Advanced Piano Experience

[ricenoodles]

I'm currently self-teaching myself how to play the piano, still looking for a teacher here where I live. I have a basic question for the very experienced piano players out there. For those who can play any one level 8 piano pieces, at your current experience, are you able to play the particular piece in a different key effectively and easily? Or would it become a whole new experience in playing the piece? In advanced piano sessions or classes, are students trained to be able to transpose easily at that level? Also, should I put a strong emphasis on transposing every piece that I play, and practice and play them on all keys C/C#/D/D# etc...

[pianist1976]

Well, I think that the more difficult is a piece, the more difficult is to transport it. Advanced repertoire requires many hours for overcoming and studying the most difficult parts of the pieces. Playing these in another tonality is having to study them from scratch (new digitations, new "orography" of the keyboard, relearn automatisms, not always comfortable in the new tonality because great pianist-composers chose the tonalities very well in order to provide the pianistic solutions and vice versa...).

I've met some people who have a special ability to transport, I have not got it although I can transport, with some effort, very simple pieces but, unless you work with singers, I think it is not a daily required or indispensable skill. Of course, there are methods to improve the transporting skills such as clef readings (all C and F clefs), functional harmonic reading and reduction, very useful in the real working world, as I said, to transpose a reduction of the accompaniment of an aria from Norma. But there's no a common (or useful) need to transport a master piece written for the piano (why transporting Fantasie-impromptu, Mozart A minor sonata or Mephisto Valtz, i.e?).

Just my opinion