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.