Student Piano Performance Failures and “Bad” Piano Teaching

These comments are based on my experience.
Students are given unrealistic hopes within what turns out to be a crippling environment – e.g. of parents thinking their son or daughter is destined for great things, that they are concert pianists in the making, or they are given pieces to perform that are destined to make them fail when performing.
I have no remembrance of teachers understanding my limitations or where I could grow, rather simply giving me pieces and being told to learn and perform for an examination. A teacher may know I was struggling and be empathetic, but as a student I was set up with full knowledge of others that I would be humiliated and fail in a performance. This has devastating emotional impact.

There is no assistance (I understand there is today at the Queensland Conservatorium) on what is going on during performance preparation and what happens during performance, or the realisation of failure and how to cope with such expectations for being perfect.

We cannot be perfect. A concert pianist can win a Chopin competition and know full well they were overplaying the left hand, so that later in life they have the ability to correct. We have to enjoy how others perform so well, and enjoy how we perform ourselves. There are pianists in Jazz and Classics that are masters of amazement. It is great.

We have to realise that younger students will be playing differently as they age. I play better today than when I was young. I did not know how to play, was thinking the wrong things about playing, and was far more limited in ability than I ever knew. Not the case today, but failure is like setting concrete, with no one to help us through to where we should be in these life experiences that will happen. I would openly say without embarrassment that I had no understanding of Beethoven when I was a student. I really, really did not.

I also do not recall any valuable teaching from my University teacher, despite my teacher being a concert pianist. I rarely use the one singular technique that was shown to me. I learnt more from concert pianists who published on YouTube during and hence after Covid-19.

We must learn NOT TO COMPETE. We have to learn to love who we are and how we ourselves are progressing. It was impossible as a youth not to be jealous and frustrated at how amazing others were, and I was not.

Why is my music different today?

In 2010 I had a major life threatening medical condition. Pain and suffering is real. This demanded letting go of many aspects of life I had previously focused on. For example, before then I was really interested in my DVD collection. Now this is a totally meaningless pursuit. Now I am able to listen to people rather than having to have a last say. It does not bother me. During my career I learnt to deal with many situations. I learnt more clearly about other people’s behaviour and my own. All of this added up to changes the way my brain would see things. I intuitively know things about music now that I can build further upon. These changes are always validated. I have no problems in finding and purchasing music scores and learning myself. I develop techniques with my improvisations. I can see what concert pianists are doing to a greater degree.

We cannot manufacture these milestones in our development. Each year I push myself into a harder piece of music with passion and love for the piece. I keep developing with other pieces that are not aiming towards public performance. Site reading improves. Flow improves. Phrasing improves. I latch onto those who seem to know how to perform a piece. For example, I have only heard one or two pianists who seem to get how to convey the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. I can listen to a teacher on YouTube go over Chopin who has no idea what they are talking about. These things develop and are real.

As we develop, it is like placing one brick upon another, and one day we look back and see we have built a wall. How did that happen? We just did it.

Some students are more naturally gifted and technically capable than myself, obviously, and have great memory. My memory is bad. I have to focus specifically on developing memory because some pieces demand it in order to perform publicly. The brain changes slowly over time.

I have no qualms about saying no one taught me at University. Or, that I was really in the wrong direction at that time for developing music. I was given the most ludicrous and impossible pieces, but not only that, pieces that even today you should not give to a student. Why give some sadistic machination of a piece from Chopin to a student who will not be able to perform the stupidity of that piece? The student will suffer greatly.

How many students have been obliterated because they were asked to perform pieces they could not. Why do students have to perform? If one is developing as a concert-style pianist, they should perform so they have exposure to performance dynamics. Others could perform in a safe settings where failure is likely, so they learn not to be humiliated and crushed.

Parents who tell everyone their child is going to London to be a great concert pianist, who ask others to listen to them perform and then demand they say how good they are, is appalling and inept when the young adult is not really on that path or able to do it. We only know what we see, so how many students are obliterated? Music should be approached as a development in life, to be celebrated and supported, not an exam. Let’s only get really serious with those who obviously go into public or concert performance, and get really serious in how we develop and support other musicians and their hearts who will develop in various ways over time.