My friend is taking grade 2 piano this year and when I watch her play I find it amazing to see how fast her fingers are moving
does anyone feel the same about other piano players.

misspojo

Sorry, I believe I have not see your friend playing before, no comment.

Even of I can play the same piece, things always sound or look more impressive when I'm not playing them!

exactly what i was thinking lol

...And if you goto someone elses Piano/Organ/instrument and play a piece, it always sounds better on their instrument than yours....

QUOTE (elmo @ Jan 18 2005, 08:26 PM)

Even of I can play the same piece, things always sound or look more impressive when I'm not playing them!

hah, yes... when my teacher plays even the simplest pieces I go "wow", then I get given them and think, hmm, this is familiar, but it doesn't sound the same the way I play it! the exception being when he finds a new piece for me but it's not one he knows that well, so when he demonstrates it occassionally he gets his fingers tied in knots... but at least that makes me feel better about the times I mess up, and it's always good for a giggle in the middle of the lesson...

QUOTE (sarah-flute @ Jan 25 2005, 03:20 PM)

hah, yes... when my teacher plays even the simplest pieces I go "wow"

This is the essence of what I'm always saying about music and why I think that grade rushing is a bad thing and is in many ways deceiving oneself. People believe that they will only be a better musician if they're playing harder, higher grade pieces, and it doesn't matter anywhere near as much how they play it. It is clear, however, even from hearing two people play a grade 2 piece which of the two is a better musician, yet neither has played a hard piece.

I went to a piano recital a couple of years ago ran by a teacher for her pupils to perform, there were people there ranging from grade 1 right through to grade 8 (although only two or three past grade 5). The person who I thought was one of the best pianists there was someone who had only just done grade 1: I was impressed by his fluency and the musicality in his playing which was better than most of the higher grade players (I later found out that he had passed grade 1 with 138, a rather good mark!). Although other people were playing harder pieces he was fundamentally a better pianist and I'm sure if he keeps working he will be better than they are at playing grade 4 pieces when he reaches that level (without skipping grades, missing out intermediate steps could lose that fluency and turn it into technical stumbling) than they were then; furthermore if the grade 4 players had been given a grade 1 piece to play I doubt that they would have played it anywhere near as nicely as he did. This is not a teacher that grade rushes, and I'm not saying that the people who were on the higher grades had grade rushed (they hadn't), but just that grade 1 pianists can be better than those on much higher grades and that I think the mark tells a lot more about the player than the grade number (although admittedly even the mark doesn't always tell the whole story).

(apologies for the digression, I seem unable to resist talking about this topic!)

I'm not going to try and answer this whole post, just wanted to say "absolutely"