How to deal with losing interest in pieces?

[mishamalchik]

I've had this issue for a while now, where I get started on a longer piece (the greatest offender being Beethoven sonatas other than op 49) and just can't for the life of me find the motivation to stick with it to finish it. I love the music but with Beethoven, I have a very specific way I want it to sound, and I get frustrated when I lack the technical skill to make it sound that way and then this just compounds the overall repetitive nature of sonata form and I just go back to plowing away at more exciting things like Liszt.

I love Liszt! Even his most challenging pieces just fit very naturally under the hands! I'll spend hours going over a few measures of Liszt without thinking about it but feel immense mental fatigue after 15 minutes of a classical sonata.

I'm thinking it might have to do with where my strengths are? I'm really good at a lot of the "flashy" motions and techniques of Liszt, and genuinely struggle with things that require a more subtle touch and control, like Bach or Beethoven.

Any advice on how to get through these pieces? Every audition that has ever auditioned requires a Beethoven sonata, and I love Beethoven when played by Sokolov or Schiff, but I just get so annoyed when I hear myself playing it.

[lostinidlewonder]

There's no real mystery to the solution to this problem, learn pieces that are not so difficult or large scale. I don't think it is healthy to spend hours on a few measures, in fact I think that is rather mind numbing! If you approach your studies from an efficiency perspective you should simplify your repertoire choice and then build from there, you will find then eventually even what is difficult now will be solved in quick time later if you have built up towards it.

Difficulty of pieces very much has to do with the time it takes to learn the piece. Just because you can play something technically demanding doesn't mean that it represents your skill level especially if it took an excessive amount of time to learn the piece!

[mjames]

^--I'm more of the opposite, I tend to lose interest in pieces that are well within my grasp. There is nothing more euphoric to me in piano playing than conquering a beast! Hunt, hunt! I'm hunter of dragons not mere goblins!

OP: If you feel bored, just try to work on small-scale classical/baroque pieces. Little preludes, sonatinas, and so on. There's lot of it in the literature. I'm exactly the same as you, I can really only enjoy and dedicate myself 100% if I'm playing god-like bombastic music like Liszt or Scriabin.

[visitor]

Op nothing wrong w setting a piece aside for a few weeks or months....
Also try working them from the end backwards, that helps too

[mishamalchik]

I think the issue is more along the lines of my having the attention span of a peanut lol. I've played some Chopin etudes (a recording of Opus 10 no 1 is around here somewhere and I've played also Opus 25 no 10 and no 7) so I don't know that the issue is necessarily a technical one. I love short technical pieces that keep me on my toes! While it's a long way off, I'm currently working Mazeppa and it's the longest piece I've ever worked on that I intend to fully finish! It's like a puzzle for my hands and I love it!
   I can handle just about anything in Beethoven's writing with some squinting and dreaded metronome work, but I think I just get lost musically? Like when I hear others play it, I have an appreciation for how they've crafted the piece, and I can imagine how I might put it together, but as I'm practicing I lose track of the big picture of how I want it to sound. When I lose track of the sound I want and the colors I want to see I just stop dead in my tracks when I'm playing. The same thing happens when I play Bach, even when the work is short.

[lostinidlewonder]

^--I'm more of the opposite, I tend to lose interest in pieces that are well within my grasp. There is nothing more euphoric to me in piano playing than conquering a beast! Hunt, hunt! I'm hunter of dragons not mere goblins!

But what does it mean to play something that is a beast? Do you spend extended months or even years on a single piece? I can't understand how anyone would find that enjoyable myself, a waste of precious time. Building towards "difficult" pieces and making them easier is a better approach I reckon, I remember tackling certain pieces in my childhood/teens and them taking a while and feeling like beasts, but now they are tamed kittens! Approaching works as if they are tough will always put you in that mindset,  aiming to learn pieces efficiently changes the whole game.

[ted]

I don't deal with it at all, I just stop playing pieces I have ceased to enjoy. It isn't a matter of difficulty, I could probably play lots of things, but learning a work solely to prove I could do it seems a pointless exercise.

[mjames]

Do you spend extended months or even years on a single piece?

no. LOL, a few weeks usually. I only play difficult works that are within my grasp technically. I usually learn one or two big pieces along with several easier ones so there really isn't any time being wasted.

[dogperson]

.,..

I'm thinking it might have to do with where my strengths are? I'm really good at a lot of the "flashy" motions and techniques of Liszt, and genuinely struggle with things that require a more subtle touch and control, like Bach or Beethoven.

Any advice on how to get through these pieces? Every audition that has ever auditioned requires a Beethoven sonata, and I love Beethoven when played by Sokolov or Schiff, but I just get so annoyed when I hear myself playing it.

.

Didn't you answer your own question?  Your strengths lie in playing the 'flashy'  repertoire,  but you need to develop  the technical skills of subtlety and color, don't you?  I would recommend developing those skills by choosing  some repertoire that is technically  very easy but requires refinement in touch and color.  Choose things that you can sight read so that you eliminate all other considerations.

[mishamalchik]

Pieces that I can sight read at the moment are very very very very easy. Like think opus 49 sonata difficult at most. My summer project is to get better at sight reading and not to listen to pieces before I play them. I have perfect pitch, and I almost never play with sheet music in front of me. I know it's bad and I'm undisciplined and immature as a musician, so I'm working on that. One of the issues I've faced there is that my teacher typically only teaches advanced students who already have a pretty advanced sight reading ability, and since I'm relatively new to piano (just genuinely obsessed) I don't have a lot of those fundamental skills but he doesn't have a lot of experience teaching people how to read music. So it's been something I'm really trying to work on but that I only really get to work on by myself, because whenever I bring it up he always just laughs and says, oh you know that!

I think it's also possible that I just need to mature a bit as a musician before I have the mental strength to take on a sonata? I'm a bit of a non-traditional student and the entirety of my repertoire list is about 15 pieces. The thing is, I really want to advance my studies with piano and in order to do that, I'll need to audition for festivals and summer programs and all of these auditions are asking for a movement of a Beethoven/Classical sonata.

[dogperson]

If you need to work on the skill of developing touch and interpretation, you should start with something extremely easy and this means not a Beethoven sonata.  Play something very easy that you can sight read  to develop the skills that you need:  Think about how you want it to sound,  and play around with what it takes to get it there. 

 It is not too early in your development to have this, and skipping the process will haunt you.  After you worked on several very easy pieces, and are able to play them as you would like them to be heard,  you can increase the technical difficulty.