The recent piano recital at Waterloo Street is a very good exposure for my higher grade students and diploma piano students to try out their technical and musical capabilities on stage. During the very first lesson when they started the diploma course with me, I will usually go through the requirements to pass this exam with them. This exam requires the candidate to perform about 30 minutes of repertoire on stage and at the level of a professional pianist. From the comment sheets that I’ve read in the past, it seems that the examiners will not tolerate any note errors, be it caused by careless finger slips or misplacement of chords and they would fail the candidates even though they have impressive musical expressions. This means they require the candidates to be able to perform with a high level of technical abilities, with perfect accuracy of notes and rhythm before they move on to judge the musicality and expressive parts of their performance. With such demanding requirements, this explains why the passing rate is less than half of all the candidates.
In order to secure at least a pass for the diploma exam, I adopted the teaching technique that I learned during my music study in Germany, a place where most classical composers were born and which is the origin of classical music. The German piano pedagogist always said that how you practise is how you perform and sight read during the exams, which is very true as I experienced it myself. The German practice method helps the students hit the right note, produce the right tone and ensure that it falls at the right beat with metronome right from the beginning when one learns a total new piece. This allows the students to build a very strong muscle memory in their hands to ensure they will not have chance to produce note errors because they will be stopped once the wrong note occurs and will be asked to focus on that particular section. This ensures the building of strong muscle memory, which ensures that the player remembers the position of notes we hit during practice session. That’s why the teacher’s guidance is very important by making sure that their technique is correct and choose the right metronome speed with appropriate acceleration.
The method worked so well that my students always said that how they practise is how they perform on stage, during piano recital and real exam, their muscle memory is so strong that no matter how nervous they are, how hard the piano is, their hands would always go to the right notes and hit the right rhythm just like what they usually practise at home.
I really feel very lucky that I got the chance to pick up German’s study skill not only in piano playing, but also their study skills on academic side. They are able to simplify the complicated music theory into simple steps. Hence I adopted their systematic study systems into teaching music theory. For example when teaching one of the topics in music theory, the ‘intervals’, I managed to use the same system to simplified the complicated methods mentioned in other text books into three simple steps. The students find it very fun as I designed some activities to teach them the simplified methods.
There are many piano teacher friends who told me that I should keep these as secrets. But to me I feel that knowledge is for sharing, and believe that the more I share the smarter I get. So I share everything I know with my diploma students, who are going to be qualified teachers. As I believe with my generous sharing of musical knowledge, many more students are going to benefit from their effective teaching method and in fact some teachers who learned from me have already applied the method in their piano teaching and commented that the methods are very effective, their student’s playing has improved tremendously after they applied the method that I introduced.
Appreciate all parents and students support our diploma piano concert this time!
The main participants are mainly diploma students, but I still added in a few graded exam candidates to performed at the opening part of the concert because they like to know if they are ready for piano exams.
A young performer that impressed the audience was an 8-year-old girl Gwyneth, who performed an ABRSM grade 7 piece and her own piano composition, her notes and rhythm were highly accurate and musical awareness was very well expressed with stylish hand’s posture. Her finger works were well articulated throughout her entire performance.
There were 3 diploma students who played the same Beethoven Sonata in E minor Op.90. Although they are playing the same 2nd movement of the sonata, but the feeling was totally different. Joan played with very romantic touch and relaxing tempo, and the sound was very much in an under tone in darker shade. Claire played with every single note clearly projected and articulated, with accuracy of notes and rhythm. Deli’s playing of the same piece was highly expressive in character, she played the loud passages with flamboyant heavy touch and soft passages with gentle and soothing wrist movement, contrast of loud and soft passages were clearly conveyed.
Russell played his grade 8 piece with flowy and flexible finger works in all running semiquavers passages, for loud passages with big chords I advised him to apply more weight from shoulder, so that the full harmony sounded very rich and warm. He also played his octave passages with flamboyant and virtuoso styles that captured lot of exciting moments.
Most of the performers were happy with their playing on that days as they managed to recovered from finger slips and minor errors during the piano recital, and they felt more confident with passing their diploma exams as they have learned how to overcome the stage fright and know how to secure their playing on stage.
I was glad that I got a chance to find out whether they projected enough tone and volume in recital hall and also will advise whether their 2 hands coordination are balanced as I got to make sure that right hand’s melody will not be drown by left hand’s accompaniment especially in the loud passages.
In spite of that, everyone was happy because they had fun making new piano friends and learned lot of things about stage performance from each other’s playing.
Most of the players were first time performers and they are keen to try again because they have learned how to overcome stage fright and technical difficulties through this experience. I believed that they will play much better and become more seasoned on stage next round. Look forward to seeing more fantastic performance on stage next time!
