Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
πΉ π€¦ββοΈ I broke my own rule {video}
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I thought my competition days had ended more than 30 years ago. Apparently not. π€·ββοΈ There are very few international piano competitions with no age limit. I only know of three. I love the preparation. What I didn't love was what happened last week. The maximum submission length was 15 minutes, which isn't much time to make an impression. My plan was to submit Brahms's left-hand arrangement of the Bach Chaconne. It's an extraordinary piece, but also an extremely transparent one. One wrong note lands like a dropped plate in a quiet restaurant. π½οΈ So I recorded it. Again and again. Sometimes three times a day. βΎοΈ The problem wasn't the notes. πΆ The problem was that I had slipped into chasing perfection. π€¦ββοΈ Which is ironic, because my motto is "Screw Perfect. Just Make Music." Not exactly the slogan of a competition pianist. Hours before the deadline, I made a last-minute decision and recorded Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasie instead. One take. Not perfect. But it sounded like me. It had breath. Space. Color. If I'm selected for Spain, I'll still play the Chaconne in the semi-finals. But I'll have a couple more months with it... to stop chasing perfection and start chasing beauty again. For now, here's a 50-second glimpse of the opening of the Polonaise-Fantasie that made the cut. Play On, ps Stay tuned for the full recording... |
Lisa Spector, Piano Ninja
Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
Growing up, I swore by altered rhythms. Hours and hours of dotted-rhythms drilling my Chopin Γ©tudes. Five of them, on my debut recital at age 14. I don't practice that way anymore and haven't since high school. I posted about it on Instagram last week and it did not go over well. Most people pushed back hard. Fair enough, Instagram reels are short, I didn't have room to explain the alternative. So here it is. My real problem with altered rhythms comes down to one thing. When I'm doing a whole...
I've been playing Amy Beach's "Dreaming" at the same tempo for years. It felt like an andante tempo, as the composer wrote. Then I heard Greg Anderson play it slower. I'm talking seriously slower. π’And I stopped mid-scroll and was mesmerized, because something clicked that I didn't want to admit. My tempo wasn't wrong because it wasn't Andante. It was wrong because I'd never questioned it. Here's the thing nobody tells you about tempo: it doesn't just live in your fingers. It lives in your...
You know the moment. You're three lines out from That Passage and your stomach already knows it's coming. π³ Hands tense. Breath gets shallow. You start playing the mistake before you've even reached the measure. I used to think the fix was more reps. Drill it until the fear goes away. But no matter how many reps, it was hit or miss for years. The fear isn't about the notes. It's about what your body does when it feels it coming. Here's the first thing that changed it for me. SMILE π Tension...