Piano Concerto Competition
Read in Chinese HERE (中文版)
It was in my senior year in college. I told my piano teacher I'd like to join the concerto competition :)
The concerto competition is the biggest event at music school once every year. I watched the competition every year, and accompanied (played the orchestral reduction) for others many times, but never entered the competition myself. All students can register for the competition in the fall semester. You compete with others who have the same majors as you do in the first round, and the judges will select 2-3 people. Those who get selected will compete with all the other instrumentalists (and singers) in the final round, and about 5-6 winners will perform with the school orchestra in the spring semester.
In the piano concerto competition, we can choose a concerto from about 2 or 3 concertos of a composer, and in the first round we play only the first movement, but we still need to practice the whole concerto because we need to play all the movements if we get to the final round. That year we played Mozart's concertos. I chose the d minor concerto. Few weeks ago I mentioned that I really love the music in a minor. Actually I guess I love all minor keys because major keys just sound too happy for me haha 😁
I'm so grateful that my piano teacher back then supported me on the idea of joining the concerto competition. I had a graduation recital in the spring semester, so there's really not much time to prepare for the competition. However, I realized that year would be the last chance for me to play in the concerto competition because that was my last year at school. So I took the chance (I'm really glad I did), and practiced the first concerto I ever practiced in my life.
My piano teacher helped me so much. I remember I played the first few measures in my piano lessons for weeks because it was never good enough. I got frustrated a lot because I really couldn't seem to understand how to play it well, but my piano teacher never got impatient or tired with helping me improve. What's terrible is not that you can't play it well, but you don't know how to play it well. And even if you start getting how to play it well, it still takes time to reach to the point when you can actually play it well. Well, that's why playing the piano is such a difficult task to accomplish, but people are still enjoying doing it ever day 😉
My piano accompanist was a vocal major, and we had the same piano teacher (she minored in piano). Most people would try to find a piano major to accompany them. Some people even said those who win the competition usually have a piano graduate student to help them. However, I had more vocal major friends than piano major friends back then (probably because I took a lot of vocal major classes?! haha), and she was a really nice friend. I really appreciate for her willingness to help me with this competition. I think she even brought this piece to her own piano lessons, and she also came to my piano lessons quite a few times to play with me for our piano teacher. Usually I was in the role of piano accompanist, and this was the first time I had my own accompanist :) Now I think of this competition, it's a really wonderful memory in my college life 💕
Unfortunately I didn't get in the final round, and of course I was upset, and I didn't have the opportunity to play the other movements in the competition. However, I felt really excited on the competition day. It was my first time playing the piano in front of so many people. It was incredible. I think all the students in our music department really supported each other, or at least really supported this event. Every year when there's concerto competition, the concert hall would be crowded with people. Really filled with people, whether sitting on the chair, sitting on the floor, standing at the back. I never had that much of audiences before, so I was really really happy to be able to play the piano in public like that. I enjoyed performing, I would say.
Despite the fact that I didn't win the competition, there were 2 things that really cheered me up. The first one happened right after the competition. A piano teacher (she was the teacher of a class about piano accompanying and sight-reading that I took in my sophomore year) came to talk with me. She looked excited, and asked me why I improved so much, and played the piano like a great master on the stage. Hahaha! 😆 I was too happy because of her encouraging words, and also felt really thankful to my piano teacher. By the way, I didn't start taking piano lessons with my piano teacher until the 3rd year in college. It was all because of her that I could really make a progress on my piano learning. She's the kind of teacher that I will never forget for the rest of my life. I don't know how I would be like if I never met her in my life! The second thing was when I had my piano lesson after the competition. I told my piano teacher that I didn't get in, and she wanted me to show her the recording (that I'm sharing with you right now), and she listened to my performance right away. She said she was really touched, and she thought I did it really well. She said it's sad I didn't get in, but what matters is that I really learned a lot from this competition 😉
So hopefully you'll like my competition video. It's also the only competition video I have because usually there's no chance to record the competition. I asked someone to help me record right before the competition. I thought she would stand or sit at the place where she could record the keyboard and my hands, but I guess there were too many people in the hall so that she couldn't really find a good spot. But I still appreciate her help a lot, especially with holding the camera for so long. It's because of her help that I can keep this precious moment in my life ^ ^
What's your favorite piano concerto? Let me know in the comment section!
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