how do professional pianists not miss any notes????

[david456103]

i've always wondered, and was always amazed, at how professional pianists dont miss any notes(with the exception of maybe 1 unnoticeable error) in ANY of their performances. I mean, even if you practice 4+ hours a day, are not nervous, etc.,,, isn't there still that chance you will miss a note? Professional pianists also never EVER seem to make "major" errors....all, if any, of the errors they make are very minor and can easily be blended in with the rest of the music.
Any thoughts??

[david456103]

oh and not to mention they may not always be in the best mood, best physical condition, etc...
the piano may not be top notch, they may not be used to the piano, etc...

[j_menz]

Ahh.... but they did. Here's a collection:

[dima_76557]

how do professional pianists not miss any notes?

Even Michelangeli misses some notes in the heat of a performance. It's only during practice of pieces they already know that some pianists never miss notes. Good technique and maximum concentration and awareness.

[awesom_o]

Yeah, I was going to say, the ones I've heard tend to miss plenty of notes. It takes very good ears to notice these things, though.
 

[dima_76557]

Yeah, I was going to say, the ones I've heard tend to miss plenty of notes. It takes very good ears to notice these things, though.
 

Probably because their focus is on good notes, not on wrong ones. That is one of the apsects that distinguish them from the general crowd of struggling mortals.

[david456103]

just as an example:

in her first 3 etudes, three of the most difficult in piano literature, theres maybe 1 minor slip(in the stravinsky). unbelievable.

[awesom_o]

But at this level, what is much more important is musicianship, tone-quality and having a genuine sense of spontaneity in the sound.

That's what is missing entirely in those performances for me.

They sound extremely rushed and over-rehearsed, and rushed!

Do you know what the tempo marking for Liszt Transcendental Etude no. 5 is?

[dima_76557]

just as an example:

in her first 3 etudes, three of the most difficult in piano literature, theres maybe 1 minor slip(in the stravinsky). unbelievable.

It's exactly that focus on not making mistakes that spoils it all. Unbelievable, yes.

[dcstudio]

It's exactly that focus on not making mistakes that spoils it all. Unbelievable, yes.

totally believable.

[minona]

I think it just becomes incredibly so much more likely to hit the right ones, those you've been practicing endlessly.

That said, since Kissin is renowned for his note-perfect (at least in terms of which notes) performances, that must mean most others are not note-perfect.

I think it's more of an obsession today than in history. Beethoven was well known for letting notes 'fall under the table' but he cared about how you played rather than how accurately. He regarded a mistake as almost unimportant.

I remember hearing a Mozart piano concerto or sonata, can't remember which, but it incorporates what sounds like a wrong note. It's almost as though he wrote it in to make people think he made a mistake so they'd then realise it wasn't, or perhaps thought he was improvising it in.

[indianajo]

I'm just an amateur, but after the beginning, I don't miss notes very often.  My teacher taught me that if you ever made a mistake, you were playing too fast.  So I would go as slow as necessary to play correctly, then speed up later.  In the beginning this would be unmusically slow.   I may not play as fast as the people on commercial recordings, but pieces I am through with practicing, I don't miss notes.  There is a church organist in our AGO local that never misses anything in her twice a year concerts.  She played a movement of JS Bach beautifully two weeks ago, and I was asking her to play the rest sometime.  She says there is one measure, where she frequently can't play all the notes.  So we won't be hearing the whole piece, until the year that she is satisfied with it. 

[iansinclair]

They do miss notes.  Not all that many, to be sure, but they do.  What they DON"T do is let missing a note change anything else, or disturb their concentration.  In fact, I would venture to say that this is true of any reasonably advanced amateur, as well as the pros.

Not that I advocate ignoring mistakes.  I don't.  If I make a mistake whilst practicing, I myself stop (but not right there; next obvious place) and go back and work on the whole section -- never less than half a dozen measures -- for a while.  If I've had to do that, when I'm less unhappy about the section than I was I will finish the piece -- and then go back and do the whole thing through again.  That last run through may still have the same mistake (or, horrors, others), but I feel that it is nearly as important to feel, if you will, the piece as a whole as it is to get it note perfect.

This may be, though, because I was a church musician -- and every week I had three to four pieces to present to the congregation, as well as the hymns and a choir anthem or two, and The Show Must Go On!

[omar_roy]

I once had a teacher who rarely played a wrong note.  I asked him how he always managed to play the right notes.  He looked at me, grinned, and said, "It helps if you practice the right ones."

I couldn't help but laugh because it was so obvious, so simple, and so TRUE.