Perfectly preparing-for-performance

by

Julia Jensen Baxter

What factors make a difference in how well a performance goes? I feel the roots of a good or bad performance go back to the learning of the piece. The reason I say this has to do with my own performance history. I remember, with a lot of embarrassment, when I was a junior high school student and I performed "Leibestrom," by Franz Liszt.

Looking back on that experience now, I can identify several factors that affected the outcome as I was preparing-for-performance. First, I had memorized the last page of that piece just the night before I was to perform it. Of course, when it came time to play it, I totally forgot the last page. I learned from that experience that it is vital to have at least several weeks of playing a piece from memory when you are preparing-for-performance. Larger pieces are more secure if several months, and even several smaller performances, are in their history.

Not only should I have memorized earlier, I should have memorized it without mistakes. Shortly after this experience, I started taking lessons from a very good teacher who insisted from the very start of learning a piece that I practice difficult areas to the point I could play them five times in a row without a single mistake. In fact, that activity had to be repeated enough times to insure that when I came to my lesson the difficult parts were played perfectly. It soon became a game I played in my practicing, starting at slow tempos and working into faster tempos. In fact, I found if I could identify the difficult areas and what I had to do to conquer them early on, the five perfect in a row came much faster, and the preperation for the performance was more effective.

I have since realized there is a similarity between our brain and a computer. If we “program” it correctly, it is far more likely we will be able to play a difficult spot correctly, even under the pressure of performing. I’ve found that if I had to relearn something after having practiced it incorrectly it was more likely that I would make mistakes during performances. That realization made me much more careful to make sure I was learning a piece very, very carefully.

Another method of practicing I used to perfect a piece was to give myself just one try. I had to play the piece all the way through, without stopping to correct anything and with as few mistakes as possible. No matter how badly I played it, I had to allow myself just the one try. Doing that seemed to help sharpen my memory as to how the piece should be played, and knowing I had just one chance made me concentrate even more. It also more closely mimicked how a musical performance would actually work. Later that same day I would come back and give myself one other try.

Assuming the piano is the instrument you'll be performing on, it's helpful to play your piece on as many different pianos as possible, including the performance piano. Pianos can be different in their touch and personality and the performance is not the time to be surprised over the different touch of a piano keyboard.

Let us now assume you are starting your performance after having prepared for it to the best of your ability. It is now time to get as immersed as possible in the music you're performing. Try as hard as you can to be focused on projecting the message of the piece you are playing. Give it the personality it deserves, and work on taking your audience away from the mundane time and place and putting them into a world of feelings that words are inadequate to describe. If your technical preparation has been good, it can be a fun experience to take on that challenge.

As I have learned and changed as a performer, the pieces I can play have obviously become much more difficult, but the methods I learned early on still serve me well when it comes to my preperation for a performance. If I learn a piece early and correctly, and drill it perfectly, I can count on being ready to perform when the time comes.