Yay, recital!!
I our Suzuki school’s adult recitals. Each year, it is a private soireé, graciously hosted at the home of one the students. We have wine and nibblies, and everybody ensures that it is a safe, encouraging place for us to play for each other, without any judgement. I also love it because its an exciting opportunity to hear how everybody has progressed throughout the year. No matter where you are at, or how long it takes you to learn a new piece or technique, the one thing that is true is that with practice, you will progress. We all loose sight of that, in the week to week or month to month. But year to year, it becomes so clear!
Playing in front of other people is very different than playing for your teacher is very different than practicing alone. By “different”, of course I mean “harder”. Its important to remember what you are playing for.
When playing in front of your teacher, making mistakes is an important part of the learning process. Those mistakes are how your teacher understands the bits that you are struggling with. If your teacher doesn’t hear the mistakes, then they can’t help you work through them.
When playing in front of others, the mistakes are just part of the music. Performance is about sharing our music, and as students, our music will always have rough edges. Learning to embrace this is such a process, because so much of the music we listen to is performed by professionals. But embrace it, I shall!
So here is my 2019 recital performance. This is my second recital (unfortunately we didn’t record my 2018 recital).
I am playing “Two Grenadiers”, from Book 2. I started learning this piece on Feb 28 (97 days before the recital), with ~200 complete play-throughs between then and now.
On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being my worst practice of this, and 5 being my best practice, I’d rate this a 4. This rating comes after listening to this video, uh, many times. Immediately following the performance, I would have rated it a 2.5 or 3. We are our worst critics.
My timing here is better than my typical. In particular, I have a tendency to rush the rest in bars 26 & 30 when playing with accompaniment. I still think my tone is worse than my typical, although both Teacher & Partner disagree. Lesson to you: we can’t always trust our ears.
Enjoy!
