Is this normal?

[keyb0ardfweak]

Hi,

My question is, is it normal that someone would play this in one year? (Actually 8 months.. not a year)

6 Etudes - Czerny Op. 740 1, 2, 3, 6, 8
               Chopin Nouvelle etude Ab major

Bach - Suite nº5

3 Sonatas - Scarlatti K.87, K.141
                 J. Haydn Sonata nº31 Hob: XVI

Chopin - Nocturne Op. 27 nº1
Schumann - Novelletten Op. 21 nº1
Rachmaninoff - Prelude Op. 3 nº2

Ligeti - Musica Ricercata nº1


Now, I am not showing off with this repertoire, not at all, my purpose is to discuss if this is really necessary, because I think this is not normal.
I am currently at a conservatoire and this is my second official year, last year I did "anything" due to a problem I had.
I would like to know if this will keep me in the right path or I should tell my teacher to make me play less pieces, so this way, I could play with better quality.

What do you think? Because I think if I played this year only the Haydn sonata I wouldn't play it the same as I do now with all of the pieces I've played.


What really scares me is the repertoire I have for next year, I am worried of being just a machine that can play many pieces.. Next year the repertoire I have been given is almost the double of this one



Is this right?
I am confused,,
I am worried, I need some help!  

[j_menz]

I'd have thought that for a second year conservatoire student, these would all be quite managable, even relatively easy, pieces. 8 months should be more than adequate, and it doesn't seem like a great quantity.

There are advantages to be had from playing a large number of various pieces (even if one doesn't bring them up to performance standard), as well as "perfecting" pieces.

[keyb0ardfweak]

I see,, and yes, there are some pieces I didn't perform in public

The problem here is that I think I am the only one who is playing this amount of pieces and the other students have much less pieces to play, until someone told me that this is no good, that I wouldn't be able to play anything 100% correctly and I would play this pieces in a mediocre way.

So, what advantage does this have?

[danhuyle]

I'm speaking from my own personal experience in college and I myself have been in this situation thus I can relate to this topic.

I was a student who was ambitious about learning a lot of pieces, and if you know university piano teachers, they only help you with exam pieces and nothing more.

If you couldn't interpret one piece, what makes you think you'll play other pieces well?
If your rhythm skills are not fully controlled, then chances are, it'll spread to other pieces you play.

Here's the thing- playing nothing but exam repertoire is boring. I let my piano teacher take care of it. Honestly if I was to work on perfecting exam pieces I'd be bored.

When I learned pieces outside my exam repertoire, they're usually half done meaning that I
- play it slowly
- get started
- identify any challenging spots
- know what the difficulty of the piece is

Whatever you learn from your teacher, I'd implement that into pieces I'm self-learning.

Think of it as growing a tree. You plant the seed and water it, let settle in, then when you return to it, you'll have an easier time getting it to performance tempo.

My suggestion would be to play those pieces slowly to a point where you can play from start to finish with little to no hiccups. If you get it to performance tempo, great, if you don't, then you work on it after your end of year exam.

 

[music_doctor]

Yes. This is normal. I usually play so many pieces uncountable pieces every year,especially romantic pieces because most of them appear to be easier than the classical peices i encountered.