Perfecting.

[zheer]

When should one stop practicing a master piece, haw do you know that you have perfected and don the best you can. For example haw much work does a pianist like Alfred Brendle invest in mastering a Beethoven sonata, i imagin a lot ?

[nicolaievich]

Good question zheer, I am interested in the replies too 

[pianalex]

i guess we can draw a distiction between 'perfection' and the 'best we can do'.  as schnabel(?) commented 'great music is written better than it can be performed'.  there can be no definitive hammerklavier, it is subject to many equally valid interpretations.  not to mention the crap ones...   any given performance is going to be, as it were , a 'work in progress'  by the pianist.   beyond the technical/analytical i'm sure someone like brendel does much by the study of other works by Beethoven and his contemporaries; literature, philosophy, art etc, etc - also study of the autograph, ms and early editions.  he has recorded the sonatas at least 3 times, with differing results.  having said that brendel has said that he will no longer play the hammerklavier(for example) for physical and memorising reasons, which would imply that that side of things is also unrelenting, even for him!   far be it from me to speak on his behalf, however - this probably all a load of bollocks........

[pianistimo]

having a lot of repertoire probably helps to solidify the missing parts of our musical understanding, technique, and imagination.  therefore, as i see it, we should strive to keep adding to the cycled material (newer pieces) and never stop learning.  perfection at old age might mean not just playing a perfected piece - but a whole collection of sonatas by whichever composer - at a very high level and showing mastery of the concepts that go into each technique and interpretation.

 

[chopet]

Honestly, if I thought I had a piece completely perfected I would actually be asking myself what had I missed. Perfection just is not possible. There will always be something you feel could be better, something that you think could do with a bit more work. It must be the same for a genius like Alfred Brendel. Learning is a life long process, there is always more to learn, more to improve on.

[rc]

Agreed, perfect just doesn't exist... But it's a useful ideal

I 'spose in reality, 'the best we can do' is pretty much 'perfect'. Ya probably won't do much better than your best, at any given time .

What I normally do is polish a new piece until I run out of ideas or I start getting sick of it, then I drop the piece for some months. Just recently I'm discovering how well the hands will remember how to play something that the mind has long forgotten. So it's no problem to re-learn a piece, and by then it will sound fresh again, as well as bringing more experience and insight to the interpretation.

So I s'pose by this process, everything will ripen with time.

I like Pianistimo's idea of the gradual mastery of concepts.

[zheer]

Clearly asking this question is a little like asking is there a  God.
Am sure you have all been in a situation similar to mine, in that you have performed a piece to your teacher by memory and almost note perfect, but still with a lot of errors. I think we can only do so much and so long as the music is good to listen to , that should be enogh, i gess.

[jlh]

It depends on what you hope to accomplish with what you're working on.  You should always be learning new repertaoire -- that's a given, but what about the repertoire you're trying to perfect?  If you're preparing for a recital, you should be doing all you can do to make the piece as good as possible.  There is no such thing as "perfecting a piece" because no matter how well you think you know it, there will always be someone who thinks it should be interpreted a different way.  It's a subjective world we live in, this music world, and therefore perfection lies not with making a piece technically accurate or emotionally perfect, but with lifting the music up to a higher plane, of which there are endless possibilities.

If you spend so much time learning one piece early in your piano career, then you are missing out on all the other lessons you could be learning by adding new pieces to your repertoire.  I remember back in highschool I was going through about 15 different pieces a year, learning and letting the music shape my idea of what constitutes good music.  If I had spent all year learning just 2 or 3 pieces, then I would know how to play those really well, but what if I wanted to learn something else?  I'd be completely lost.

Professionals spend so much time learning and practicing pieces because that's the nature of the business and there's a lot of competition these days to produce recordings of unbelievable quality.  They also have the benefit of thousands of other pieces they've worked on and lessons they've learned from them that help them play up to that unbelievable level.

Even when I, for example, think I've learned a piece to the best of my ability, I'll keep looking for new things in the music that will help me give a more convincing performance, and frequently I will find these treasures in pieces I've known for some time.  One of my piano teachers told me that you have to be especially careful when playing something you've known for a long time, because frequently these will give you the most trouble in performance.

[rc]

Am sure you have all been in a situation similar to mine, in that you have performed a piece to your teacher by memory and almost note perfect, but still with a lot of errors. I think we can only do so much and so long as the music is good to listen to , that should be enogh, i gess.

I agree 100%!

Of course we'd all like to be able to play note-perfect, in actuality I think that rarely happens. But so long as the music is good to listen to, who cares about wrong notes. I could forgive having to start over so long as what comes out sounds good.

Take a note from any of the greats who can hit wrong notes, or even just plain omit many of them, who still sound excellent, and are still considered great.

[lostinidlewonder]

I think we know when we are playing something we are very good at playing or playing something which we have difficulties to keep under our fingers. Any piece which has a small physical or musical difficulties have to be ironed out, practiced until they become automatic otherwise they become pieces which are "difficult" for us to play.

Improving the quality of your pieces you play on the piano is constant. The more you play the piano the more obvious these changes are. People who are dedicated to their piano study can always say, last month I played this peice much worse than what I did now. This improvement never ever ends. There are hundereds of instances in any piece where we question ineffective physical touch or sound production. Some people cannot pin point these things so they say that perfection is unattainable and impossible and non-existant. I feel that yes, an ultimate perfection, where nothing can be proven to be "better" than it is impossible. Unless God plays the piano for you. But I like to think that we all mirror God, especially the love/creative side of humans. Once you learn to pick out things which cause you problems physically or sound production wise you move closer towards perfection. I personally think I can play a few peices perfectly simply because I have played them all my life and know them inside and out, know many different ways to express it, know how to balance expression to something that is ideal in my mind.

I think you have to let the music play you for a little while, then you turn around and play it! This means, let the music overwhelm you, get extremely passionate with it, over do all expression, play with huge contrasts over exxagerations. Then after all this steam is released go back and look at it with a critical musical mind, listen to lots of advice from people more experienced than yourself.

The problems I find in music is that being a "perfectionist" can be dangerous. You can get so caught up over trying to make something perfect that you flounder about and learn slowly. Music is art, art works best went we are in a positive frame of mind, if we are in a negative mindset our music work will amplify that emotional state and even reflect it in our playing. Getting upset that our playing is not perfect or how we would ideally like it wil not help us, but interlectualising it does. What part of your playing don't you like? Why? What do we have to do to change it? How will that change push the music closer to perfection?

 I always ask these things when I practice even if they are not a conscious effort anymore. I find it exciting trying to discover the best sound and physical action, I really think that frame of mind pushes you to perfection much faster than getting upset that you cannot play the way you want. Search for perfection with interest, don't say it is impossible and unattainable and use that as an excuse for second rate playing. I like to believe everyone can play at a concert standard. I really think anyone can if they work hard and with the right instruction.

Perfection simply is entertaining playing in my mind. I think people play close to perfect when they play and nothing provokes listeners to think or say, "Hmmm thats not exactly what I would do." If we hear someone play and think, "That is not what I would do but it sounds great." This is a peformance which changes how we observe music, and this is something only "great" pianists can do and which is to me perfect. Can you do that for everyone? Of course not. Some people sit up to attention when Horowitz is mentioned, some people wave his name off with a grimace. Most important is that you please yourself that is why we study music afterall! But some of us are our own toughest critics i guess that is what makes a good pianist over a mediocre one. Someone who is never satisfied with how they play and make changes to their music until they find something closer to their liking. Still I have always heard this advice echoed from many great teachers of art/music. "A good artist knows when they should stop."

[pianistimo]

interesting.  especially about overexaggerating.  i thought my most recent teacher was a bit crazy for suggesting this at first, but i see now how bland my playing was and why he was suggesting it.  what we hear isn't always what the audience hears.  sometimes you accidentally add in your mind what you want to hear instead of what is really heard.  for me, this is probably dynamics.  my forte (i thought) was quite adequate.  to others, maybe it seemed too conservative and bland.  especially at crescendos.  so, it was suggested that i go beyond where the crescendo ended (in my mind) and keep the level up.  that was very hard for me.  just like putting an accent on a beat that you are not used to.  it's challenging yourself to just do something wild and different - and then tone it down afterwards.

i like the art analogy (either here or on another thread) too because that's how artists work - throwing paint sometimes - and then adding water and toning it down or adding more white.  but, if you never add enough color to begin with - you're lacking umph. 

solar plexus is what it ends up being for me.

[jamie_liszt]

 It would be nice to play a song perfect with no wrong notes. It seems these days pianists are concentrating more on right notes and perfection. But what about the pianists from the 20th century (Horowitz, Cziffra, Richter, Rach), I enjoy them more then the pianists in stuff like the Chopin competition. They may hit wrong notes, eg: Horowitz. But in my opinion they are more interesting to listen to, and watch. But My teacher said you don't get away with it these days (playing wrong notes). I don't know if everyone else agrees.

[pianalex]

recording