Confession: I just don't want to practice!

[bernadette60614]

My teacher has assigned me the 2nd Schubert Impromtu, Opus 90.

I don't want to practice.

It seems impossible!

If anyone else has ever had this feeling about a daunting new piece, words of wisdom would be appreciated!  (Kindly put..please!)

[hfmadopter]

Yes and I never completed the piece, we moved on after a few weeks of O progress. I don't recall the piece off hand that caused my big bog out but I just plain and simple couldn't stomach doing it ! That was a long time ago now but the teacher just went on to something else after a few lessons with it, what ever it was.

Edit:
Incidentally I had a Brahms piece I thought was going to be the same way and we worked right through it. So give the new piece a go at least !

[brogers70]

My teacher has assigned me the 2nd Schubert Impromtu, Opus 90.

I don't want to practice.

It seems impossible!

If anyone else has ever had this feeling about a daunting new piece, words of wisdom would be appreciated!  (Kindly put..please!)

It's not as hard as it sounds or looks on the page. When my teacher assigned it to me I listened to a recording and thought I'd never be able to do it. But it turned out to take less time than I thought. Just be patient. Do a lot of hands separate practice. The RH fingering for the first 24 bars is pretty straightforward, Eb major scales. Work on that bit slowly, practice the hand shifts, do small groups of notes together. Starting at measure 25, where it shifts into Eb minor and Gb major, the fingering gets a bit more difficult. Maybe your teacher can help figure out what fingering works best for your RH there. I found the B minor section (starts m. 84) more difficult, but it's certainly fun to bang and crash once you get the hang of it. The coda, is hard, and you end with some quite fast Eb minor scales. Just work them out very slowly at first; they get easier.

Then if you want to think about the piece as a piece, here's one central idea (I think). Even though the two main sections are in different keys and have completely different textures, there's one thing in common. Schubert is always playing with a syncopated accent on the second beat in a 3/4 measure - not where it belongs. It's often in the LH, like the Bb's in the LH in the first few measures, or the accented LH chords in the ben marcato section starting at m 83, but it shows up in the RH, too, for example in the half notes in the RH in m 26, 28, 30, etc. So once you get the notes you can think about feeling that syncopation throughout the piece, yet without making it too obvious or heavy handed.

Hope that helps. But if you just hate the piece, dump it and ask your teacher for another.

[outin]

I have tried to give every piece a fair chance, but sometimes I try too long because I am trying to make myself believe that the piece is really ok...sometimes it's me, sometimes it's my teacher who says we'll better drop it because I simply have no motivation to practice and if I take it too far I start thinking about any excuses not to sit on the piano at all. It's different when I actually like the music, it may be very hard and frustrating and I sometimes just get enough of it, but it soon passes and I still want to continue.

I have never been able to understand how those people who do exams can work so long on pieces they have not selected themselves, sometimes a whole year. But maybe I just have too selective taste, in music like in everything else. It would be easier if I could just enjoy almost anything. I cannot practice a piece without listening to my playing and if I don't like the music at all the way it should be played, then how on earth could I keep learning it. It's pure torture.
Like trying to play Mozart... how could I when the music itself annoys me so much. I just try my best NOT to make it sound so much like Mozart

So...don't torture yourself too long, no one piece can be so important to your learning process that it cannot be replaced with another one, either something easier or something so much more appealing that you can handle the mental pain involved.

[j_menz]

Sounds like it going to be a challenging piece for you. The first question you need to ask is if you actually like the piece in the first place. If you don't, talk to your teacher about changing to one you do - it's going to be with you for a while and hating it will only make it harder.

Other than that, you do it analogously to how you eat an elephant - one bite at a time.