From an early age, I have enjoyed performing. At first, it was mostly just showing off, since playing the piano was the one thing I could do really well. Once I had been told that I was just a show-off, I became more reticent about playing in front of others, but always loved to play when asked. Some people seem to be born to perform and it comes very natural to them. My first big performances were in the talent competitions at Butlins, where I had to play in front of about a thousand people in the finals. I remember getting stuck in the middle of the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata in Cmajor (K545) and being unable to get past the first repeat. Playing from memory can be very troublesome if you don’t know the links well enough. In the end I just had to break out into the next bit that I could remember. This early training served me well and taught me a few things (the need to understand the structure of the music was certainly one of them).
I performed at school and at churches and believed I was a great player, until I entered some music festivals. There were many there who were better prepared and better taught than I . There was always someone who could play faster than me. It was very good for me to be brought down to size and understand that I must put in a lot of work to match these people. The bottom line was that most of my playing came easily and I did not really know the meaning of hard work.
After learning how to do proper practice (some hard graft) I applied and was accepted by The City University (London) to do a BSc in Music, with all performance studies being given by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. My course had three components: Performance, Music History and The Science of Music. The moment I walked into the GSMD I had the same experience as with the music festivals: there are so many good performers out there. I realised that I was just a small fish in a big sea of musicians. I was totally focused on performance and wanted to find out how good I could be. The penny had finally dropped : performing is closely coupled with lots of hard practice. I began to practise really hard, harder than all my colleagues at University. How good could I be?!
(TO BE CONTINUED)