Practice after a concert

6.7 Practice on the day of a concert

There are a few similar themes which surfaced when the pianists described their practice on performance days. Almost every pianist who commented on this specific topic suggested they would do most their practice in the morning, and then have a long rest before the performance. Both Busoni and Tausig were reported to have performed slow play-throughs of their programs, without emotion, before a

performance. Janina Fialkowska also stated she would play everything at least once slowly in the morning practice. Every interviewed pianist said they would also

practice everything at slower tempos. Some wanted to make sure they played through each piece which would be performed on the evening in its entirety, while others were confident to leave much of the program alone, perhaps only touching up a few technical sections. Stephen Kovacevich and Soyeon Lee both suggested playing pieces other than their evening performance repertoire as they were wary of discovering a problem section which they may not have time to fix.

There are only three references from the older pianists on how they specifically warmed-up immediately before a concert. Horowitz stated that he never warmed up on a concert day. In Glenn Gould’s lengthy description of his recording procedures, he also did not touch the piano until the recording light was on. He believed playing the pieces just prior to the performance diluted his strong mental imagery of the music. Orion Weiss related that he had heard Emanuel Ax warming-up by playing the opening section of a particular concerto over and over.

6.8 Practice after a concert

Practicing after a concert was only mentioned by two artists, but it is an interesting concept to consider. Carl Tausig stated that he would go home after a concert and play through everything again, slowly and carefully, in an attempt to correct all of the small imperfections which inevitably came out during the performance. Ivo

Pogorelich also stated he would occasionally do the same thing and described that he may not have another chance to practice until the next concert, or more often he

would stay afterward because he was a perfectionist and wanted to fix certain problems immediately.

6.9 Conclusion

There is an intriguing amount of collected advice which has been presented in this study. Many pianists from different cultures and backgrounds have commented on a number of relevant issues. The majority of the ideas and suggestions are found in sources from both the older and newer generations of pianists. There are very few conflicting ideas which adamantly declare that one method is far superior to another method. Each of these artists may have their preferred schemes or techniques for practicing, but none of them ever suggested that their way was the best or the only way to achieve something.

There were a few questions asked in the interviews for which corresponding advice could not be found from any of the older pianists. I could not find any important sources of information with regard to the following: there was no practice history or evolution of practice regimes to be found for the older artists; we do not know what any of the older pianists ate or drank before concerts; we do not know how long they warmed up just prior to a performance (other than a few comments from Horowitz and Gould which are most likely not very applicable to most pianists); and we are uncertain if any of the older pianists used beta-blockers or other chemicals to control their nerves.

Considering all of the information which has been collected, a few final conclusions can be stated:

1. The information and guidelines for good practice do exist and are to be found, but they are scattered throughout many different types of books and articles, and students are generally unaware of how to find this information.

2. The pianists in this study were exposed to very little of the information presented in the literature review. Most all of them felt lost and unsure of how they were working in their earlier years, and had they been exposed to this information, they may have been able to more readily establish their own routines with more varieties of practice techniques, and their self-confidence may have been stronger after reading about the performance advice offered.

3. There is clearly a lack of exposure to this information at the high school and university level, and making teachers aware of these studies might improve their teaching and help their students immeasurably.

There are a few suggestions I have for further research concerning this topic:

1. It would be beneficial to interview the most famous pianists of today’s generation, both young and old, and ask a similar set of questions that were asked of my selected eight artists. Their answers may not be much different, but hearing the same ideas as expressed by different pianists would add further depth to this study.

2. The interviews could further explore the relationship between the work and run ideas as suggested by Chaffin et al in their study. Their attempt to record and quantify Gabriele’s work in relation to her playing through could be performed on a larger scale with more artists and with different criteria.

3. Teachers have the strongest influence on students’ practice habits. A set of

interviews with heads of music departments could be useful to ascertain today’s most current methodology on teaching students how to practice. This information may be very sparse or even non-existent.

Chapter 7