’s pieces and you may be disappointed when re-visiting them with the growing insight of later decades. The first set of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues was written by a composer in his thirties; the second set by a composer in his fifties. And it is true that whilst I learnt a number of the pieces from Book 1 when I was younger it was only in my fifties that I invested much time in Book 2. is this a coincidence? Or another example of discovering emotional resonance? Of course many great piano composers did not live beyond their thirties - Mozart, Chopin, Schubert. yet there are works by all of them that seem beyond the limitations of time or age and that can be returned to again and again during a lifetime of playing. I have re-visited such pieces as Mozart’s Rondo in A minor, K511, Chopin’s Ballade in G minor, and Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat at frequent intervals during forty years and they never fail to reveal new depths and insights. There are other pieces that I feel I have re-visited with the wrong intention, and the inevitable result is more frustration. By wrong intention, I mean the tendency to want to master, to conquer, to capture as another trophy of success. Perhaps the thing to learn from these is that failure to get on top of a piece - and I am thinking particularly here of pieces that I really wish I had the skill to play like Rachmaninov’s Prelude in B flat and Albeniz’s El Polo - reveals a lot about the inner working of the mind. The main reasons for not mastering a piece I can now recognise as : Not being realistic about the complexity of coordination required Not being realistic about the amount of time necessary to invest Wanting too much to ‘get to the end’ Lack of patience Not staying sufficiently focused Being realistic does mot mean backing out of setting yourself a challenge. It means selecting a challenge which engages you and where you can see gradual progress. A challenge which you can return to again and again at different stages of life. A challenge which you can enjoy as process rather than seeking to complete. The piano repertoire is vast. you will get most reward by selecting a few pieces that really speak to you and returning to them again and again.