WieWaldi How long did you practice those 3 pieces to be secure enough to perform on stage?
Roundelay (no errors in the recital): 8.5 hours.
Echo Dance (one nervous bobble): 3.5 hours.
Allemande (5-6 bobbles, and a long pause right at the end when I blanked): 4 hours (insufficient).
WieWaldi How much of your performance was read-playing and how much did you play by memory.
I was looking at the music for all 3 pieces. A lot of times, the left hand becomes automated while I focus on the right, but for Allemande, the runs kept switching back and forth between hands, and I needed more time practicing the piece before performing it. It was much harder than Roundelay, yet I practiced it for half as long, because it was a newer piece.
WieWaldi And how would you describe the memory? More of a muscle memory on autopilot, or was the brain remembering passages? Or was the brain only remembering 2 or 3 entry notes for a passage, and then the muscle memory took over?
I don't think of note letters when I'm playing. At a certain stage, I go directly from dot on the staff to finger on the key without consciously thinking. I find my hand position using an anchor then follow intervals and other fingering anchors from there. There is a lot of muscle memory happening, so if I get distracted, and I get too much in my thoughts, I miss an anchor. Then I have to quickly find my place in the score, make sure my hands are in the correct position, and resume. The notes are going by too quickly, and trading between hands like with Allemande, for me to be sight-reading by consciously thinking of notes.
In hindsight, I'd say Allemande wasn't ready, even though it got a clean test. I needed another four hours maybe, playing the sections randomly, and practicing playing through errors to eliminate stops. I'm considering adding more layers to my solidification process: memorize, mental practice, visualization of the score, and actually saying the letter name when there's an anchor point of some sort to see if that helps.
But none of this is advice. I never try hard not to give advice, and I'm wary of other people's advice. Because this is a personal thing, learning piano. What works for me and my goals is not universally true or helpful. These are the things I tried for these pieces, but I've only just started my second year. The thing I'm most confident about is that I know very little, and this is a good thing. My teacher and I agree that there is no such thing as natural talent, and "not being a natural" is a self-limiting belief, and a tragedy. I do have a superpower: a willingness to be wrong, a willingness to fall on my face and look stupid, and a passion for testing ideas. I like learning stuff. If I'm a natural at anything, it's curiosity and a lack of fear of discomfort while indulging my curiosity. Learning is uncomfortable!
That's with fine with me.