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Hi There!

I am about to head into my first spring with enough students to justify a recital and I have a few questions.
1) What is a good length for a recital (I.E. At what point should I divide it into two recitals)
2)When should we begin picking recital music?
3) What have you found that helps your kids get ready for recitals efficiently and with as little anxiety as possible.
4) what are some of the difficulties you encountered when teaching your kids to memorize music and how did you solve that problem?

I have a venue and am planning to do a "group party" to help everyone prepare. I just want to make sure I have a firm plan and timeline before the new year hits

Angela

Spring? You must be in Australia.

30-45 minutes is a good length for a recital program. Anything longer than that will warrant an intermission. Or just split the recital in two.

I give most students two months of preparation for recital music. Of course, late-intermediate and advanced students need a lot more time. It also depends on the nature of the repertoire. But I give everybody at least two months, including beginners who are playing 8-bar pieces.

Most normal kids can memorize music without prompting. Actually, I have to tell kids to STOP memorizing, so that we can have a chance to fix technical problems and wrong notes before they become crystallized.

In my experience, kids who can't memorize often fall into one of these categories:

1) lazy (those who don't practice much)
2) undisciplined (those who can't follow directions)
3) below-average intelligence
4) severe psychological problem like stage fright
5) have extremely pushy parents, and they're playing piano out of fear
6) have parents who are completely "hands off" and/or aloof

I don't have a solution, other than letting the kids use their books at recitals. The audience can conclude whatever they want about the kids who don't memorize.

What is the point of making kids memorize music for a recital, unless they are budding concert pianists?

Other than loading on yet another potential source of stress on kids who don't need it?

No way! It's well and truly summer here already.

Length of recital -- best if there are no more than 45 minutes between intermissions (or split it up). If the audience is mostly adults you can push it to an hour but consider the likelihood of numerous fidgety young siblings.

Preparing music -- I only let students perform pieces that have been mastered for at least a month. Every time I've made an exception, the student has had a very poor performing experience. Sometimes a student will want to perform a piece that was once mastered but has gotten rusty, and I will let them polish it up within a couple weeks of the recital and then perform it. That's much more doable and it's often a great experience to bring an old piece to a higher level even over that short span of time.

Yes, the students do care about the quality of their performances; they feel great when it goes well and horrible when it goes badly, no matter how positively I and their parents respond. So I have learned that it's my job to create the best chances for a successful performance.

Memory -- Most of my students are more comfortable when playing from memory, but there are exceptions, and even some of the memorizers just feel better with the book in front of them. I don't know that I would ever require memory unless it was for a competition or other event where you had to memorize.

There is a difficult point in the learning process when the piece is partly but not completely memorized. It's so hard to switch back and forth between reading and focusing on sound. If a student gets to that point with a piece and the recital is near, we usually pick a "backup plan" piece. (I personally hate performing partly-memorized pieces myself, it feels very insecure.)