Doublereed Archive - Posting 000030.txt from 2003/01

From: ContraReed@-----.com
Subj: Re: [DR-L] recovering from a bad recital
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 19:29:17 -0500

In a message dated 1/5/03 5:54:14 PM Eastern Standard Time,
Lisa.Vickery@-----.com writes:

<< My 10-year-old son recently was in a piano recital, and it was a disaster.
Luckily, he's had several others that went off without a hitch. But for this
one, he began playing his little Berlioz piece (which he'd played a million
times by memory) and just choked about 2 lines into it. He started over, but
hit the same problem at the same spot. He simply couldn't remember how it
went. >>

As someone who is not a great fan of performing from memory, I don't
understand why some teachers feel they need to foist this on their students,
especially younger ones. True, after practicing a piece you basically have
it memorized, but it is nice to be able to have the music there just in case
there is a case of nerves or forgeting in the performance. It's one thing to
be able to play a piece from memory for your own personal amusement
(amazement?) or for friends, but in the case of a stress producing recital,
why add to it?