Piano Forum

Topic: ARCT EXAM question  (Read 2007 times)

Offline julietteh

  • PS Silver Member
  • Newbie
  • ***
  • Posts: 1
ARCT EXAM question
on: August 18, 2013, 03:36:29 AM
I took my performer's ARCT exam this August in the Downtown Toronto location. I do admit I feel rushed into taking this exam as I took little time to prepare and I had only recently learned to memorize my pieces. However when I performed in the theatre in front of the examiners I felt comfortable and felt that I performed so much better than I normally do (by this I mean I performed without wrong notes or slips, and performing with a large dynamic range, staying focused and engaged, etc...) -- until it got to my final couple of pieces. I think my unpreparedness and insecurity got to be all of a sudden and I panicked a little bit and this caused lots of mistakes. The Etude, especially, was a joke- I played wrong notes far too many times to remember. In case anyone is wondering, the piece was Chopin Op.25 No.12 in C- which is already a challenging piece in itself (NOT saying that any other pieces are less challenging, but this is certainly a technically difficult piece.) If you'd like to have a listen on YouTube:
Once you have a listen you could easily assume how badly it could have turned out for this nervous pianist. I finished my recital literally sweating and panting because I couldn't believe what I had done.

I know that the rest of my repertoire was fine. I am just extremely worried about my chances of failing this exam.

I consider this a very stupid question but I do have to ask, for my sanity... For those with ARCT exam experiences: is this a factor to failure? Performing well for all of your repertoire but quite badly messing up one of the pieces. I have 2-3 weeks before I find out my result and I don't know how I can sleep until I find out!!!!!!

Thanks for reading