Is there a reason why a piano teacher would go through a piece quickly?

[figaro]

I am someone returning to piano after time away.  For about a year I have been taking weekly 1 hour lessons to relearn and acquire new piano playing skills.  Currently I am learning Debussy - Clare de Lune and will start on Beethoven - Sonata in F Minor.  What I'm a little confused about is the sudden speed my teacher is taking with Clare de Lune.  It's been about 8 weeks into learning the notes and I'm to practice up to M58.  I'm guessing at next week's lesson the last page of the piece will be covered and I'll be devoting my practice time on playing through the entire piece. 

This is very different from learning the Chopin Nocturne, where we went through sections at a time and finally after about 7 months, my teacher commented that she can now hear my sound when playing.

I commented at my last lesson that we were going through Clare de Lune faster than with Chopin.  Would anyone have had a similar type of experience learning or teaching a student and are reasons various?  I'm not sure if she's trying to get me to learn faster in order to work on expressive playing or if she doesn't want to spend so much time on a piece.  I do sometimes feel she might be frustrated that I'm taking too long. 

With the addition of the Beethoven Sonata, does it make sense from a learning perspective to be covering a piece quickly?  Or is there something in the teaching method I'm not aware of?

For background, this has been my year of work with my current teacher:

Technique:
Hanon exercises
Czerny etude
Loeschorn etude
Scales, chords, arpeggios

Repetoire:
Mozart K545 - Allegro (about 2 months)
Bach Allemande from English Suite no3 (about 3 months)
Grieg - Anitra's Dance (duet) (about 4 months)
Chopin - Nocturne in E Minor (about 7 months)
Debussy - Clare de Lune (current)
Beethoven - Sonata in F Minor (current)

[ranjit]

That sounds perfectly normal to me. It's possible you picked up on the Debussy quicker than the Chopin.

Teachers tend to look at how much you've achieved as opposed to the overall time spent, which I think is reasonable.

[lostinidlewonder]

Doing only months for a piece seems excessive to me, why not build up skills with pieces that take less than a month. Even better have every week a new piece to learn. This of course can be done along side pieces which take months.

[brogers70]

Doing only months for a piece seems excessive to me, why not build up skills with pieces that take less than a month. Even better have every week a new piece to learn. This of course can be done along side pieces which take months.

I second this. If you learn only pieces that take you months to learn, you may spend a year and learn only a handful of pieces. Of course it can be motivating to work on difficult pieces that you love, but you miss out if you don't give yourself the experience of mastering a variety easier pieces quickly. There's a lot to learn and a lot of fun to be had by playing stuff you can play well without taking months and months just to learn the notes. Fine to keep an aspirational piece on the side for many months, but learning lots of things that are relatively easier may end up getting you to your aspirational pieces faster in the long run.

[transitional]

Is your teacher making a distinction between a "serious" piece and a "for fun" piece? Maybe the Claire de lune is just "for fun," so you don't need to spend as much time on it?

[keypeg]

Since there is a sudden change, you might want to ask your teacher about it directly.

[figaro]

That sounds perfectly normal to me. It's possible you picked up on the Debussy quicker than the Chopin.

Teachers tend to look at how much you've achieved as opposed to the overall time spent, which I think is reasonable.

Thanks for your comment.  I suppose it could be that I am picking up on the Debussy quicker - it doesn't have tricky note combinations like in the nocturne.   Perhaps it's hard for me to judge my own progress given how there's always something new to learn in piano. 

[figaro]

I second this. If you learn only pieces that take you months to learn, you may spend a year and learn only a handful of pieces. Of course it can be motivating to work on difficult pieces that you love, but you miss out if you don't give yourself the experience of mastering a variety easier pieces quickly. There's a lot to learn and a lot of fun to be had by playing stuff you can play well without taking months and months just to learn the notes. Fine to keep an aspirational piece on the side for many months, but learning lots of things that are relatively easier may end up getting you to your aspirational pieces faster in the long run.

I appreciate the comments that there should be more variety in the pieces I'm learning.  While I am learning the pieces I listed above with my teacher - I am also learning independently less challenging pieces that I can study on my own.  I guess because I didn't mention that in my original post, the assumption was that I was limited in my exposure to music.   Some examples of what I'm learning on my own would be Vivaldi, Bartok, and Glass.