Earlier today, I performed the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Concerto, as well as two other pieces, for a small audience. All things considered, it was not a terrible performance. There were no fatal memory slips, which were what I’d primarily been afraid of. Yet the concerto was still strewn with mistakes–some due to nerves in the moment, yes, but others frankly due to a lack of adequate preparation. Indeed there were quite a few sections of the piece, most notably the 2nd un poco piu mosso, which I knowingly brought onstage in an unpolished and fragile state. There were sections where, even without an audience, my success was dependent essentially on a roll of the dice; at best, I would escape having sprayed only a small amount of wrong notes; at worst, I’d lose my bearings and have to restart. And again, I was completely aware of this game I was playing while heading onstage, and aware also of the fact that nerves would further rig the odds against me.
But I still played the game. Because on these sections, each attempt to sway the dice in my favor required a disproportionately massive amount of work. They meant hours of slow practice and metronome work, of exercising rhythms and leaps until they were second-nature, of internalizing the harmonies of both hands separately and together. The drilling doesn’t end once the odds have improved; though it may not need to be done as frequently, it must still be carried out semi-regularly to even just maintain progress, since the dice inexorably deterioriate with time. The level of discipline that I would’ve needed to practice with in order to feel truly confident in these sections is extremely high–and, as an amateur really just looking to make some nice tunes, I simply couldn’t devote myself to it.
It’s not so much the time commitment, really; I can easily kill hours at the keys when I’m in the zone. But I can only sustain prolonged practice sessions if I’m enjoying them, if I can wiggle my fingers while also producing music that I love–at least most of the time. And the type of slow, deliberate practice previously mentioned, practice required towards not only the sections themselves but also towards rote scale and arpeggio patterns, is painfully monotonous. In my mind, this is the curse of piano: that in order to make pieces sound the way I’d like them to, I often need to play them in a way I don’t like. When it’s called for by a tough section, I can pull it off as needed until the section becomes at least listenable, maybe even proceed further and bring it to a decently high standard. But after a certain point, I inevitably get sick of the drilling, moving on to at-tempo runthroughs or learning something new. That point is as far as that section will go. Sometime later it’ll inevitably decline as the dice roll themselves out of order, and then the cycle will repeat from the start.
It wasn’t always this way. I remember that when I was starting off, I hardly if ever resorted to such strict practice and still could pull off most pieces quite nicely anyway; the sections weren’t difficult enough and I learned quickly. As I’ve continued to progress I’ve found myself running into this seeming skill ceiling more and more often, wondering why I couldn’t entirely or even partially break it. I’ve accepted now that it boils down to raw discipline, to a willingness to push through slow practice and drills for their eventual benefit. Sometimes I have enough of it, and sometimes I don’t. And, well, I guess I’ll settle. I can already play a solid variety of difficult sections, and at the end of the day, I’m not particularly looking to raise my commitment. It’s the best I can do.
If I knew of an easier way I’d take it in a heartbeat, but for me personally I find that there isn’t one. I’m sure, however, that there are folks out there who are able to naturally pick up difficult sections with much less relative effort. I think it’s that ability, combined with an endless supply of discipline, that separates the pros from the amateurs.