Piano Recital 2014-10

October 4, 2014 @ Otsuka

Yesterday was my piano recital. This year I performed the "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" variations, which I had been working on for quite a while.

Compared with last year, I think I was able to play with more confidence. My fingers did not shake as much, and I suspect it helped that I had been playing in front of people at practice sessions every three months. I also performed in a suit again this year, and between the length of the piece and the tension, I ended up drenched in sweat. Near the end I was sweating so much that it was literally dripping off me.

My fingers still are not fully up to speed, but I think I managed to play at a respectable tempo. I stopped at Variation 11 and had a scary moment where I almost could not recover. This is a piece I practiced for about a year, and at the beginning I honestly was not sure how it would turn out, but because it contains so many different kinds of material, it ended up being very good training.

Whenever I know I have to play in front of people, I am always full of anxiety. When I sit down at the piano, I sometimes feel as though pieces I could play before might suddenly disappear from my mind.

I still felt some of that anxiety this time too, but as I have had more opportunities to perform in public, I have started to realize that this fear is mostly unnecessary. Once you have practiced a piece enough, your body remembers it. Even under extreme tension, you may make more mistakes, but you can still make it through.

That said, I am still afraid of not being able to recover after a major mistake. I especially worry that if I stop and try to restart, I will not be able to jump back in from the middle. My teacher often asks me to resume from arbitrary spots during lessons, and I am not very good at that. Looking back, I think that weakness is one of the things that undermines my confidence.

This year I want to get better at reading the score, fix that weakness, and play with more confidence and composure next year. I wonder what I should play next. Choosing the repertoire is always hard.