Rachmaninov Concertos - too ambitious?

[natalyaturetskii]

Hi,

I'm 15 years old and I've done my Grade 8 Piano. I really want to start learning Rachmaninov's Second and Third Piano Concerto, but I'm not sure if it's too ambitious... My teacher seemed fine with it and told me to buy the music so that I can start working on it, but nearly everyone that I talk to seems to think I'm mad! I expect that it'll take longer than a year to get everything comfortable but I'm just not quite sure if it really is too ambitious or not??

[thalbergmad]

if you have only just done your grade 8, I wouldn't go anywhere near them.

Thal

[pytheamateur]

Hi,I'm 15 years old and I've done my Grade 8 Piano. I really want to start learning Rachmaninov's Second and Third Piano Concerto, but I'm not sure if it's too ambitious... My teacher seemed fine with it and told me to buy the music so that I can start working on it, but nearly everyone that I talk to seems to think I'm mad! I expect that it'll take longer than a year to get everything comfortable but I'm just not quite sure if it really is too ambitious or not??

Is your current teacher my piano teacher at school?!  I see history repeating itself.

I also got my Grade 8 at 15.  I was considered the best pianist at my school at the time (it's a small school, and not a music school either).  Then the head of music at my school introduced me to the music of Rachmaninov.  I first learnt the prelude in C sharp minor.  After that he suggested Rach 2.  I wasn't keen at first, thinking it was too difficult.  Anyway, the school didn't have the score for that, but they did have the score for Rach 3, so we worked on Rach 3 for a while.  After that, Rach 2 seemed so much easier, so in the end, after playing the last few pages of the third movement I agreed I would take on the first movement.  I still wonder today if getting me to play Rach 3 was some kind of psychological tactic on my teacher's part to get me to play Rach 2.

I then performed the first movement at 16 with the school orchestra.  Then, my teacher suggested I could learn the rest of Rach 2 during my sixth form years.  In the end, he got me to play Rhapsody on a Theme by Pagannini just before I left school.  In between, I learnt some solo pieces, mostly too difficult for me technically and musically.  He even got me to work on Islamey by Balakirev, but that didn't go anywhere.

This was all a very bad idea; I even suspected it at the time.  For a long time, all I could do is to hammer away at the piano.  The Pagannini performance was a disaster (although  part of the audience didn't seem to realise that):  I didn't play with an orchestra: ths school orchestera was not good enough and my rhythm was too insecure for that.  The school didn't even have two pianos for concerts so my teacher ended up playing the orchestral reduction on a crappy keyboard with half the range of a piano!

The "second best" pianist at that time got his Grade 7.  My teacher got him to work on Grieg's concerto and Chopin's Second Ballade.

This is crazy.  Obviously, your case might not be the same.  But if your teacher is indeed my school teacher, then beware.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Hi,

I'm 15 years old and I've done my Grade 8 Piano. I really want to start learning Rachmaninov's Second and Third Piano Concerto, but I'm not sure if it's too ambitious... My teacher seemed fine with it and told me to buy the music so that I can start working on it, but nearly everyone that I talk to seems to think I'm mad! I expect that it'll take longer than a year to get everything comfortable but I'm just not quite sure if it really is too ambitious or not??

It is a little odd that your piano teacher is letting you do it.  Maybe he/she's letting you have a try at it and let you see for yourself that it's FAAAAAR past grade 8?

My teacher did the same thing.  A student wanted to learn La Campanella after playing only a couple of months and my teacher was like, 'yeah sure go ahead!', and he tried it but quit learning it after the first week.

But yeah I made a thread in the students corner forum called The Rachmaninoff Marathon and I'm trying to get a bunch of people to learn Rachmaninoff's third and we should share advice, and progress together!  I'm gonna see if I can manage two measures a day including the rests.

The 3rd is far more difficult than the second, so the politically correct answer if you're going to learn one of them would be the 2nd piano concerto. 

[natalyaturetskii]

Thanks for all the replies!

My teacher is not a school teacher, he plays in concerts around the world so much that he may as well be a concert pianist! I might just take the concertos on as a long term project that I can work on really slowly for about two years, but I suppose I should focus on others...

Oh and sorry, pytheamateur! What happened does sound too good... I'd be upset if that happened to me!

Thanks again!
Natalya