Masterclasses... overrated?

[kghayesh]

I went to a masterclass about 2 weeks ago. The pianist was quite good, and he gave quite good notes to everyone, including me. However, I felt that it didn't differ much from a lesson with my teacher (I take 3 lessons per week). It was a good experience for me, as my first masterclass, but I felt that the whole masterclass thing was a bit overrated.

I didn't make sense to me that I pay a lot of money, just to spend about half an hour playing to a pianist (no matter how good and famous he/she was) and listening to a very brief summary of what he can tell me about the piece I am playing. It was almost like another lesson from my teacher.

Is this true, and masterclasses are really overrated, or I just haven't seen a proper one???

[jabbz]

I guess you just haven't seen a proper one. I've seen Masterclasses with some pretty big names, and they're fantastic. Donohoe and Rogé to name a couple, but there are many more.

[practice]

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a masterclass?

[thierry13]

Masterclasses aren't overrated, either you haven't seen a proper one and the pianist who gave it wasn't an experienced/great enough artist or you weren't advanced enough to participate in it. If he could only tell what your teacher tells you, then it is probably because you are still working on very basic stuff anybody could tell you. If you would have had your piece completly mastered, then you would have opened doors to more comments and he could have worked many other things with you, simply because everybody's different and he couldn't have told you everything your teacher would have.