People at the gamingforce forum kept telling me that Rach 3 concerto is too hard for me. They tell me it's impossible to play it, and that has really discouraged me from learning it. I've been playing the piano for 9 years now...and I just finished my ARCT Performers exam.
Here we go again.
I usually stay clear of this sort of posts, and what I am about to say, Aki, I say in a spirit of friendship and helpfulness. It is also not directed at you personally but to all the countless people who asked the same question over and over again.
1. Why do you want to play this piece? And why a piece that will need a whole orchestra to accompany you? Let us ignore for the moment the possibility/impossibility of the piece and just consider the logistics of getting an orchestra to accompany you. Are you saying that you want to devote a substantial amount of your life practising/playing a piece that you will only be able to perform under incredibly auspicious circumstances – which means rarely or never? Why not go for the piano solo repertory. At lest you can have the piano whenever you need.
2. You say that people in another forum told you that it was impossible. But how can anyone tell what is possible or impossible without seeing you play, without seeing how you learn a piece (are you an efficient learner/practitioner?), without having experienced first hand your physical and mental weaknesses and strengths? This seems completely obvious to me. We are not the best people for you to ask this question. Which leads me to:
3. Why are you asking us? And why should our answer be it positive or negative be of any importance? Another FAQ here is “what piece should I learn next?” Although I have posted list after list of repertory in reply to this sort of question, the question is absurd. Ultimately it will depend on the taste of the questioner. Only the questioner will know if he likes or does not like the piece, so why is s/he asking
me? Likewise, only you (and possibly your teacher) can answer the question of possibility or impossibility. No one here knows you/your potential well enough to answer this question in any helpful way, and therefore whatever answer you get is pretty much useless.
4. Do you want to play this piece? Go ahead and do it for crying out loud! You will pretty soon figure out if it is possible or impossible. If it turns out to be impossible, your job is to figure out how to make impossible into easy. This is the ultimate goal of practice. If you cannot figure this out, come back with specific, intelligent questions, and who knows, we may be able to help you. Even better, ask your teacher, who can demonstrate to you and guide you with a hands on approach through this process of turning impossible into easy.
5. You say you have been playing the piano for nine years. Now I met a guy once who had done some karate when he was 15 years old. He did for a year, achieved a green belt and then dropped it. (karate belts in progressive order: white – yellow – orange – green – purple – brown – black). When he was 26 he came back to it and stuck with it for two years and manage to get to purple belt. Then he got married hade kids and dropped it. In his 40s he decided he needed some exercise and enrolled in a club which I happen to attend. He entered the training hall with a brown belt (he thought he deserved it) and told people he had been doing karate for over 25 years. We found this interesting, since 25 years is a pretty long time to still be a brown belt (anyone practising reguraly should get his black belt in 3 – 5 years). So we watched as he joined us. He was puffing and panting after 5 minutes of warmup. His flexibility was nil. When sparring he was being beaten by white belts. Slowly the true story came up.
What is the point of this little story? The point is, saying that you have trained for 25 years, or putting a brown belt around your belly are
credentials, but unless they are backed up by real
skills, they are worth exactly zilch. Who cares for how long you have been playing the piano, or what grades you have achieved? The only thing that matters is what you are capable of doing once you sit at the piano. And we cannot judge this.
Now, whenever I see this Rach 3 question again, I can direct the questioner to this thread!
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: Rachmaninov's piano concerto