Managing music performance stress

Managing music performance stress

Performing in front of an audience has always proven to be a big challenge. There are several reasons why this is the case, although in our modern life it shouldn’t be so difficult to deal with them… mainly taking into account we are far more used to show and expose our ideas to other people’s judgment.

Anthony Elward, music teacher at WKMT, has written a very interesting article on how our everyday-life affects the way we deal with the “performance situation”.

He intertwines the personal and the professional backgrounds in order to lead us to the right analytical place.

As beginner piano students, we might think this is something to worry after we have reached a certain musical level; but that is not the case. It is highly advisable to try and approach the stress management issue from piano-learning-step-1!

WKMT London applies an extremely effective teaching approach which involves encouraging their students to perform in front of a silent audience at quite early stages of their piano training. This approach is based on Juan Rezzuto’s educational statement: “We can always play professionally what is within our musical and academic reach!” And we should, why? Mainly because, as prospective pianists, we will play beautiful music at each level of our piano tuition. Unfortunately, after we have moved on to new pieces we probably won’t have time to revisit the ones we used to play before. For that reason, it is fundamental to record them when we are playing them well! In this way, we create a musical asset out of each piano level achieved.

We won’t be able to remember each piece we have played, but if we record them, we can always evaluate the rate of our progress…

To read the article in full please visit

http://www.piano-composer-teacher-london.co.uk/single-post/Brief-about-performance