A student once told me that he couldn’t possibly have anything to learn from a certain piece because he could sight read it, and anyway his brother had played it when he was 2 years younger.

On a podcast of a recent From the Top episode members of a young trio discussed preparing and performing a previously learned piece. One of the young artists talked about going deeper into the piece—how it was like reading a novel. He likened it to the first time you read a book and it is all about the characters and the plot. Then, upon rereading you discover it is much greater than characters or plot and every time you go back there is more there for you.

It makes me sad when I meet a student who has fallen into the trap (or been led into it) of moving on to the next piece, and the next, and the next, to the point that they have lost sight of the reason for learning and playing music in the first place. A good teacher walks the thin line where there is just enough challenge to keep a student progressing but not so much that it results in complete frustration. This line has to be custom tailored for every student.

Did you notice I said, “complete frustration?” Frustration is actually a good thing. It leads to curiosity, creativity, and stick-to-itiveness.  Young musicians need to develop a tolerance for frustration—for delayed notational, technical, and musical gratification.

There is a delicate spot in the development of every musician where suddenly the challenges of reading and technique lessen. They can read through a great deal of piano literature fairly well. A fine teacher will have made sure that, over the years,  the student has mastered many pieces in which the challenges and frustrations were primarily musical ones.

One important way to help a student accept purely musical challenges is review and performance of old friends—AKA previously learned pieces.  The act of meeting a piece of repertoire again after some time has passed helps us gauge our maturity and accept the challenges of working our new insights into our performance.

When a student hasn’t learned to accept musical challenges in the absence of notational and technical ones, an attitude like the one described in the first paragraph of this post can result. On the other hand, if he or she has learned to accept notational, technical, and musical challenges separately and equally, then the student is able to mature and blossom as in the second example.

Two of my students recently revisited previously learned recital pieces for a recent masterclass. We listeners were amazed at how much the pieces had grown in just two and a half months. The two performers were surprised and grateful for new insights into their pieces. Well, OK there were a couple of places where they were more than a little disgruntled that new solutions had to be found in order to make the new and the old work together. All of us were awed at how the brain is always still working away even when we are not actively practicing a work.

I am always delighted by how much I learn from revisiting old friends through teaching. Somehow, the act of seeing a piece through another’s hands and helping them through the process of learning it, opens up possibilities and wisdom that I am certain I could never come to all on my own.

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