i fear the pieces i'm starting are too difficult

[stiefel]

Hello all.

    I'm a junior in high school who's been playing for 12 years.  I love playing and have an amazing teacher who is also a professor of piano at a large  university.
    I just played the first movement of mozart a minor sonata, brahms op 116 no 5 and pagodes from estampes by debussy in a competition.  Now that I've finished those things I am starting Beethoven op 7 and Scriabin op 42 no 5.  I've been at them for only a week.  My problem is that these pieces just seem incredibly difficult for me.  So difficult that I'm wondering if they are too much for me at this point in my piano education.
    I know I haven't been playing them very long, but normally I learn repertoire very quickly.  I'm planning to talk to my teacher, but I'm curious what you all think. 

Thoughts?

[j_menz]

Evidently your teacher thinks you're ready.

For what it's worth, IMO they seem like a fairly logical step. A bit of a stretch can, at times, be very beneficial (though it may take you a while to notice the benefits).  I'd suggest you stick with them.

[elenka]

Mhh try to study seriuolsy a littly chunk, then if you see that it's too difficoult stop and learn other things, after all Scriabin's music is grade 10 in my country... it's not so easy jump from Mozart's sonata in a moll to Scriabin's sonatas...

[larapool]

Sometimes I feel like this...  the first 'big' piece my professor and I ever started (back when I first started formal piano instruction) was Beethoven's Op. 49 No. 2.  It's an easy sonata, sure, but at the time it was incredibly daunting.  I eventually made it through and two years later I can play it with ease. 

I'm back in the same boat now, with the first movement of Beethoven's Pathetique sonata and Chopin's Op. 34 No. 2 waltz.  What I'm doing is only studying the first page of each, learning everything there until I'm comfortable enough moving on.  The trick with pieces that are more difficult, in my opinion, is to simply study in very small chunks.  The easier the piece, the more you can take in at once -- a harder piece demands much more concentration in much smaller chunks of music.

It's a little tedious but well worth it.  At least, in my experience. 

[roseamelia]

You're going to get to better don't you worry.

[jgendron]

You should keep those pieces and practice them.
You said you were learning your pieces easily normally, so I think it's time to move on and to make it a bit more difficult for you ! I've been there once, and I had that incredibly fear... cause I was about to totally fail my semester in classical piano. It was the unknown Rondo in A minor op.59 by Kabalevsky. My teacher didn't stop to tell me that this piece was written for me !! I practiced, practiced and practiced, and finally I had a really high result at my final concert for that semester.

Today, I really understand the benefits of this piece. It showed me of course some technic, but better than that : I finally understood that it was time for me to move on and increase the levels of my pieces. I now know what it's worth to do difficult pieces, cause it makes you learn about yourself, your un-reachable limit and all that kind of stuff that is, for me, just as important as technical work.

Keep practicing, I know how that Scriabin etude is tough, I had my own fights with it. But it's worth it at the end !

[keypeg]

There are ways of approaching pieces, stages to the approach etc.  Sometimes our teachers neglect to give us that.  Do you think this might apply?