The Evolving Piano Recital, Or Nerves, Inc.

     I've been shepherding piano students through recitals for over 20 years, for most of those years three recitals a year, only in the past few years cutting back to two a year, only because for the advanced students it was getting too difficult to conquer three big, polished, memorized pieces a year.
      Over the years I've had recitals in my home, students' homes,  a school auditorium, a church hall,

​...and now Graves Recital Hall,

...where the students not only have the opportunity to play on a 9-foot concert grand Steinway,

...but can roam through room after room of the piano store to which the recital hall is attached, and have a look at all the beautiful pianos for sale,

...and organs.

     I've done piano recitals with as many as 26 students, and as few as five. ​

    Back when the recitals were in homes or halls I'd organize a big post-recital pot-luck.

​...or in the summer a post-recital swim party.

     For all the years I've been doing piano recitals, I should be able to pull one off in my sleep.
      Or rather, I shouldn't be trying to mentally pull one off wide awake when I should be sleeping, which was the situation in the wee hours of the morning before yesterday's recital, when instead of being asleep I was up at 4:30 am thinking about - what else? My students' upcoming piano recital.
       Now, I generally have a case of nerves on the day of a piano recital, but it's usually only a small - to - medium  case. Yesterday it was a biiiig case.
       And after I'd moved in the middle of the night from my bed to the arm chair in my family room - the better to ruminate in - I spent equal amounts of time stressing and trying to figure out why I was stressing. After all, my student group having become progressively smaller over the past several years, I was down to five students - the same number I'd started out with - and so a recital of only five students, all of whom were prepared and had more or less breezed though their pieces at their last lessons, should not have been keeping me up.
       But it wasn't my students that I was worrying over.  And when I dug a little deeper into my psyche I realized that I was worrying about me. Worrying that I'd mess up my piece, that I'd get so tangled up in some chord or arpeggio that the whole thing would crash and burn.

      I also realized that I was worrying about this eventuality more than usual because usually I just figure that if I mess up my piece, well, at least the rest of my students will sound good enough that I'll be able to hold my head high; but this time I'd only have five student performances to justify any potential mess-ups of my own piece.  Would five good performances be sufficient to distract the audience from my terrible one, should my own performance play out as terribly on the stage as it was playing out in my mind?
      That's how your mind works at 4:30 am.
      Also, since I was down to five students, I'd invited a couple of guest performers to the recital, an Irish fiddler and her guitar duet partner, and the daughter of one of my friends who is an accomplished pianist. None of the guest performers had heard me play before. What if I blew my piece out of the water in front of them?
      Of course, none of the guest performers would have cared. They were friends. And, being themselves musicians, they all knew from hitting a wrong note. But again, that's not what your mind tells you at 4:30 am.
      Finally, after I'd spent fourteen hours worrying it to death, how did the recital go?
       Fine.        

      My piece was fine,        

​... as was the  piano accompaniment I played to the French horn piece one of my students performed after her piano piece.

     My students played well.

    The Irish fiddle-guitar duo was wonderful,

​...as was our guest pianist.

     At the end, everyone felt good, all of us riding the wave of post-recital relief and gemütlichkeit.

       After the recital Tom, myself, my fiddler friend and another friend who'd shown up at the recital for support headed over to our new traditional post-recital go-to,

...where it was well with my soul.