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Sometimes – often! – learning a new piece of music can feel like ascending a steep mountain.

The first few weeks, when the piece is still very new, can be an uphill slog as you cope with note-reading and learning, understanding the structure and harmony, and trying to get a handle on the character and expressive elements of the piece. Then one day you go to practise it and suddenly it seems a whole lot easier: you’ve scaled that initial steep ascent and have arrived on a pleasant plateau where playing becomes enjoyable again. At this point your progress may suddenly become quite rapid as you feel more at ease with the music.

But then – and I’m sure you know the feeling – you reach a certain point where you feel stuck on a ledge, the summit in sight, but seemingly unattainable. You need a push, a burst of energy to get you up there.

When I am reach this point in my learning, it is usually a sign that I need to see my teacher to assess my progress and to give me a shot of inspiration and encouragement to push me to the next level.

Sometimes reaching a seemingly inescapable plateau indicates that we are over-thinking our practising, or fretting over small or imaginary issues which we have turned into bigger problems. In this instance, try shifting the focus of your practising: if you have been practising the same piece in the same way for the past few weeks, try a different approach.

Maybe it’s a sign that it’s the time to put the music away for a few weeks and look at something else. “Oh but I might forget everything I’ve learnt!” I hear you cry. Not true – if you’ve done the careful learning in the first place, revisiting the music after a break should be fairly straightforward and it will take a matter of days to reacquaint yourself with the score. Taking a break also revives our interest in our music and gives us pause for reflection. Returning to the music after a break often throws up interesting new insights and ideas about the music, enabling us to work with renewed energy and excitement.

Conversations with friends, colleagues, teachers can often shine a light on a seemingly intractable issues with a piece. Asking a trusted friend or colleague to hear you play and give feedback can be helpful too. Meanwhile listening to recordings or going to concerts can lead to moments of revelation and inspiration.

Playing the piano is hard – as my teacher regularly says, “If it was easy, everyone would do it!” – and some pieces remain difficult, despite the many hours of work and thought we put into them. Thus, it is important to celebrate the Eureka! moments, while also allowing ourselves time to evaluate and reflect on what we are doing.

If you’ve reached a plateau in your learning, don’t despair. See your teacher, if you have one, or learn something new, something easier, or return to a piece you know you play well (this can be a tremendous confidence booster). Go to a concert with friends and enjoy talking about the music afterwards, join a piano group where you can meet other pianists and discover that we all share the same afflictions, hopes and fears. We don’t have to be chained to the piano every day to gain useful support for our practising and musical thinking.

Above all – don’t give up! And enjoy your music.

Further reading

The Bulletproof Musician

Practising the Piano

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Olivier Messiaen’s monumental work Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus) surely ranks amongst the “greats” of the piano repertoire, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas in terms of its scale, variety and pianistic challenges. It is one of the most ground-breaking works in 20th-century piano music, a work which has accrued iconic status and deep respect. It combines richly-hued romanticism and the spare modernism that influenced Messiaen’s pupil, Pierre Boulez, and reveals many of Messiaen’s preoccupations and interests – birdsong, eastern rhythms and instruments, cosmology, religious iconography and his own deeply-held Catholic faith.

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys the special distinction of having known Messiaen personally, and he studied with Yvonne Loriod (who premiered the work in March 1945 and who became the composer’s second wife in 1961). Aimard has a long-standing and highly-respected relationship with Messiaen’s piano music and it remains a core part of his repertoire. He is also a champion of modern and contemporary piano repertoire, and as a result he brings to this music a special understanding of Messiaen’s unique approach to pitch, rhythm, sonority and attack.

Read my full review here

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Who or what inspired you to take up the violin and pursue a career in music? 

To be honest there was no great epiphany or moment of inspiration, it just always felt like I was meant to be making music – exactly how and in what form is still wonderfully open … tomorrow is a new day and will bring with it new inspiration.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career? 

Everything and everyone we encounter seeps into our being and becomes a part of our fabric, not least musical. When we give a name to the ‘most important’ influences there is always the danger that we forget the ‘very minor influences’, whose accumulation pave the indispensable road. Having said this, there are two remarkably special people who have shaped my playing and my life, and to whom I am eternally grateful: my mentor and teacher Nina Balabina and – on a more ethereal plane – Mahatma Gandhi.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

Not to pursue one.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?  

Life has taught me not to look back but rather, in the spirit of forgetfulness, learn to live in the present, so I hope you do not mind if I pass on this question.

Which particular works do you think you perform best? 

More than anything I feel at home performing contemporary music or music from the last century, often in unusual and improvisatory combinations with older music.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season? 

I love having a large variety of works during a season both in style and genre. I try and create a balance between works I have played many times and into which I can delve deeper; new repertoire pieces; newly commissioned works; and finally works that will challenge different aspects of my playing and musical personality and which will hopefully open me up to new musical spaces.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

For me it is more than anything the energy of the audience that makes a concert special. Therefore I love performing in any space that encourages a bubbling sharing of energies. Then, there are of course the ‘great’ halls that have their unique aura, filled with the sounds of past legends – it is a great privilege to be able to stand and add ones own little sounds to such spaces.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 

My tastes are rather eclectic and vary from day to day, from season to season. Some days I love the melancholic strains of Byrd and Josquin, on other days the romantic drama of Strauss, while Bach is always close at hand to cleanse the soul. I may also get immersed in the epic melodrama of Muse or the contemplative strains of Indian music.

Who are your favourite musicians?

Oh dear, this could be a very long list! Two personalities that immediately come to mind our David Oistrakh and Ravi Shankar.

What is your most memorable concert experience? 

Playing to monks in the Himalayas.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians? 

Always LOVE every minute of what you are doing and learn to totally immerse yourself in the process, not worrying too much about where it will lead and what the resulting outcome will be.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

I experience perfect happiness when I get so lost in what I am doing, which happens most often when I am performing, that all time – past and future – seems to converge on the singularity of the present moment, bringing with it a surreal combination of overwhelming peace and the feeling of ecstasy.

Hugo Ticciati performs with Dame Evelyn Glennie at Kings Place on 27th April, and directs the Festival O/MODERNT in Stockholm from 10th to 16th June, centred on Handel and the Art of Borrowing. 

Festival O/MODERNT

Hugo Ticciati is a violinist with a uniquely intellectual approach to his work, incorporating aspects of literature, philosophy, spirituality and meditation. He embraces the world of contemporary music, collaborating with composers such as Sven-David Sandström, Albert Schnelzer, Anders Hillborg, Djuro Zivkovic, Leonardo Coral, Andrea Tarrodi, Tobias Broström, Thomas Jennefelt, Sergey N. Evtushenko, Esaias Järnegard, Wijnand van Klaveren. In the coming seasons he will be performing world premières of concertos dedicated to him in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. Hugo also loves devising concerts and events that combine music with dance, literature and more obscure arts such as kinetic painting and rock balancing.

Last season’s highlights included concertos by Bach, Mozart, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Hartmann, Shchedrin, Piazzolla, Auerbach, Glass, Lutosławski, Takemitsu and world premieres of concertos by Tobias Broström, Sergey N. Evtushenko and Albert Schnelzer in venues including Carnegie Hall, Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall, Chicago Symphony Hall and King’s Place. He also curated a series of concerts at the Wigmore Hall and the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Amsterdam.

Read more about Hugo Ticciati

(Photo credit: Marco Borggreve)

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Last weekend I ran a masterclass for members of the Hitchin Piano Club who are taught by a teaching friend of mine. It was the first time I’d taught adults in this format and I found the experience hugely enjoyable and stimulating – and I think the participants did too. In addition to one-to-one coaching while the others observed, we covered warm up exercises away from the piano, managing performance anxiety and finished the day with a listening game in which participants were asked to try to identify nationality, period and style of a selection of pieces chosen from Spotify. The day ended with me giving my friend a brief lesson, which was interesting for both of us and an important test of mutual respect and trust.

The commonest issue with adult amateur pianists tends to be performance anxiety – by which I don’t mean the fear of playing in an actual concert, but simply playing in front of other people. This anxiety has its roots in a number of places, including negative musical experiences in childhood and the simple, and entirely understandable, fear of making mistakes and feeling a fool in front of one’s peers. Whenever I discuss performance anxiety with any student, I stress that such feelings of anxiety are normal, natural and common – even amongst top-class professional musicians. Until fairly recently, performance anxiety – like injury – was not discussed amongst professionals. It was considered taboo to mention it for fear of admitting to a weakness, but recent projects such as Charlotte Tomlinson’s Beyond Stage Fright and interviews with leading musicians who have revealed their own anxieties and how they deal with them, has led to greater openness. Personally, I find a state of acceptance about the symptoms of performance anxiety, coupled with solid preparation of one’s music, can lead to greater confidence in performance, whether this involves playing in someone’s living room on a Sunday afternoon, as at our Piano Day, or in a formal concert.

The participants in Sunday’s piano day had not been taught in a masterclass format before and I tried to ensure that even while I was giving individual coaching, everyone found something useful in what I was saying and doing with the other student. In fact, the masterclass format can be one of the most useful and inspiring ways of being taught – one can learn a great deal by listening and observing, and I encouraged the others to comment on one another’s playing, including differences in sound and touch. We covered a number of technical aspects, such as rotary motion and lateral arm movement to help certain players release tension in their hands and arms, and to help them achieve the kind of sound they envisaged.

My main aim when teaching is to help students to achieve the sound and emotional content they desire in their music and to enable them to play with colour, expression and confidence. To achieve this, I use visualisation techniques in my teaching, asking students to explain what they like about the music they are playing, to describe the character of the music and ascribe a narrative or mental picture to it to help them create a vivid portrayal in their playing. Technique, such as a cantabile legato or particular type of staccato, gives us the tools to create timbre, mood and emotional impact in music, and technique must always be seen as something with a clear musical purpose. Combine solid technique with imagination and the rather elusive “artistic vision”, and one can create wonderful music, and play with confidence and authority.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable and very stimulating day and a pleasure to work with a group of such engaged and receptive students.

Repertoire played:

Mozart – Fantasy in D minor, K.397

Philip Glass – Metamorphosis 3

Beethoven – Sonata in F minor, Opus 2, No. 2 & Sonata in D, Opus 10, No. 3

 

Further reading

Masterclasses without tears

More than hobbyists – the world of amateur pianism