Since spring our son has been practicing for this year’s piano recital held yesterday at a concert hall in Fukuoka. Three piano teachers had joined together to present a three-act recital featuring performances by all of their students, each playing music of their choice. In the middle act, the teachers themselves treated the audience to their skills behind the piano.
This is the second year our son participated. Last year he played a brief 10 second song together with his teacher, so the contrast hearing him yesterday could not have been starker. His music piece of choice was the main theme from the original Star Wars movie. Being a Star Wars fan (which any regular blog reader would know very well by now), being able to play the Star Wars main theme has been a dream for our son since March. My son talked about it with his piano teacher who was so kind as to make an arrangement suitable for his skills. But as it turned out that was just the start. He started to practice and practice and could soon play her arrangement, so she obliged and gradually added to the music score.
However, having listened to the orchestra Star Wars music every week for months, our son had made a very clear image of how he wanted his piano music to sound, so after two months or so of practice, he started to add to the score by himself, arranging parts of it to make it sound like he wanted. All the way he felt the support of his teacher and from inside he felt the desire to play, so there have not been many occasions where I have had to urge him to practice (how wonderful when the motivation comes from an inner wish to do something).
As we got closer to the recital, our son started to experiment even more. He changed the order of playing the parts of the music, he extended the original version, and eventually I thought it sounded like a different arrangement every time he played. No doubt he was getting bored having practiced the music for so long, but when when he made new changes even on the morning of the recital, I started to get concerned that he would get lost and end up not knowing how he wanted to play his piece at the concert. But looking back at the recital now, I think his playfulness in practice gave him the confidence he needed to confidently play on the big concert piano, alone on the stage in front of the audience. When he was sitting there he played so beautifully and I think he ended up playing his best arrangement so far.
I feel so impressed by him – when I was a child playing the piano I would never have had the confidence to change even one note on the sheet music in front of me, and to my son that seems like the most natural thing in the world to do. And he has already moved on to his next mission now – playing another favorite piece of music from the Star Wars universe.
