u/Advanced_Honey_2679

When I was single going to a classical concert was an event but it wasn’t breaking the bank, but now I have a family we have to multiply the cost it’s starting to really add up. For us, it can be only a once in a year thing.

Are there some ideas or hacks to be able to see decent quality classical concerts - doesn’t have to be top tier professionals, but better than high schoolers - for not-too-expensive prices?

Around holiday season it seems there’s more of these opportunities, but less so at other times of the year. Would love to hear any experiences you might have.

It’s that season again, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on performance anxiety and so on. And, I just gave a recital 2 days ago as well.

One issue that keeps popping up is the fear of mistakes. How do I avoid making mistakes, etc. I would encourage you NOT to try to make avoidance of mistakes your objective. Above all, this mindset just doesn’t make for a very enjoyable experience, for you or for the audience.

Instead of viewing it like a test where every mistake you make is costing you points. This is a SUBTRACTIVE mindset.

Look at it through an ADDITIVE lens. Every time you create music that sounds good to you, a phrase that flows, a moment of perfect rubato, beautiful voicing, whatever. Give yourself an applause. You created a moment of magic.

I think from an audience standpoint, I just want to be moved. The other day a lady played a Schumann and there was this phrase where she had these delicate runs into the high treble. It was BEAUTIFUL. It moved me. That’s what I remember from the performance. I don’t even remember if she had mistakes, she probably did, but I don’t care. It’s that MOMENT that sticks with me even weeks later.

Long-video, made an error which two commenters called out. I don’t want to fix and reupload because it got 4K views in the first 24 hours. What’s the best way to acknowledge and not let it get into a toxic comments discussion.

My first teacher taught nothing about musicality, I was a piano playing robot, my second teacher taught me but I kind of swung all the way to the opposite extreme.

By my third teacher - who was a renowned and very strict teacher - he would often say to me, “You try too hard to sound musical, but it doesn’t convince me.”

These comments hurt my feelings at the time, but now I always question whether I have pushed a rendition too far. Curious where you draw the line.

So I’m the guy with the “virtuoso” teacher - if you recall from a few days back - so this week he popped a really interesting insight into why I was hitting a speed wall.

Basically in all my runs, almost 100% of the time I’m hitting a speed limit it’s because one of my fingers is hanging on a hair too long.

I was sitting through this and myself and diagnosed it as - say you’re doing rapid LH arpeggio my thumb might be hanging on a millisecond too long going up, and my finger 3/4 is hanging on too long coming down.

What’s happening is basically because the finger is hanging on a millisecond longer than it needs to, the hand is very slightly rotating in one direction or the other. Say your thumb is holding on but you need to keep going up the keys with the LH, naturally your hand will rotate towards your body to compensate. But you need to rotate the hand back to keep going so it’s a wasted motion.

It is this HOLDING ON + HAND ROTATION that is causing me to lose time, and at a fast tempo it’s either causing a speed limit or when I try to push it, inaccuracies.

When he plays fast passages I carefully noticed his hand is always parallel to the keysticks. He can generate incredible velocity this way. He won’t tell me that - I don’t even think he noticed that of himself - but you can clearly see it when he virtuosos all over the keyboard.

(This also applies to rapid octaves. He gets off the octave so fast, it’s like a hot potato.)

Curious if you have one and what it is, and whether your students follow it!

My teacher is great and everything - child prodigy, virtuoso, placed in some international competitions. Difficult passages come super easy for him.

The other day I was walking through a difficult part of Liszt Bm Sonata with him, and I’m like I’m struggling with accuracy here. He says “oh … just do this” and proceeds to virtuoso all over the keyboard. My jaw is on the floor.

I go “well that’s the thing I don’t know how to do the thing you just did” he thinks about it a moment and kind of shrugs his shoulders like he doesn’t know how he did it either.

Awkward silence.

Saw this drop on Freakonomics podcast: “Great. Then depressed. Then great again. Stephen Dubner gets the full story from David Lang; we also hear from some fans, and the New York Philharmonic’s president. The math and the aftermath of wealth of nations.”

I know we give a lot of advice like perform more, with more experience performance anxiety gets better. But I wanted to give a first hand account of what happens to performance anxiety when you play more, having gone through it myself (three recitals in 4 weeks).

1. The first recital was contained a number of mistakes, as I played thru a technically challenging piece, some parts just kind of went by like a blur. This is a typical experience of this sub I think. But in the aftermath, I was like, "I'm still alive." I'm being serious. I went through that and I did not die. That gave me comfort for the next recital and kind of made me more relaxed.
2. The second thing is the audience reaction was really positive despite the mistakes, and especially from other intermediate and advanced pianists. This gave me a lot of confidence that I could give a convincing rendition despite what I assumed were errors.
3. I was able to identify areas from the first recital that needed particularly more attention. As a result, I'm able to lock in a bit more, focus where I need to focus, and importantly very slightly SLOW DOWN in parts the next time around, and certainly by the third time. It's like selective attention you can really only get from going through the fire of a live performance.
4. Finally and I would say this is the most comforting is that I kind of subconsciously developed this attitude of idgaf. I didn't ever tell myself it doesn't matter like positive reinforcement, but rather the attitude just naturally shifts to idgaf without me really doing anything about it. Because by the third performance it's like, I've been through this, I survived, I don't really care about the outcome, as long as I put my heart and soul into the performance I'm happy with whatever happens.

I think that final one is really powerful because it is kind of addicting in the sense that after you start giving several recitals, your attitude changes from "I want to avoid recitals like the plague", to more like, "wow that was a rush, when's the next one?"

I’ve been trying to come up with mental framework for thumbnails and titling videos and everything I thought of was just too complicated.

I think the dumbest one that works for me is simply this one:

• Make your thumb and title so compelling, people will click on it even if you had ZERO views and ZERO subs.

Because at some point you WILL have zero views and people can’t see your subs unless they click through it. Someone’s got to be the first to click.

The more people you can get to sign up to be the FIRST to click on the video, the more chances you have something viral on your hands.

Today I learned that apparently Chopin and Alkan were NEIGHBORS in Paris (along with George Sand). Liszt was in Paris at the same time, and Alkan appeared in concerts with him.

Can you imagine what a concert featuring Liszt AND Alkan would have been like? I almost feel bad for the piano.