Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2007-07-16 11:43
Nobody could pay me enough to be a teenager again, but allow an old bag who's ended up as an amateur with terminal stage fright to comment that this situation is nothing new. I went to very few music competitions for the excellent reason that I wasn't good enough, but even though my piano teacher encouraged me to try "just for the experience," and kept telling me to relax because none of this stuff mattered anyway (he was a fine one to talk--I once saw him break down so badly from nervousness in Bartok 1 that the conductor nearly stopped the orchestra), I will never forget the feeling of absolute doom.
Invariably, I knew, going in, that nothing I could do would be the right thing. I would sit there and watch other kids (who played better than I did) wait their turns while gnawing their fingers or rocking back and forth. Now and then one of them would suddenly leap up and rush into the bathroom to vomit; or for no apparent reason burst into tears; or start cursing so loudly the sould probably carried onstage; or rise, walk in dignified silence toward the door that did not lead to the concert hall and then suddenly develop winged feet and dash out of the green room, never to return. (You think wind students are bad; you should see the mobs and mobs and mobs of terrified little pianists facing the facts of gross over-population.)
Sometimes, I played with robotic rigidity. Other times, I went too far the other way and waxed disastrously creative. Never did get it right. I didn't have that problem at public speaking contests, maybe because I was better at those and went into them thinking I knew what I was doing and had a good chance of winning. Music contests: I guess they're necessary, to weed out people like me, but--feh.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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The Clarinet BBoard
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