Oh come on, by saying that you're saying that any student who can read notes can learn any piece. Given they are willing to bend over backwards and work for years and years on it, only to find out after those years that everything they've done is meaningless because they could've have learned other pieces that would have better prepared them for the piece they would've spent years on.
Any older instruments, including piano, don't fit hands naturally, they're very unergonomic. This is why a teacher can be important, because the technical demands of the instrument can be treacherous. However, I have yet to find a technical obstacle in a piece that I couldn't overcome by myself. Improvising also helps technique, and I don't mean doing strictly scales, but using your hands freely on the keyboard. This is pretty much how I learnt about harmony in practice - which keys to not play with others. If on the other hand I didn't straight away start tackling those exact pieces that I really loved from heart, I probably never would've developed my technique even as much as I have. In my case, and as my temporary teacher said, I was naturally "in the technique". I don't force my hands on keys, the keys call on the right finger, and this is where improvisation has helped me too.
There ARE people who can learn the mentioned pieces in less than two years and play them musically. In my opinion, if you have the determination and motivation, all the energy and will to learn the instrument so bad, you must have some kind of artistical need. People keep saying anyone can hit the right keys but not necessarily play music. I would like to underline the "necessarily" here, usually people's need to crush these young beginning pianists (young = not yet adapted to the thought world of adults, being openminded and seeing no limits to what they can do, exploring those limits) is more based on something that derives from inside these people, not the young "wannabe-virtuoso".
Don't bother calling me a narcists because I can definitely back up what I say (Canadian Music Competition, 4th place-tie out of about 300). So, I know what I'm talking about.
Can you point out the exact spot where I called you a narcist? With due all respect, no matter how much I try to speak generally and without hurting anyone personally, someone will always pick up anything I say and reflect it on their self.
Also, I don't let the "fantasies" of others influence the image of myself because 1. My goal in life is non-music related completely (Pharmacy/Medicine) and 2. Cash grants have made their way into my pocket with several other music competitions.
Your goal not being in music does not exclude the possibility that music is important and very personal to you, meaning you attach it as part of your identity and your abilities in area of music affect the way you see yourself in relation to your environment. And we all need to stand out in a way or another, to exist. This is why we form egos, to summon this image of our selves from the inside instead of only reflecting it from other people and getting to know it by observing what we see in them. Jealousy and envy and their paradoxal co-existence (or continous fighting for it) with pride are about the most common characteristics of mankind. Of course you update your views on the world by observing other people, and if you need to raise standards on something, say piano playing (in the case somebody claims to have learnt it much faster than you would think), you start comparing yourself to this picture, just to be conscious of what is needed from you to fulfill your own goals, even if they're not financial ones.
P.S. - More then half the time I roast YaBB Newbie's not because I care about them damaging their hands or butchering a famous piece, but because every week their seems to be a new one asking the same question. So I take the oppurtunity maul them, and sometimes show them previous threads of people who have asked similar questions. On the whole (a pun for lubriderm maybe?) I find it hemroidingly (SP? lol) discomforting to sit back (as the piano gods seem to be doing) and let these posts go without harsh truths.
Yes indeed you're not responsible to maul anyone, yet you do it to promote your avatar on this forum. To you I could say; This is not a "who wants to be a cyber bully."
Topic: piano skill