Student Advancing Quickly

[njimenez4u]

I received a student about 7 months ago, who is 15, and started playing piano when he was 14ish. He came to me already finished with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata 1st Mov, and had self-taught himself how to read sheet music. I started him off with basics, simple czerny etudes, scales, and a simple contemporary piece, i thought his talent was good, and ordinary, until one day he came to me and confessed that he had been working on several pieces without telling me, he is half way through the revolutionary etude, halfway through the op.10 no.1 chopin etude, and playing other pieces such as op.9 no.1 nocturne, some chopin mazurkas, has the op.69 no.1 waltz completed, several preludes and others, and i was shocked, and don't know how to judge this talent since he's only been playing for a year and 4 of 5 months. Any ideas?

[49410enrique]

give him a fresh assignment, on a difficulty level that is average for what he's into, tell him to work it up on his own, then have a 'mock jury'  on it, see what musical standard he hits, gauge techinical fascility, etc then you can weigh the accomplishment vs how long it takes him to get it here, you can put a cap and say 4 months is the limit he can bring it to you anytime in that period for review.

or have him enter a competition and again use new works for him and see how he places / stacks up, and you get a hold of the judges comments. similar deal.

if he's excelling along well here, you should probably begin working on collaborative skills, i.e start pairing him with vocal and instrumental soloists to play the piano part so he can work on listening, ensemble, balance, etc.

that is try to find areas that are less developed or that do not come as easy and try to work those too?

good luck!

id' also caution that it super possible to get farily decent proficiency on one's own sometimes but they can pick up some bad habits so going witha  'back to basics' approach would probably be helpful, i.e. all technique patterns, lots of Bach, Mozart, etc.

[asiantraveller101]

He is probably a very self-motivated person. Always a pleasure to work with such students. My suggestion is to provide him as much of variety in repertoire and musical styles. From what you have told us, he is working mainly on Chopin. Provide him a broad musical foundation and he will go far. Have fun, and good luck! 

[j_menz]

He's clearly bored to tears with the stuff you're teaching him, and I can't say I blame him. If he's capable of playing the pieces you mention, or of learning them, teach to his interests and actual level and throw in some other stuff to make up for any technical deficiencies.

[danhuyle]

How about start working on interpretation? Since this student can learn a lot of pieces...

[gearmenta]

Although his technical ability may be up to par, is his maturity in interpreting the music on the same level? If it is, then hand him some of the repertoire he wants. He likes Chopin but I also had a student that was this way but became almost do involved with one composer and it took me some time to get him out of the habit of playing everything like you play rachmaninoff. So, I tank you should try to talk him into different composers as well as make sure his technique is efficient, he will try to apply this technique to everything else he plays, and as you k ow, technique differentiates from composer to composer. Good luck, it is always amazing to have such talent to mold in your hands!

[aryannaghedi]

oh man...what u said is exactly what happened to me...and you know i started playing piano and now im 16 but when i was about 9 or 10 i went to a teacher and he acted me as a stupid guy but other teachers had a positive idea about me...so that time i could play chopin nocturnes but that teacher unfortunately disapointed me...and started teaching beyer to me...but now he is 30 and im 16 and im a better teacher than him...so please dont do that with your student...its what i can say...just try to motive him more and more and just correct the pieces he has played i think this methode is more effective than any other methodes...

[asuhayda]

That's exciting (and terrifying)!

Sounds like he likes Chopin!  I would let him run with it, but if he is still young and inexperienced it's going to be easy for him to develop bad technical habits.  So, eventually he's going to hit a wall if he doesn't tread carefully.  So, just make sure you keep a hold of the reigns.

I would let him continue playing the pieces that speak to him.  Just, watch his technique like a hawk! Don't let him get away with anything. 

Also, he obviously listens to piano music because he was able to find those pieces on his own.  That's really cool because he's going to be interested in talking interpretation with you.  Those are always the best lessons IMO. 

I would ditch the Czerny.. I used to teach those as well, but I've found that they just took up time and did not give my students any significant technical improvement.  So, I've been streamlining my technique down to 4 octave scales in 10ths, 6ths and 3rds, along with Arpeggios w/inversions and 4 octave chromatic scales split at 2 and using an interval of 10.  This has worked pretty well.  The only Czerny that I have found effective has been the etudes for the left hand (op. 718)..

Then I just focus on LOTS of repertoire.  Give him TONS of music from all genres. And listen to him, if he doesn't like what he's playing, try your best to accommodate him (but sometimes it's tough luck!)

Best of luck! And congratulations! It's always exciting to get a talented new student.