Piano Exam Stories

[Vivers]

My friend phoned me the other day, and I feel compelled to tell this story.

At our conservatory, there is a girl who did her public speaking exam, and while she was answering one of the questions that the examiner asked her on her speech, she noticed that the examiner looked like she saw sleeping, so she stopped and tried to *politely* wake her... it seems that the examiner had died.

My teacher, who is also an examiner, says that this also happened with a piano examiner who had a heart attack in the middle of an exam. I can only imagine the trauma that these young children doing their exams would have to live with. "I'm not so good at piano... When I did my exam, I bored the examiner to death!"

Everytime my teacher leaves to examine, she saves strange stories to tell... so your turn, do you guys have strange exam stories?

[amanfang]

Um, nothing really weird like that.  But at the end of my second year in the university, we had to pass a platform to be formally accepted into the piano program.  I brought a big plate of brownies.  Fortunately, my examiners were all men (5 of them) and I had an exam at 5:45 pm - right before dinner.  I told them of course it wasn't a bribe, but that whoever gave me the highest score could take the leftovers home.  I passed with very high scores.....      

[richard w]

Some years ago, I was doing some accompanying for various woodwind players, mostly youngsters doing their grade 1 or 2 exams. I recall that the examiner started off by offering to adjust the music stand to the students' requirements. It may have been because the candidates got progressively taller, but it seemed that every time the examiner offered to make the stand higher. This conjured in my mind the image of a poor seven-year-old flautist entering the exam room only to be dwarfed by the ridiculous height of the music stand, and then to have the examiner say 'Now, I'm sure we need to make this stand a bit higher for you.', and for her to proceed to elevate it through the ceiling.

It made me chuckle to myself at the time.....








PS - why isn't there a laughing 'smiley' available? 

[Tash]

oh this happened to a girl at my old school when she was doing her HSC performance exam.

basically when the examiners come into school we had it in the main hall, and so the 'security guard' of the school would go around checking that nobody was in there before the performances happened. he of course checked supposedly everywhere and kicked everyone out so it was all good. so this girl goes on to start playing, when a man (someone's father who'd been working at the canteen that day) came out of the men's toilets! so the examiners had to stop the performance ( it's a rule to stop the performance if any distractions occur) and kick this guy out. so she started again.
then later in her performance, they hear this loud crashing and hammering outside and had to stop her once again to see what the noise was. so one examiner goes out the door behind the stage to get rid of the noise, except then the door shut on her as she was outside and got locked out! so then she's banging on the door trying to get back in again and finally they realised and the rest of the performance was fine. but poor girl having stop and restart twice i'd hate that

[allthumbs]

Greetings

I have a true story. I am an adult piano student and started formal lessons in late 1997, working on my Grade 8 RCM after not having played for almost 20 years. Anyway, I took my very first piano exam of my life in January 2000.

My elderly father-in-law was in a nursing home at the time as a result of Parkinson's Disease and a week befor the exam, he took a turn for the worse. Two hours before my exam, the nursing home advised he had just passed away.

I was right in the middle of rehersing my pieces, so I packed up my music and went to the home to deal with the situation.

Knowing my father-in-law, he would have wanted me to do the exam as he played the piano in his younger days, so after finishing what had to be done at the home, I had about 15 minutes to drive to where the exam was being held. I got there just before my time slot.

I did my performance and I had a sense he was there with me, as I wasn't nervous at all which was unusual.

Cheers

Oh how did I do? I scored an 88!