Four hands

This afternoon, I had another rehearsal again with my duet partner. Our exam is on Friday morning, and we’ve finally got about everything together. But this afternoon’s practice left me feeling really tired and demoralized and simply… sien-ed. Maybe it was just me having an off day or something, or “it’s that time of the month“, but I just felt really tired and was in a “can’t-be-bothered-to-listen-to-you” mood when we worked through certain passages, and when she proffered advice on what to do in my part. For goodness’ sake, I know.

Maybe it’s just me. I don’t like taking criticism if I can help it, but I accept it if I must, and especially if it’s constructive and it helps me improve. I’m not that petty that I refuse all kinds of advice. But anyway, it tired me, because, simply put, I already know what I’m supposed to do, and I really do not need to keep hearing her reminding/telling me. But maybe it’s not just me – maybe it’s just that… well, we’re both pianists.

Doing piano duet this semester has really made me realize a lot of things: pianists are really quite individualists. We like to do things “my way“. We bring our own interpretations and ideas to a piece that we’re playing, and we have to convince the audience that it’s an excellent performance. We’re loners in that aspect, and deep down, we are egoists, and like to think that we’re better than that previous pianist who “didn’t do all that well on that Rachmaninoff prelude” (“I think I could have done better“). If working on a piece by yourself already makes you feel like driving a sledgehammer into the piano, then you can imagine how a duet would work out. Two pianists working together can turn the environment into quite a volatile one.

Not that I’ve had any arguments or fights with my partner; even though we don’t voice it out, I think we can feel that tension sometimes as we discuss bar 243, how we should play a particular passage -

“I feel that it should crescendo here, and as you move into this bar, then diminuendo“.

“Mmm… I get what you mean…”

(Here’s where I think to myself “…but”)

“…but I’m thinking that this is actually really just one phrase, so … ” etc. etc.

It’s a lot of give and take, and listening to each other, and deciding what sounds better. Tempo is another thing. (Okay, I concede that she was right in that the tempo of the third movement should be dictated by the Trio section.) But anyway, it can get quite challenging. Then there’s the idea of … well, it’s not just “two hands” anymore, it’s “four hands”. And “four hands” is simply just not the same as “two hands”. My right hand is technically not “the” right hand anymore. Listening to each other, and getting the balance right… playing it “together”, like, really TOGETHER. There’s no “me” in piano duet. It’s “we”. And I think that can be harder to grasp when both are pianists, because we automatically want to show that we’re better than the other.

There’s so much to do. A two-hour rehearsal leaves my brain feeling drained and I just feel really mentally exhausted afterwards, and not want to do anything else for the rest of the day.

After our rehearsal today, which felt worse to me, as opposed to the really good one we had a day ago, I left, and went to another room to practice my Bach and Moscheles study for my own practical exam, which was what I had planned. But the piano in the room I went into was out of tune, and I can’t take it when I hear an out-of-tune piano, because it just feels so jarring and puts me in a “GAAAHH-I-WANT-TO-SMASH-THIS-KEYBOARD-and-make-it-in-tune” mood, and THAT put me OUT OF TUNE literally, because I’m not a piano tuner and I can’t make it IN tune. I stopped playing my Bach prelude and felt irritated.

So I gave up and left the building altogether.

Blah.