A Question of Polish

[nightwindsonata]

Hi all,

I just would like to hear from some of the experienced pianists on this forum about their mindsets regarding polishing pieces for concert. I have no problem getting to the 80-percent mark with pieces (sight-reading, learning, memorizing, etc.), but then I always seem to hit a wall, and it is only in certain pieces that I feel I can really attain a high-level of performance-ready (or else it seems to happen by accident).

Case in point--I am currently trying to bring the Beethoven Op. 31 No. 3 up to audition-level as part of my program. I have less than a month before videos are due for master's applications, and three months before the live auditions. I can play through the entire thing from memory with minimal issues, but it always seems less-than-stellar when I perform it. My teacher always tells me what I'm doing wrong in specific passages, but rarely can I glean out general principles to apply to most of the things in the piece, since as sonatas go this one is typical in that it has a wide variety of challenges (and there always seems to be more to do). How do you get in a mindset of really perfecting a piece to a concert level? I feel like I've been over every measure in slow-motion so, so many times already; but it never seems to improve at all when I bring it on stage.

Thoughts? Any advice (or encouragement, or discouragement) would be appreciated. If you all like, I will post some vids in the audition section later today.

[lelle]

I'm not the right person to answer, because most things I play are always a bit rougharound the edges, but I wondered nonetheless if you mean that you struggle to play perfectly cleanly in a technical sense, or if you mean musical issues that are not "good enough" so to speak (your teacher pointing out how to play specific passages better, but you can't glean the general principles you need to apply to the entire piece based on that), or both?

Keep in mind also that most pianists who are not at the top of the field do make some mistakes, that it's normal to be imperfect. The question is just how much.

Please post videos, I could give you feedback on musical matters, at least.