Isn’t that a Boy Scout motto? It is also good advice for pianists!
Wherever you are in your career, it is good to maintain your skills. If you are a pianist, you have probably experienced the situation where there is a piano at some social event you’re attending, someone finds out you play, and they ask you to “play something.” These words may thrill or terrify you! It is quite easy to bow out with “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t have any music with me,” or, “It’s been awhile, I’m not really up to it.” But what if you had a few pieces at the ready, memorized and easy to recall, and if you had been keeping up by playing a little bit each day or each week as a matter of habit?
I am getting ready to give a solo piano recital soon, and I will admit that it is coming up more quickly than I would like. I do not have the time to prepare a brand-new program, so I am going back to pieces I have learned in the past: no warhorses, but pieces that fit easily in my fingers and that won’t take much time to work up again. It is nice to have a variety from which to choose, and while I would really like to do something new, nothing I have been working on in the last few months is anywhere near ready to take out in public yet, so some old standards will fit the bill for now.
Do you have pieces “at the ready” at any given moment? If not, do you have a list of pieces that you have studied and/or performed in the past? Take some time to look through your music books and make a list of “your” repertoire – things that you have studied and might like to work up again at some point. From that list, choose maybe three songs that you would like to work up to performance standard this year. As you are comfortable, play one for an audience: your family, a group of friends at a dinner party, or at a public piano in a hospital or senior center. Challenge yourself to have three songs at the ready at any one time. Keep them in your fingers by playing them once a week, or once a month, and then start a new list!
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