How to Play 2

Don’t be a member of the ‘panic’ club, says Kathryn Page: a grasp of overall harmony and structure will instil calmness, rather than panic, into the memorising of a piece

Chordal balance is a big challenge in MacDowell’s By Smouldering Embers, says Nils Franke (Scores p40)

‘Ihave a recurring nightmare that I am in the middle of an important concert, playing to a huge crowd… and I suddenly stop, seize up and panic! Will this happen?’

As both piano teacher and parent, this frightening confession has been shared with me much more often than I would like. In our piano-playing community, fear of humiliation is often linked to a fear of forgetting the notes. Inexperienced players of all ages commonly become negatively fixated by the risk of blanking and freezing – even if they are performing repertoire they’ve known for a long time.

What can a teacher do when fear levels reach fever pitch? I want my pupils to take a step back when it comes to the pursuit of perfection. Of course, catastrophic memory issues such as when a Mozart sonata movement either blanks out into silence or moves stylistically into atonal Schoënberg can be extremely unsettling. To avoid such a scenario, it is vital to emphasise the need for thorough preparation. Always ask your pupils questions: Can you internalise your music? Are you able to hear every note in your head? Can you play your memorised pieces in the air from start to finish?

Work away from the piano can do wonders for confidence and awareness; internalising your music unquestionably leads to strength and heightened control. But what about work at the piano itself? Preparation at the keyboard has to start with solid and consistent fingering. Students need to know that position changes shouldn’t be randomly realised in different ways each time they approach challenging passages. Repetition is key, in all the areas that are a concern, ironing out slowly all potential hazards in advance.

Beyond consistency, it is vital to know not only the main melodic elements in your repertoire, but also the accompaniment parts. Dame Fanny Waterman famously used to ask many of her students to play the left hand alone to her from memory. This is an excellent approach, as so often it is the left hand that lets inexperienced players down in terms of memory.

Skeletons in the music

Big memory problems often result when players fail to understand the musical structure beyond the literal note-reading level. Strong analytical awareness is vital for infallible control of the music your pupils are studying. If they can play the harmonic skeleton of a piece from memory, then they have a proverbial emergency generator to fall back on if they suddenly skip a few notes forward in a concert. It is useful to be able to play – from memory – a musical ‘summary’ of the piece, minus all the frills and non-essential notes. Get them to try gradually reducing a piece to its bare bones. This can easily be done with the first

Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, in which one can play a single chord in place of the 16 semiquavers that appear in each bar.

Confidence and awareness of structure usually begins with the identification of cadences, sequences, and repetitions. Find the crucial moments in pieces. Get students to be able to start not only from bar one but also from all the major turning points. Train them to deal with potential blanks by jumping quickly to an easily-navigated point in the next phrase. Nourish them via improvisation from the first lesson in which sequences, scale patterns and harmonic awareness mean that it is always possible for camouflage and quick extemporisation to save the day.

We must encourage our students not to take themselves too seriously. Performing is not an exam: we are on stage to celebrate the music and lose ourselves in the glorious art that we love so much. Banish negativity – what one thinks and fears can so easily become reality. Visualisation of confidence and control on stage when accompanied by a radical psychological restructuring away from negativity can, and indeed will, make memory lapses something that can easily be controlled and harnessed. ■

Kathryn Page has appeared in concert and on television as a soloist and in chamber music. She is a teacher, adjudicator and administrator for Chetham’s International Summer School and Festival for Pianists, as well as the Manchester International Concerto Competition for young pianists. She lives in Cheshire and has five children.