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Topic: Juggling many pieces for recital  (Read 1693 times)

Offline pianojems

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Juggling many pieces for recital
on: August 23, 2004, 05:14:07 PM
Hi everyone! I am getting ready to play a recital in three months that consists of all pieces that I previously played but need to relearn and rememorize. How do you schedule practicing many pieces at once, everyday, or divide pieces into several days? This has always been a problem for me. Knowing how to practice is half the battle, so if anyone has any experience with this please give me advice? Thanks in advance!

Some of my pieces are:
Bach prelude and fugue
mozart sonata
Rachmaninov prelude
Chopin ballade
debussy 3 estampes and more
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Offline Motrax

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Re: Juggling many pieces for recital
Reply #1 on: August 23, 2004, 07:13:11 PM
I had a pretty similar situation a while ago. I played every piece just once a day, slowly, until the old ones soaked back into my fingers. Once you feel like you're able to play the old pieces "in general," that's when you start working hard on them, working out any spots still causing trouble and such.

It's a somewhat straightforward process.  :)
"I always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before I start to play." --  Artur Schnabel, after being asked for the secret of piano playing.

Offline IllBeBach

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Re: Juggling many pieces for recital
Reply #2 on: August 24, 2004, 03:03:57 AM
I find that leaving a piece I know well alone for a few days (or even a week or two) helps to give me a fresh viewpoint on it.  Sometimes, after I havn't played a piece for a couple of week I'll go back to it and find that musically it seems much better than before, even if there are a few mishaps here and there.  I consider the trouble spots places that I didn't know as well as I thought I did to begin with and work especially hard to iron them out so I won't have problems with them again.

I guess what I'm saying is don't be afraid to put a piece "on the back burner"; sometimes it helps more than it hurts.  Mostly I try to cycle through everything every two weeks or so, but that is while I'm learning everything and I still have months before the recital.
At least a few weeks to a month before the recital I would make sure to play everything through at least once a day in all kinds of situations.  I change pianos constantly, practice in different rooms, practice with the lights on and off, and even play pieces for no-stress situations such as at nursing homes (they are always glad to have you, and appreciative no matter how well--or poorly  ;D --you play).  To me it seems like the more I perform a piece the less I have to practice it to keep it ready for performance--almost like the stress of performing it impresses it more thoroughly on my mind and body.
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Offline pianojems

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Re: Juggling many pieces for recital
Reply #3 on: August 24, 2004, 06:54:00 PM
The problem is that I have known them and performed them years ago, but now I will have to pretty much completely relearn them from scratch. Since I learn a lot of new music, I had to give those up for a while.
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Offline Max

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Re: Juggling many pieces for recital
Reply #4 on: September 04, 2004, 01:05:08 PM
They will come back very fast. You would learn most of those in a day, if you've played them before and have improved technically since you played them. Start off by looking at the score and listening to them, then learn them as if it was a new piece (sightread through it slowly).
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