JEFF MANCHUR: PIANIST
  • Home
  • Biography
  • News and Updates
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Praying with Bach
  • Blogger
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Biography
  • News and Updates
  • Pianist
    • Mozart in a Month
    • Choosing Joy
    • Audio and Video
    • Repertoire
  • Praying with Bach
  • Blogger
  • Contact
Search

Failing in order to succeed

7/19/2018

Comments

 
Following on the heels of my last two posts (one about how practice doesn't make perfect, another analyzing a recent Beethoven performance), it's worth noting one more thing:

All of our successes are a culmination of our entire lives up to that point, including successes and especially including our failures.

I mentioned in the Beethoven post that I'm quite terrified of performing fugues; that's a genre you can't get away from playing the piano. Here's the source of my terror: towards the end of my B.Mus in piano performance, I went through a string of performances where I had memory lapses in fugues. It didn't seem to matter what I did at the time, no matter how prepared I was, no matter how often I played without problems in the practice room, or for my teacher. I could not get through fugues.

Now, I know of several strategies to do better memorization work. The point here isn't how to do better practicing.

The point is that no matter how much better prepared I am today, I will still be worried about performing fugues in public. That makes every successful performance of a fugue that much more of an accomplishment. That makes every remembered note, every beautiful phrase or voicing that much more powerful to me. I think that playing on that knife’s edge allows me a certain kind of musicality that I wouldn't otherwise have. I would play differently if I didn't have that string of rough performances. Not better or worse, just differently.

The “failures” of my past make me, me, the pianist that I am today. That's the most valuable, distinctive, tool in my musical arsenal.

​
Comments
      Built with ConvertKit
      Sign up for my e-mail list and receive my free guide "Listening to the Mozart Piano Sonatas

      ​"Modern performers seem to regard their performances as texts rather than acts, and to prepare for them with the same goal as present-day textual editors: to clear away accretions. Not that this is not a laudable and necessary step; but what is an ultimate step for an editor should be only a first step for a performer, as the very temporal relationship between the functions of editing and performing already suggests." -Richard Taruskin, ​Text and Act

      Archives

      March 2021
      November 2018
      October 2018
      September 2018
      August 2018
      July 2018
      June 2018
      May 2018
      April 2018
      March 2018
      November 2017
      October 2017
      September 2017
      August 2017
      July 2017
      June 2017
      May 2017
      April 2017
      July 2016
      June 2016
      May 2016
      June 2012
      January 2012
      December 2011

      Categories

      All
      Alex Ross
      Amy Beach
      Artistic Messages
      Artistry
      Audio
      Bach
      Best Practices
      Boring
      Chamber Music
      Chiara
      Chopin
      Clapping
      Cliburn Competition Report
      Competitions
      Concert Reflections
      Contemporary Music
      Creativity
      Enjoying
      Extraordinary Recordings
      Glenn Gould
      Influential Books
      Intellectual
      Learning
      Listening
      Liszt
      Messiaen
      Mozart In A Month
      Nature
      Performance Practice
      Performance Traditions
      Pianistic Intentions
      Piano Business
      Practicing
      Richard Dare
      Richard Taruskin
      Rising Stars
      Serialism
      Subjectivity
      Teacher Sayings
      Teaching
      Textual Fidelity
      Time
      Video

      RSS Feed

    Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
    • Home
    • Biography
    • News and Updates
    • Pianist
      • Mozart in a Month
      • Choosing Joy
      • Audio and Video
      • Repertoire
    • Praying with Bach
    • Blogger
    • Contact