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I was thinking of titling this "joy", but I think they both mean the same thing ultimately.

How many members have experienced the euphoria that comes in a performance, usually within 30 to 90 seconds of the start, when you realize that it's all good, you're not going to play any wrong notes, you're communicating with the audience, they are loving you, and you are going to knock it out of the ballpark? You are experiencing joy.

This has happened to me three or possibly four times. Only one was recent: (https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...-brahms-recital-3-feb-2019-op-79-34.html), but I would love to know how many others of us have had this joy, like when you're the batsman and the cricket ball becomes a balloon. I had this with Rhapsody in Blue and I recognized it the moment it started to happen (midway through the opening cadenza). Is this what professionals experience the whole time?

Is this what we're missing because we're effing "amateurs"?

If I recall from a prior post of yours, you played this piece when you were young. How is it coming back to a piece after many years? Was it easy to relearn and get it "under your fingers" in round 2?

As for euphoria, I wish I could feel any euphoria if people were listening!

I don't know one end of a cricket bat from another, nor one end of a balloon from the other, but I've certainly experienced performance euphoria. Slightly different from a 'runner's high', which I've also sometimes experienced during long trail races (when I feel like I'm floating effortlessly), but no less joyful (except I'm not usually breathless with it ).

I think any performer - in any of the performance arts - do get it, from time to time, whether they're professional or amateur. The difference is that the professional can also look forward to the paycheck afterwards, which we amateurs are denied......

I have felt euphoria when performing--but if I had all those thoughts going about not hitting wrong notes, the audience loving me, etc., I think it could quickly turn to crashing and burning. (As in, gee, I'm doing great, look at this, haven't made a mistake--oops! I've had that happen, too!)

For me the times of euphoria are ones when I'm not assessing, but am totally focused on the music. I do have an awareness of things going well, a kind of magical freedom, and of the audience being engaged along with me. I feel some detachment too, allowing things to happen--the closest I'll ever get to an out-of-body experience. But if I start to actually think about myself and the situation and what they think of me, I'm toast.

That must be like when you've practiced the heck out of a piece and when you perform it you're not playing so fast that you're at the limits of your capabilities so you can actually play comfortably and beautifully. When does THAT happen?

Just once. Funnily enough, I just wrote about the experience in the thread about Internal Monologues the other day! It's the best feeling in the world

Yo-Yo Ma has said that you can't be worried about technique while performing. I'm not sure I entirely agree with him (we pianists shouldn't pound so hard, for example, that the lid of the piano bounces up and down too much at the unsupported end 😁).

I remember being "on fire" several times, most notably playing the 1st mvt. of Bach's Italian Concerto (breaking a streak of Bach memory lapses by everybody during student recitals one semester in music school). Another time playing a couple of cheerful Scarlatti sonatas before lauching into sightreading carols perfectly for about 2 hours during a very large Christmas party.

The best that I have ever played was a run-thru of the 2nd and 3rd mvts. of Beethoven's Third Concerto for a handful of people in my teacher's studio. Absolutely perfect and euphoric on all levels--musically, technically, spiritually (my teacher, at the second piano, was rather dumbfounded, and the other students seemed almost scared afterwards 😁). Alas, the actual performance, a week later, was exciting, but somewhat flawed.

The euphoria is rare for me as I engage in that terrible internal monologue (“yay this sounds so great!..(wrong note)oh no what just happened? “)

The best I played was the Chopin Waltz Op18 (grande valse) at a Meetup once..i remember the circumstances for that one, I had eaten a good meal, had worked out my challenge measures on a different practice piano just a few hours before at the Hall, and the person who played just before I was to perform had made about 10 errors playing the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique. I was so into the zone, and when I finished the look on the other peoples faces in the front row was priceless, I heard a few folks just saying “wow...” as they clapped.. At first I thought to myself (“oh no maybe I played that section too loud again and harsh”) but I sat down and the moderator got up and said “ok John you are next,,I know its going to feel very hard to follow THAT flawless performance!! But you got this!”). I wish I taped it!! Arrgh.

There's a story about Reiner's perfect performance with the Chicago Symphony (rather difficult for 100 people to get "in the zone" 😁):

https://csosoundsandstories.org/125-moments-101-fritz-reiners-perfect-concert/

If I am being completely honest, I have never experienced that on stage - and I believe it is because deep down I knew I did not prepare as well as I possibly could have.

Sure, I've experienced that quite often. I've performed a lot over the years, on a variety of instruments, and that feeling of euphoria is probably one reason why I've performed so much. Granted, I always pay for it by weariness later once the adrenaline and whatever other odd chemicals start leaving my system, but it's great while it lasts.

I experience this as a trance state where the music is just...happening and I'm off somewhere. It's only happen a few times and it seem it takes a while for me to get there, but it's moreso a sense of tranquility. Often times I would get a preview of this usually when the process of learning a program is coming to a close or I'm about to perform a recital.

I had devoted my semester to the audition. Within a few seconds, I made my first blunder and distrusted my memory—so I would use my sheet music, also not perfectly prepared, albeit allowed—and I was soon nigh certain I would fail.

But I loved the music still, and after so much time in dismaying practice rooms, playing this piano felt like a dream flowing under my fingers, floating me almost above my despair until the piece came to an end.

Really, the action felt responsive and nuanced, something like the opposite of a pit of ghost-notes. Everything came. Beautifully.
Including more blunders—a few.


I hope I don't go deep into fields where I find little more reward than a few minutes of inspiration for every few years of arduous labor. But at least my experience with piano is not nearly so forbidding as that.

So true. I get that more now than I did when I was young. It's like, hey I got through the first page of Au bord d'une source without a mistake, yay! Wait, why am I suddenly in E major, isn't this piece in Ab? [Minor panic ensues.]

But when you find yourself "in the zone", which is kind of what I was trying to describe, you're not really celebrating your success. You're reveling in the music itself and your exquisite connection to it in the moment. I'll never be able to describe it adequately, but it's real. It is a thing.

Perfect!! I wish I could have said it that well.

Certainly one of the absolute best when you examine the broad picture.

This is one of the most honest postings I have ever seen on any blog anywhere. If you, computerpro3, could translate your honesty and humility into focus and energy you would rock as a performer. Keep trying. It's worth it, I promise. Better than heroin.

I totally get the runner's high thing. So, since you raised it, during my first marathon in 2000 (Marine Corps, DC), I experienced almost more euphoria than I could deal with. Same thing in NYC 2006. But you're right. It's different.

Yet as I try to express how it's different I'm starting to think maybe it isn't. C.S. Lewis didn't circumscribe his conception of joy. As I recall, he said it's a kind of "you know it when you feel it" thing. But the thing in itself is very specific. I think he meant that you have to understand what you're feeling in order to know it. I believe that we know it when we feel it.

Tyrone, I had played the two piano version, and I played piano 2, which is mostly, though not entirely, a reduction of the string parts. I was surprised at how much work was needed to get this piece to performance standard. So no, it was not at all easy, especially those nightmare passages in the last movement!!

Resurrecting this ancient thread because today it actually happened again. Not quite as intensely or completely as when I was young and talented, but it was the real deal. I was playing Islamey at Strathmore Mansion in Montgomery County, MD. It was the biggest audience they've ever had there, with people actually standing at the back. Anyway, I gave my spiel about Balakirev and the various Russian folk themes and experiences that inspired the work, then just got to it. Flubbed the opening, as I always do, but then just got better and better. When I reached the final section (Быстро, неистово), I just risked everything and let it rip. Lord knows how, but I made it to the end in one piece. But by that time it was happening for me. Sure there were some mistakes, not too many, but I was flying and loving it. Euphoric, maybe?

Postscript: Do we know that when it's happening for us it's happening for the audience? I can't answer that, execept to say that when I was walking out, the MC sent me back for a curtain call because the crowd were still applauding noisily. That was a nice feeling. Sorry if this all seems self-indulgent, but it's been a good day and I don't have too many of those.