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I'm working on a pretty difficult Junior Recital program that includes Beethoven's 26th sonata (Les Adieux), Mendelssohn G minor concerto, and the apparently above-my-technique Pletnev transcriptions of movements from The Nutcracker. I can go into specific technical challenges if you're curious what in them is especially difficult for me but I'm just wondering...

what do you normally do when you hit a wall?

This will also apply to my learning Chopin's winter wind etude and Liszt's Transcendental Etude No. 2 which I don't necessarily intend to program but would be good for my technique.

I'm just curious what the wise pianists in pianist corner do when something is just out of reach technically. Do you play it slow and raise the tempo bit by bit? Do you leave it and come back in a year? Do you a different piece with a more concentrated version of that challenge to work on? Do you ever even have this problem?

I think the best thing to do when you hit a wall is to set the piece aside for a while. Sometimes it's not the difficulty of the piece that gets in your way; it's the fact that your focus is too intense and you need a break and a fresh perspective. Sometimes you need to set it aside for 2 weeks and sometimes a year.

Sometimes you just have to make a bigger effort than usual but the piece is still within your reach, but if it is really too hard, set it aside for awhile, as gooddog said.

HI evil,

Well, the way I feel about this when I'm under contract, with a deadline to perform or record, is to find a way to make it work. It's the only professional solution, or they simply won't ask you back.

"les adieux" 1st movement has 8 measure that are famous for their difficulty. The rest of the piece is nothing, but the last movement does fly about but not in the same league as those notorious 8 measures. The winter wind is 6 pages of nasty, pure and simple. The Mendelssohn is a handful of notes and pages and pages of text to learn, and the ensemble is not simple.

1- When is your deadline?
2- What are your priorities?
3- What can you afford to drop for the moment? So you can focus on the first approaching deadline? Sounds to me like the etudes should be the first to go. You have way more than enough "technique" on your program without them.
4- Are you willing to go outside the box for answers?
5- Do you have people you can ask for help besides your principal teacher?
6- If sheer repetition is the thing necessary to get you over the hump (it might not be), are you willing to do it? I mean, 1,000 times a day?
7- Have you made a plan from all that? Have you written your plan down on paper, and put it in a place where you see it several times per day e.g. your music desk? Does it spell out what you must do every day of the week so you don't have to think about it?
8- If your answer to more than one of these questions is "No", you can always cancel/postpone. Perhaps you should, if you really don't think you can get it done in time. It's not a professional gig, so nobody will be upset if you postpone except for your teacher, who frankly should be supporting your decision.

I had two teachers outside of school that I could go to for help when I was in school both times. One of them was Dorothy Taubman. Can you find resources like that to help you? No, it's not impossible.

Good Luck!

Leave it and come back to it later.

I think it is important to first identify the source of your difficulty, and how much time you're willing to (and should) spend trying to overcome this obstacle. Is it really worth your time, or would your time be better spent elsewhere?

Answering that question is usually how I determine to proceed..

I'm currently trying to figure out what to do with the mozart sonata. It's kicking my butt. It was designed to be a challenge, but can't quite figure out if it's simply a bit too difficult or WAY to difficult for me, but what is certainly true is that I have gotten to the point where I just look at it, tense up, and no matter what tempo I choose, it just sounds awful. It's uneven, it's riddled with errors, and it's expressionless because I am overwhelmed with detail and can't even think reasonably about how it should sound, so it sounds like I have no idea what music should sound like. It's wince-worthy.

I think the problem is that I started it the first day I started back with piano, and just imprinted the piece with some very bad habits that I have now since corrected in various other areas, but can't walk myself back on this piece. Every time I play it, it sounds like the first day I restarted piano.

I'm thinking that perhaps I put it aside. There's a lot of progress in general going on, and lack of dedication is not my issue. I would love to play it, but maybe I need a break so I can come back to it both fresh, and as a better pianist in general.

Why not put it aside and start on an easier Mozart sonata? The obvious one is K545 in C, which has lots of scales and arpeggios, to get you back into the Mozartian style and fluency, without quite the tricky passagework of K310.

Or K332 in F (or at least, its first two movements initially), which also does the job of preparing you for the intricate passagework of K310.

I think the key to figuring out how hard a piece is for you is to look at the entire work, and see how much of it is beyond your level. If it is only a few parts of it, then it is something that you can expect to master fairly quickly. If too much of it is beyond you, you probably should look for another piece that has some similar difficulties, but also more that fits within your existing abilities.

While that is good advice, I still find it difficult to judge what is beyond my level. Maybe part of it is that I think I should be able to do everything now with enough effort(even though I can't). One case for me was the Beethoven violin sonata #8 I played on my last recital - it was easy enough to sight read, but getting it up to tempo was a whole lot harder than it seemed at first.

In the same manner, if I find something is too difficult, I just try harder (or longer) because I am too stubborn to give up. That said, the other advice above is probably better to follow than what I do - it likely results in less "Arghhh!!!" moments

I often have the same problem with stubbornness. Sometimes it works for me, and sometimes .... otherwise. For example, for my junior recital, I was working on a LOT of pieces in a short amount of time, but I kept trying against the advice of my teacher. I ended up having to cancel the recital because I bit off more than I could chew. I think if I would have used pieces I had worked on some before, and brought them back, I could have worked them up to a new level and it would have been great. I find that is the best way to overcome a plateau in a piece for me. Just taking a break from it.

However, for my senior recital, I learned the same Beethoven sonata that the OP is working on. My teacher was a little wary of letting me learn it, but I was so determined that I put in way more practice hours than usual. I had a few other pieces that were a challenge, but half of my repertoire was not too difficult. I made sure I had adequate time to commit to the hard stuff. I think it turned out pretty ok.

There's a difference between being difficult and hitting a wall. If you're working on a piece and struggling to progressively get through more than a few measures at a time, you've hit a wall, and may benefit from coming back to it, in a week, a month, or even longer. With a difficult piece, there may be parts of it that are fine, but a few sections that need work. Each time you work on it, there is measurable progression.

If you even have to ask the difference, putting it off may be beneficial. Unfortunately, this does not apply to gigs, recitals, etc. That's another can of worms.

I don't think I would put recitals and gigs in the same category here. Recitals can (almost) always be changed.

Not if you're being hired to do them professionally and want to develop an audience.

Ah, well then wouldn't that be a gig?

Set theory people. The set of gigs may intersect with the set of recitals. That is to say, not all recitals are gigs.

I thought those sets were disjoint. I have been laboring under the impression that intersecting the sets "playing piano" and "earning dollars" yields a proper subset called "gigs" while intersecting "playing piano" with "earning academic credit" yields a different proper subset "recitals". I am pretty sure that the intersection of "earning academic credit" and "earning dollars" is the empty set, thus my belief that "gigs" is disjoint from "recitals".

If you have a technical problem, you have a musical problem. If you have a musical problem, you're not spending enough time trying to figure it out. Slowing down the music is just one step in the process, and not the most important one. The key thing is to listen, criticize every note, and figure out where the shortfall is. If you're not asking and answering your own questions, the practice is for naught.

Interesting to see all the responses. laguna_greg's post is possibly my favorite. I'm pretty sure everything is within my reach, I don't think I'm gonna put it aside. The recital isn't a professional responsibility so if anything, if they're not gonna be ready by the end of October I'd probably just postpone the recital. But it'll all happen.

I don't think I can stomach the k545. Too cheery. Besides, I'm trying to get away from stuff I played as a kid, heh. Either I can still play it, at which point the piece is a parlor trick, or I can't play it, at which point I just get frustrated knowing how I used to play it.

Anyway, point is, probably best I stick with new stuff.

Do you really think the k332 is markedly easier than the k310?

I'll give it a shot. I really feel like I have to take a mental break from k310 anyway, whether or not it's too hard. I put aside the first chopin nocturne, too, and came back to it this week and it sounds ENORMOUSLY better. There's something weird going on with the pieces I started with because the next nocturne I did, which was arguably harder, came a whole lot easier. And then I could turn the page and try the other nocturne and it would just seize up on me. Weird.

But it's better now. So I'll hit the k332, if you really think it is at least a moderate step down in difficulty, overall.