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Brunswick House
Brunswick House

Last week, I gave a formal concert as part of the South London Concert Series (of which I am Artistic Director) at the wonderfully eccentric Brunswick House, in the ‘Embassy quarter’ of London’s Vauxhall. Part of the London Architectural Salvage and Supply Co (LASSCO), Brunswick House is a magnificent Georgian mansion just a stone’s throw from Vauxhall Station, the MI5 building and the glittering new apartments of the Nine Elms development. The house is home to an eclectic collection of antiques and salvaged curiosities, all of which are for sale, including the early twentieth-century Bechstein grand piano which graces the opulent first floor Saloon (price £6000). The venue provides a great backdrop to the kind of programmes I favour (an eclectic mix of music of different eras and styles) and also acts as a splendid talking point for the audience who can enjoy exploring the rooms beforehand. I was joined in the concert by four pianist friends, three of whom have careers outside of music for their “day jobs”. And this for me is where it gets interesting…..

All of us had clearly prepared very carefully for the concert: we’d had “practise performances” at home, for friends, and at our piano group, and I had already played the pieces I was performing at two public concerts in the weeks leading up to the Main Event. We had all tried the piano at Brunswick House in advance of the concert, and I spent a couple of hours there with the tuner a few days before the concert. On the day of the concert we arrived in good time, warmed up, chatted to one another, set up the video camera and checked the lighting over the piano, and then waited quietly for the concert to begin. No one betrayed any nerves, nor discussed how they might be feeling: we all knew that we had to deal with our anxiety in our own way. What was most evident to me was the sense of excitement and anticipation amongst my fellow performers (and I admit I was pretty excited too – the concert was a sell out and the audience mostly comprised friends and family which made for a very warm atmosphere). We all performed with confidence, poise, musical understanding, sensitivity and expression. Because we were playing music we liked and enjoyed, the experience was wholly pleasurable, and I think our affection for the pieces we had selected, and our friendship, shone through every note.

Euphoric performers after the concert (L to R: Frances Wilson, Lorraine Womack-Banning, Petra Chong, Rob Foster & Jose Luis Gutierrez Sacristan)
Euphoric performers after the concert (L to R: Frances Wilson, Lorraine Womack-Banning, Petra Chong, Rob Foster & Jose Luis Gutierrez Sacristan)

Anyone who thinks performing to a roomful of people is “easy” needs their head examined. Of course it may look easy – and one of the great skills of the performer is to present what appears to be an effortless, fluent and convincing performance. In order to reach this point, one will have put in many hours of lonely practising – note-learning, refining, adjusting and finessing the pieces. Each performance throws up interesting new things or highlights areas which need to be worked over again to be made more secure (this is why it is important to perform a programme several times). On top of this, one needs to know how to cope with the inevitable performance anxiety, to hone one’s stagecraft, select the right outfit for the occasion, practise wearing the concert frock and shoes (for women), try the piano at the venue, talk to the tuner, if applicable, find out where the green room/loos are, and generally do as much as possible to remain calm and focused in the final moments leading up to the performance.

On the day of the performance, whether it is a concert or a recital for an exam, festival or competition, I have a clear strategy which I always follows to ensure I arrive at the venue with a clear head and a rested body. Rushing around, over-practising or doing too much can leave one feeling drained and flustered, and this can heighten one’s anxiety. In all the excitement of the actual performance, it’s easy to forget that one expends a vast amount of energy, in particular brain energy: keeping body and mind rested in advance of the performance is crucial.

When I arrived at Brunswick House a couple of friends of mine were already at the bar and greeted me eagerly, admiring my dress and wishing me luck for the occasion. I didn’t want to linger to chat (keeping the head clear!) and I promised I would speak to them afterwards. In terms of final preparation, lately I have become interested in “mindfulness” and have been applying it to my performing. At a concert I gave in a very cold church on a less than perfect, but huge Petrof piano a few weeks ahead of the Brunswick House gig, I decided to employ some mindfulness techniques to play “in the moment” and not worry about what happened. I was pleased with the resulting performance and instead of dwelling on “what might have been”, I went to the piano to practise the next day with the thought “what can I do differently/better next time?”. Of course there were areas of my pieces which needed special attention, but there was nothing that caused me serious worry. And in any event, after the concert, there is nothing to be done, for we can’t go back and change what has already been.

As performers we are often our own worst enemy – and all my pianist friends, professional and amateur, are frightful perfectionists. We worry about our note-learning, our memorisation, our expression, musical understanding, how we communicate to the audience, and so much more – and of course we want to give a note-perfect and characterful performance on The Day. It is crucial that we are perfectionist in the practise room because this will enable us to do the correct, careful preparation for the performance. Looking at the video of the concert afterwards of course there are moments when one might wince a little and wish that you’d played this or that note or phrase differently. The audience, however, enjoys the music in a different way, and a well-rehearsed, fluent performance which is rich in expression and communication will engage an audience, no matter if there are a few slips or errors (in fact, audiences rarely notice the mistakes we fret so much about, and people who go to concerts to gloat about spotting errors in the performance are thankfully a rare breed).

The photographs my husband took of the event clearly demonstrate that we had a really wonderful evening: as one of my co-performers said afterwards “it was an unforgettable experience of music and friendship” – and the congratulations and bravos we received from the audience were a testament to how much everyone had enjoyed the occasion. This continued into the bar, some of us staying very late before venturing out into the freezing January night.

The day after a concert one often hits the ground with an unpleasant thump. As the adrenaline leaves the  body, one experiences a distinct “low”. This is often compounded with a deep tiredness, of brain and body, and it may be hard to motivate oneself to do anything the day after a concert (in fact, I took two days “off” the piano and instead lolled around the house, glum and moody, much to the disgruntlement of the rest of my family!). In fact, the best remedy for this special kind of post-concert depression is to get back to the piano and get working again. In my case, I was excited to start practising again because I had new work I wanted to look at, and other pieces which needed to be brought back up to scratch for a private charity concert in which I am performing in the Spring. What remains of the Brunswick House concert are memories of a very special evening, of music played by friends, with friends and for friends, an important reminder that music was written to be shared. We have photographs too, and videos, as mementoes of the event, and I would like to thank my co-performers, and Rebecca who turned the pages for me, for their special and wonderful contribution to a magical evening.

www.slconcerts.co.uk

LASSCO Brunswick House

Further reading

The Day After the Concert

On Performing

Performance Anxiety Anonymous

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I don’t perform that frequently – maybe four or five times a year (excluding informal performances and “house concerts” at home) – but I understand the “process” of performing and the necessary and special preparation which goes into a public performance, not only the learning and refining of all those notes, but also understanding how to manage performance anxiety and hone stagecraft.

Anxiety is a natural part of the performance experience and should be accepted as such. For a long time performance anxiety or stage fright has been the “dirty secret” of performers, but recently a number of articles and books on the subject have revealed that it is common amongst even top international artists, which has, I think, made it easier for performers to speak openly about anxiety and nerves, and to offer coping strategies. The physical symptoms of anxiety are the result of the release of adrenaline, a hormone and neurotransmitter which is produced when we find ourselves in stressful or exciting situations. Known as the “fight or flight hormone”, it works by stimulating the heart rate, contracting blood vessels, and dilating air passages, all of which work to increase blood flow to the muscles and oxygen to the lungs. This gives the body an increased and almost instantaneous physical boost. In a performance situation, the side-effects of adrenaline pumping through the body include racing heart or palpitations, sweating, breathlessness and trembling or shaky hands, arms or legs. It also brings a heightened sense of awareness and increased respiration which can make one feel light-headed or dizzy. Fighting the symptoms of anxiety can simply make it worse, and I have found it easier to manage my nerves by simply accepting them as part of the performance experience (something which pianist Steven Osborne discusses in this article).

The symptoms of the release of adrenaline do not leave the body the instant the stressful situation ends, and when one is not actually in a genuinely dangerous situation, the effects of adrenaline can leave one feeling jittery, restless,  irritable and sleepless. In the immediate aftermath of the performance, you may continue to feel excited, “on a high”. Many people find it beneficial to “work off” the adrenaline rush after a particularly stressful situation (the classic musical example perhaps being the rock star trashing a hotel room after a gig!). It can take several hours for the body to settle down and the day after the concert, one can feel very flat as adrenaline leaves the system and one’s hormonal levels return to normal.

The euphoria of live performance is matched by a special kind of depression compounded by a profound tiredness after the event. A vast amount of energy – mental and physical – is expended in the experience of a performance, and the excitement of the concert fills your every moment in the hours leading up to it. And then, suddenly, it is all over. Now you’re ready for your bed, but you’ve still got to do the PR thing post-concert: meet people, sign programmes and CDs, give interviews. The day after the concert everyday life can seem exceedingly inferior to the excitement of the performance. In reality, there’s no time for exhaustion: you have work to do tomorrow – and work is the best antidote to these feelings of depression and tiredness. There may be another concert to prepare for, new repertoire to be learnt, old repertoire to be revived and finessed. We draw strength from our love of the repertoire, our excitement about our individual pieces and the prospect of putting them before an audience. The performance is what endorses all the lonely hours of careful practice and preparation.

“At this low point, we have only to let music itself take charge. For every challenge we can possibly want lies before us in the vast and inexhaustible repertory that cannot but replenish our spirit. For true musicians, depression is temporary because their music is permanent.” (Seymour Bernstein, from ‘With Your Own Two hands’)

Stage fright? Blame Liszt – article by pianist Stephen Hough

Performance Anxiety Anonymous  – strategies for coping with performance anxiety

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In an recent interview for the Herald Scotland, the Scottish pianist Steven Osborne describes how he uses techniques drawn from sports psychology to enable him to counteract the exigencies of the concert pianist’s life, the anxiety of performance and the sometimes unpleasant side-effects of adrenaline.

Jessica Ennis

I often liken the pianist’s life to that of a sportsperson’s: the many hours of specialist training, the constant need to hone and improve one’s techniques and skill base, to keep fit and build stamina to cope with the Herculean learning and upkeep of all those notes, punishing concert schedules, traveling, and indeed the music itself which can present its own particular physical and mental challenges (for example, playing Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto has been likened to shoveling around three tons of coal – and that does not include the mental and emotional exertion required to learn and perform this monumental work). Added to this there is the need to feed the artistic temperament, never having permission to be less than perfect, for one is only as good as one’s last performance – just as the champion sportsman or woman will be remembered for the last record broken or gold medal won.

It can be a smothering profession, at whatever level one is engaged in it. In addition to the many hours of practising at the piano, there is painstaking work to be done away from the keyboard, reading, analysing and annotating scores, marking up fingering schemes which once learnt remain embedded in the memory and the fingers forever. There is always new repertoire to be learnt, old repertoire to be revised, overhauled, finessed, or just simply kept going, a vast repertoire “in the fingers” which can be made ready for some kind of performance within a matter of days, depending on one’s schedule. Top athletes and musicians know that excellence comes from hours and hours of this kind of highly focused training. One is not born with this extraordinary talent: it must be developed and refined – and that takes hard graft and commitment.

And then there is performing itself which requires special preparation, in particular learning how to deal with the rush of adrenaline which comes with the anxiety of performance. As Steven Osborne says “Concert tours aren’t quite real life……………All that weird adrenaline. The rhythm of anticipation then coming down afterwards – it’s not normal to do that day after day.”

Sports people experience this too: it is the adrenaline pumping through the body which, in addition to all the careful training and preparation, propels Mo Farah down the track or Chris Froome up that Hors Categorie Alp in the Tour de France. And it drives that particular aspect of ego which makes sports people and musicians go out and perform (and sport can be seen as a performance – why else are we captivated by live TV broadcasts of rugby matches, skeleton bobsleigh, snowboarding, gymnastics, et al?).

2013 Tour de France winner Chris Froome in the leader’s yellow jersey

The pressure to perform and perform perfectly has caused many an athlete, and concert pianist, to abandon the sport/profession and turn his or her attention to related aspects such as teaching and developing young talent. For in that moment when you are alone on the stage, you know that if you make a mistake there will be no-one there to help you. Learning how to deal with the anxiety and loneliness of performance and that special rush of adrenaline is a crucial aspect of being a performer, and an athlete, and many strategies for dealing with performance anxiety are drawn from sports psychology and NLP. Even the most junior students and performers need to understand why we feel nervous and to be given strategies to overcome anxiety and to learn how to work with adrenaline to enable one to respond to it positively and to lift one’s performance. And also to accept that mistakes are inevitable and normal, because we are all human.

There are day-to-day aspects of the musician’s life which also chime with that of the athlete: just as one experiences an endorphin rush, the feeling of well-being and euphoria as the body is flooded with “happy hormones” during physical exercise, so musicians enjoy the same feelings through the physical activity of practising and engaging with the instrument. When this is combined with adrenaline in a performance situation, one can come off stage on an extreme “high” and it can take several hours to come down.

Musicians also need to understand how to listen to the body and manage injuries in the same way as sportspeople do. Injuries can be devastating if not managed correctly, leading to cancelled concerts (and therefore loss of income), and, in extreme cases, can bring careers to a premature end. Repetitive strain conditions such as tendonitis and tenosynovitis must be taken seriously, and affected fingers, hands, wrists, backs and other limbs rested and given time to recuperate. It is important to adopt the correct posture when playing (for the pianist, an adjustable piano stool is essential) and to take regular breaks. Many musicians whom I know actively engage in sports such as tennis, running, swimming, cycling and weight-training, and many of us use exercises drawn from yoga, Pilates, Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais to keep our bodies in good condition. Exercise and sport can also provide useful “down time” for the musician, allowing time away from the instrument.

In my teaching I often use analogies drawn from sport to help explain a particular point or aspect of technique to my students, the most frequent being learning how to do an over-arm serve in tennis to illustrate why we practise repetitively: just as the tennis player needs to learn the movements in sequence to serve the ball, so the pianist must learn a set of movements to play a certain passage, scale or exercise. Repetition of these movements fixes them in the “muscle memory” – or what psychologists call the “procedural memory”. (I remember practising my over-arm serve endlessly as a teenager – but I never became a decent tennis player! Maybe there is a lesson here…..)

The image of the pianist as an effete artiste locked in his or her ivory tower is no longer accurate. Instead imagine a focused athlete, honing body and mind.

Resources and further reading:

BAPAM (British Association for Performing Arts Medicine) – health advice for musicians

Music and Health – many articles, links and other resources written and collated by Richard Beauchamp.

Herald Scotland interview with Steven Osborne

An earlier post on Playing in the Zone

The Piano and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

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Last week, I hosted a workshop on performance anxiety for the London Piano Meetup Group. We used a small room with a grand piano at The Music Studios on London’s Marylebone Lane, just around the corner from the Wigmore Hall, appropriately. The aim of the workshop was to offer strategies for coping with anxiety for a small group of mostly novice performers, of varying levels, from near-beginner to diploma. Seated in a rough semi-circle around the piano, one of the participants admitted that it was rather like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting – hence the title of this post.

In fact the AA analogy is not inappropriate, for there is a great deal of taboo and shame surrounding performance anxiety, with many people feeling they should not admit to feeling nervous ahead of and/or during a performance. So, to kick off the workshop, I stressed the fact that performance anxiety is normal and that even top professional musicians suffer from the unpleasant effects of nerves and stage fright. We then talked about individual symptoms from headache and cold hands to nausea and shaking, palpitations and sweating. People described particular instances where they felt nerves had got the better of them and spoiled or harmed a performance or exam. The overriding theme of this discussion was “fear” – fear of making mistakes, of looking stupid in front of one’s peers or the audience, or the fear of receiving negative feedback from colleagues, peers and others.

The unpleasant physical symptoms of performance anxiety are due to the effect of the release of adrenaline, the “fight or flight hormone”. It’s the hormone that, when we lived in caves, made us decide whether to run away from the sabre-toothed tiger, or stay and fight it. Now, performing it nothing like fighting a sabre-toothed tiger, though for some it can feel as momentous, frightening and difficult. Adrenaline can be used in a positive way too and it can actually raise our performance, making us “play up” and play with more expression, emotional depth and communication.

For me, the most significant and useful process in conquering my performance anxiety (which had developed over many years of hardly playing the piano, and limited performance experience when at school) was reaching a state of acceptance: accepting that the state of mind and body is normal and that one is “allowed” to feel nervous. Giving ourselves this permission can help us let go of some of the negative psychological effects and messages we give ourselves when we are nervous.

A couple of members of the group then admitted that when they had said to themselves “oh I don’t care, I’ve probably failed this exam anyway!” their playing improved. This is another aspect of ‘acceptance’.

We then discussed pre-empting one’s performance with negative messages such as “I know I’m going to play badly”, “I played this better at home”, “I’ll probably make a mistake”. Instead, one should replace such harmful messages with positive affirmation such as “I know my pieces” (to quote Vladimir Horowitz), “I feel nervous but I am also excited about performing these pieces”, and “I can do it!”.

We also talked about performance rituals and drugs, including the use of products such as Rescue Remedy and beta blockers (which should be used under the guidance of a doctor), and “good luck charms”, including favourite shoes, clothing or jewellery, which can help create positive feelings. Finally, we all did some deep breathing exercises, which can be wonderfully useful in helping one feel calmer and centred, both before and during a performance.

Finally, each participant gave a short performance, with the rest of the group offering supportive comments and enthusiastic applause. We talked about how we felt after we had performed, and I hope everyone who took part in the exercise found the workshop useful and positive. You can download my notes from the meeting here.

Remember, don’t feel embarrassed about admitting that you suffer from performance anxiety: it is perfectly normal!

Pieces played at the workshop:

Beatrice – Little Prelude in C minor BWV 999/JS Bach

Phillipa – Minuet in A/Krieger

Tina – Etude op.10 no. 3 ‘Tristesse’/Chopin

Steven – The Power of Love

Rick – Sonata in G/Scarlatti

Alison – Ivan Sings/Khachaturian

Fran – A Sad Song/Kabalevsky

 

The Music Studios, Marylebone Lane

The Inner Game of Music – a blog post by pianist Alisdair Hogarth on performance anxiety