Barbara Roberts wrote:
>Alas, in many student recitals, students are performing pieces that are
>at their technical limits. The necessarily skills needed to perform a
>particular piece may not be sufficiently nailed down by performance day
>. Under such situations, It's hard to think of one as being good or
>even adequate. I 'm a very nervous performer. I find it more beneficial
>to look at my short comings straight in the face. If I find in
>practice that I find that goof up a lot on a particular passage, I have
>no reason to expect that it will be any different during a recital. So I
>learned to covertly work on alternative, graceful ways to recover from
>expected problems. I figured it was better to not let my teacher know.
That's too bad, but you very well may have been right. I strive to be
the sort of teacher that you would have told.
>For piano recitals, I would even spend considerable time practicing my
>"alternative" versions. Ironically this helped. Only once do I remember
>having to use one of my "alternatives" and that was in a voice recital
>where I skipped the (added) high notes at the end of a piece. Notes that
>were just not going to happen that day. Once I got over being terrified
>about potential mistakes, my method helped me to relax enough to avoid
>devastating, recital blowing mistakes.
What a brilliant strategy!
I am reminded that I once read that the jazz pianist Bill Evans like
to quote Goethe's saying that anyone can be a master who is willing
to work (play?) within his limitations. Barbara, I think your
strategy applies that idea very well.
I'd be most grateful to anyone who could tell me either where I might
have read that Bill Evans liked that statement of Goethe, or where I
could find Goethe's statement.
John Link
"When we have choices, we are free!" (Did I just make that up?)
http://www.mp3.com/JohnLinkFeldenkrais
http://www.mp3.com/JohnLinkVocalQuintet
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