Piano, finally
Piano Finally is a podcast by an old bloke who is learning the piano, finally. I cover the process of learning the piano and music theory as an adult learner. I also review piano books, hardware and other materials from an adult learner's perspective.
Piano, finally
Episode 21 - Performance
Ever felt the thrill of tackling a new challenge, only to find it opens unexpected doors? Join me, David Reidy, as I navigate the fascinating world of piano in this week's "Piano Finally." Inspired by Ryan Abshier's captivating video ranking top piano concertos, I created a playlist on Apple Classical Music to share these masterpieces with you. As I ponder an intriguing invite to perform at a school fundraising event, I reflect on the joys and jitters of sharing music, even as a beginner. It's a raw, real experience that reminds us all of the beauty in learning and connecting through music.
You can contact me:
- via email at david@pianofinally.show; this is probably the best option
- the show website, www.pianofinally.show
- Instagram and Threads @pianofinally
- and on YouTube
- all the podcast directories - list
- here's the RSS feed
Some of the links to books and other items mentioned in the podcast are affiliate links for Amazon or other providers. If you use one of these links, a commission may be paid to me at no additional cost to you. Thank you if you use a link.
All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.
G'day everyone. I'm David Redy. Welcome to Piano. Finally, a podcast by an old bloke who's getting around to learning the piano. Finally, welcome to Show 21. Thank you for taking the time to listen to the show. If this is the first time you've heard the podcast, I hope you enjoy what you hear. If you're also a piano player or still learning, like me, let me know where you're up to. You can contact me at david at pianofinallyshow, and if you're a returning listener, thanks very much for coming back.
David Reidy:Rather than recommend an entire YouTube channel, this week, I'm going to recommend a single video from a channel that I've mentioned before. Also, this week's recommendation comes with homework. I suggested watching Ryan Absheer's channel a month or so back, and I've been continuing to keep up with his videos since then. About two weeks ago, ryan made a video called Ranking the Greatest Piano Concertos. In that video, he took his favourite piano concerti and ranked them from silver to royalty and, as he says, there are no negative tiers in the ranking. They're all good. You'll notice that Ryan uses concertos as the plural of concerto, which is perfectly fine. It has been one of the plurals in English since the 1700s, but I prefer the other plural, concerti, mostly because I learned Italian 40 years ago.
David Reidy:Ryan has chosen 19 piano concerti well, 18,. And Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which may as well be called a concerto, as it's for piano and orchestra. In addition to the Gershwin, there are pieces by Beethoven, mozart, rachmaninoff, ravel, brahms and many more. For each piece, ryan has a short excerpt of the piece and some of the score, and then he talks about why he's chosen the piece and where it fits into his ranking system. As he says, it's based on his opinion and some practical considerations of the video format. It's a great list and, in addition to including all the obvious choices, there are some pieces I had not heard before, and that's where the homework comes in.
David Reidy:I put together a playlist of all 19 pieces using Apple Classical Music. Apple Classical is a free part of an Apple Music subscription. In fact, all the musical tracks are already in Apple Music, but the Classical app allows you to search and find performances in a much more logical fashion. You can put in the name of a piece and all the performances and often there can be tens of them will be listed, with the conductor and the soloist. It's then just a matter of adding on to the playlist If you can't pick one. An editor's recommendation has been put up by an actual person, not an algorithm, so I'd recommend watching Ryan's video, seeing his reasoning, and then going and listening to a collection of pretty good piano pieces. Then you can see if you agree with his rankings Performance.
David Reidy:During the past week I got asked to be part of a group performance. It was a request that sort of came out of the blue, and my initial reaction was to say that I'm not good enough yet to make any decent contribution to a public performance. But I've been thinking about it. The performance is still about nine months away and, depending upon what it is exactly that I need to do, it's not out of the realm of possibilities. Towards the end of term three each year the school I work at has a fundraising day that includes lots of activities, including a walkathon, carnival rides, food stalls and a battle of the bands. I received an invitation for this last activity.
David Reidy:A couple of my students from last year's year 10 science class want to put together an act and for me to play the keyboard. At the moment I don't know any more than that. They want to perform something by Adele. I hadn't listened to her music before this, but it sounds quite nice and it's not too complicated. I looked at some of the scores on Sheet Music Direct and they appear to be reasonable. I think that with enough practice I could probably manage one or two.
David Reidy:Of course, the big question is should I worry about performing at all, especially since I'll only be a year and a half into learning the piano? The answer is probably. I think it was the very first episode of the podcast that I said that there are two motivations for learning the piano. You can be learning for the intellectual challenge of mastering a new and relatively complex activity, along with all the theory and other academic parts of music, or you could learn so that you can entertain using the skills you've learned. I'm learning for both reasons. I'm enjoying understanding how music stems from the mathematics and the physics that underlie it, and I'm also better at understanding the structure of pieces and how that theory informs what composers choose to do. But in the end, the purpose of music is to share.
David Reidy:There are many cases of creative people producing works and then either hiding them away or at least making no effort for others to see them. There may be some cases of composers doing this, but I don't know of any. After all, unless you are only composing for instruments, you can play yourself. You will at least have to involve others so that you can hear your work, but that's as a composer. As a player, it is entirely possible to practice, achieve your goals and never perform in public. In fact, if you have an electronic keyboard and headphones, you can practice without even performing in private.
David Reidy:You can do this, but should you? If I go ahead with this performance and I haven't said yes yet, I'll have a fairly forgiving audience. This is very much an amateur, fun competition. That's not to say that the standard of some of the performances is not really high. The school has some very hard-working music students who are becoming incredibly good performers, but there are also some acts that perhaps deserve the title novelty rather than serious. So the audience is prepared for anything.
David Reidy:That said, though, I would want to put on the best show I'm capable of, and that means really mastering the music. Deciding that you will perform in public on a date that you can't move is a great motivator If you want to be ready. It gives you more motivation to go to the piano and sit down to practice. In this case, it also means mastering a new aspect of piano playing playing with other people. It means learning a new style of music. I've been playing either exercises or more classical style pieces, and I don't mind expanding to pieces based more around left-hand chords. It's a challenge, but there's plenty of time. And then there's the whole thing about performing in front of other people. I perform in front of a lot of the potential audience members every week, although I'm talking science rather than playing notes. But there is an advantage of not playing in front of a room full of strangers. Secondly, it's a free performance, so they can't demand their money back. And thirdly, every act is always warmly received, regardless of how they do. So I'm planning on giving it a go. I think there's still a fair bit of planning to do and then lots of work to get ready, but life would be boring if you never tried anything new. I'll keep you up to date with how the thing progresses.
David Reidy:Each year, the Blue Mountains Musical Society puts on a number of reasonably large-scale productions. Every year I see the banners on the footbridge across the highway. I always think I should go, but I never get around to it. This year it's different. I'm going out of my way to support live music, so making sure that I got a ticket this year was not in doubt. I'm writing this part of the review before I've seen the production, but from the rehearsal scenes the group has posted on YouTube, it looks like it will be pretty good. I always worry a little about amateur productions, probably based on years of attending school productions, but this one looks much more polished. I'll put a link to the YouTube videos in the show notes. I'm about to leave now to go to the theatre. I'll continue this when I get back. Well, I'm back.
David Reidy:The show was great. I had seen the movie Catch Me If you Can with Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio, but I didn't know it had been made into a musical, apparently on the back of the success of the film. It opened on Broadway in 2011. The production was at the Blue Mountains Theatre and Community Hub, a venue that seats around 400 people and has a relatively small stage. That said, the Blue Mountains Musical Society more than filled it, both with performers and with the quality of the production. The singing was outstanding, there were 10 main roles in the show, and every single performer was first class. The amount of time and effort that must have gone into getting their performance polished and flawless would have been immense. It wasn't just the main performers that were excellent. The dancers, actors and ensemble were all excellent throughout. Although the sets were fairly utilitarian, the costuming was amazing. The number and variety of costume changes across the whole cast would have left many professional productions behind. It was a great show and a very enjoyable three hours. It's on for the next couple of weeks, so if you're in the area, it's definitely worth getting along to see it. It makes me a bit disappointed that I didn't get to the Society's productions in the past.
David Reidy:Well, that's it for this week. If you'd like to contact me, email is the best way. You'll find me at david at pianofinelyshow and the website at wwwpianofinelyshow. In both cases, piano, finally, is all one word. Let me know where you are in your piano journey. The show is also on Facebook, instagram and as audio only on YouTube. You can subscribe via any popular iOS or Android podcast application or from directories such as Apple Podcasts, spotify or Player FM.
David Reidy:So until the next episode, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the keys. I'm giving the scales a bit of a rest. They still need work, but I can successfully play all 12 major scales, not necessarily on the first go, but I'm okay the second time through. I'm now trying some simpler pieces to work on technique. So this week I've been working on a canon by Fritz Spindler, paying particular attention to the dynamics at the same time as learning the notes. Unfortunately, because the musical ran longer than I was anticipating, I haven't had time to get a recording done of the practice. If I did, I wouldn't get this episode out, so I'll include some extra practice in the next show.
