Well I played in my recital today. Whew.
If you've seen my 100 posts 😅 about this, you'll know that this was my first recital since the pandemic. And it was a kids recital. I played 4th from last (out of about 20 people).
Before the recital started, I played the first 3 measures or so of my piece, then I played a B major scale up the keyboard just to hear all the notes (my piece has 5 sharps). Then I played a few major chords modulating to minor while pedaling to hear how it sounded with the pedal. It was a nicely in-tune grand, so the location of my music was familiar to me.
Sitting through all those performances was a little rough. I snuck out midway through to go to the ladies room! 😃
Anyway, I had asked my spouse to record, so I just got done listening to it...
When it was my turn, I got up, set up my foot pedal, put a folded up towel on the non-adjustable bench, got settled....
And started to play. It started out really lovely. The piano sounded great on the recording, my tempo was nice, the musicality came through.... There's one transition where there's a bit of build up and drama, and then when it moves into the next section, it gets very quiet. I nailed that. Listening to the recording, it sounded much better than I realized at the time. Really lovely.
But at about page 3, I realized that I had been holding my breath, and if I didn't start breathing, I was going to fall off the bench. I also noticed that my hands were shaky.
It went downhill from there. 😃
I got stuck in a few spots, I had to go back and replay something (the one thing I wanted not to do!) and near the end, I get totally lost and just skipped ahead to end it. Some of those things wouldn't be noticed if you didn't know the piece, but some of them were very noticeable.
I had zero control of my brain for the last half. I wasn't doing anything of the things I've practiced doing to stay in the music. I felt very much like I was rolling down a hill and couldn't stop.
Considering that, I pulled off the ending nicely and was able to not make a total fool of myself.
But this is not how I want to play. And I don't think it would be appropriate to give a performance like this at the concert I'm scheduled to play in at the end of the month....
I do think I'll do better in that situation, because I'll be playing three pieces, and start with the easy one (that's what I always used to do, and it helps get the jitters out during the first piece). Also, I get to go first, so that will help.
Also, I think just having had this experience, after such a long break, will make performing much easier the next time.
But I need to work on controlling my brain, and I'm not sure how to do that.
The shakes you get in an actual performance situation are almost impossible to replicate, so it's hard to practice "playing through the shakes" or, practice "thinking through the shakes."
I have about 2.5 weeks until the concert. We'll see...
ETA: but in conclusion, I'm super glad I played in this recital!! I didn't feel silly or embarrassed playing sandwiched in between kids. And most important, I think I learned a lot, and just the chance to experience performing is so beneficial, so educational. So I feel pretty good about it.
