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My previous longest piece was 107 bars. My teacher now has me working on a piece that is 131 bars long (4-5 minutes) . It is not technically demanding. In sections I can play it well even above tempo. But when it comes time to put the whole thing together the flubs start hitting.

He has said that the primary goal of the piece is to stretch and build my stamina in playing. Something I never thought of but I can recognize clear as day.

Do any of you maestro's ever remember when the length of pieces started to push you?

When I get to the recap it always messes with my mind as much is the same but a 5th below. One distraction and you can easily be playing one or the other.

What the OP described has nothing to do with stamina. Concentration might be a better way to describe it. And the longer the piece, the greater the chance of wrong notes, everything else being equal.

Are you talking about playing a piece from memory - or simply playing it through from start to finish using the score? If using the score, how well do you read music? Does reading the score trip you up?

As for accuracy and consistency when playing a piece through, you need to focus your practice on the most demanding sections as well as the transitions into and out of those sections. Work out fingering that is comfortable for you when playing hands together - write it into the score if necessary and then follow that fingering consistently until it becomes second nature. Adjust the fingering if you find something else works better. Practice hands separately to master the tricky parts - both slowly and up to tempo. Divide the piece into logical larger sections and practice each section slowly first and then increase the tempo through repetitions until you can play the entire section at an appropriate tempo throughout. String the major sections together - again slowly at first and then eventually up to tempo. If you still consistently stumble in certain places, focus your practice on those sections alone.

Unless portions of a piece are completely beyond your reach, these practice tips should improve your overall performance significantly.

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Yep, you beat me to it.

What concerns me is that the OP is counting bars. I totally get this when I have a rather young student that has been learning two-line pieces and the next assignment has a "song" that goes onto the next page and they freak out (and thus I show them that the last two lines are the same as the first two lines except the last note without a lecture on ABA form).

But, to the OP, don't count bars. It will exhaust your concentration worrying about something like that. You can count phrases and start learning about form and how music often repeats itself, so it really isn't new material at each bar all the time.

As far as STAMINA. What kind of stamina? Musical stamina? Physical stamina? Very different concepts.

My lower grade students consistently chose 1 page pieces over 2.