A Friendly Piano

3/11/2017

The night before last, Thursday, March 9, my piano students performed their Spring Recital, the first of their twice-yearly performances,

...preceded, as always, by months of practicing,

...practicing,

...and more practicing,

And today I'm still floating on that post-recital cloud of relief mixed with elation and gratitude that all our performances went well - in fact, exceptionally well this time- thanks in no small part to one fine, friendly piano.
Now, it can perhaps be argued that pianists don't have to deal with some of the performance issues that other instrumentalists face.

For example, we don't have to worry about what we eat or drink before a performance, as do wind players,

...or wearing accommodating clothing, as do cellists.

We don't have to schlepp our instruments around, pull them out of their case, assemble them tune them, prep them, or hold onto them while we wait our turn to perform.

We don't face the challenge of endeavoring to land on an exact spot with a correctly-held bow, which will produce a terrible sound if it lands 1/32" off target,

...as we pianists have a nice 7/8" landing pad.

But we do face challenges that other instrumentalists don't.
For example, the music-reading is much harder, as we have so many more notes to deal with on the page,

...not to mention keys to deal with on the keyboard, a miniature orchestra under our hands of which we are the conductor and our fingers all the instruments.

   But probably the greatest performance challenge pianists face is that we don't perform on the instrument we've been practicing on. We always have to play on a recital-venue instrument that's strange to us, one that is likely to have a different feel, different response, a tighter key and/or pedal action than what we're used to. Having to play on who-knows-what kind of a piano can be a source of performance anxiety in and of itself.
     Over the course of the 20 years I've been teaching I've held piano recitals in homes, school auditoriums, and church halls, with a range in quality of performance spaces and instruments.
       But our current recital venue, which my students and I have been using for the past year, Graves Recital Hall, is we all agree, the best venue ever.

Not only because of the beauty of the performance hall,

...or the practice room, where everyone can warm up before their performance, this time, happily, with the availability of earphones (see post from 9/25/2016, "The Beat That My Heart Skipped"), though even if the earphones had been once again MIA we would have been all right as this time I instructed everyone to bring their own practice earphones.

But what really makes this venue is the piano, a beautiful 9-foot Wm, Knabe & Co. concert grand that is so easy to play, so responsive, so friendly to the fingers, and has a beautiful sound as well.