Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What is important to maintain in your repertoire?

Is it best to just maintain everything you learn once it's learned?

It is ideal to maintain all, but it is not easy to do so.

I think it depends on one's talent and time. The more talented a person is, the longer he can retain the level of playing that he had achieved. Talented people do not lose their playing ability as fast as those who are not so talented. On top of that...time is also a very important factor. The more time you have, the more pieces that you can maintain.

Once one has learned a certain number of pieces in their repertoire no one maintains them all. Very few pianists at any level from beginner to the highest professional would find it useful to maintain all their repertoire. The top pianists mostly have just a couple recital programs they perform during the course of a year.

There is no correct answer to the OP's question because pianists don't all have the same goals, skills, ages, available time, desire, etc. which affect how much repertoire would be the ideal amount to maintain.

does anyone besides me feel that the OP is a troll? he's opened dozens of topics asking questions like this in a short period of time.

With tons of questions yes very much so, but not a troll. The definition of a troll is very different from what Joe is doing. Joe isn't trying to provoke anyone in here, he's just extremely happy to be creating 3 thread per day! That's all!

Joe, you can't really keep everything in your repertoire. I mean some works are meant to go away... (Czerny comes to mind... heh...). Thing is, though, that you can always have them 'handy' (like being able to remember what goes on, much quicker than learning them from scratch) and that CAN be very useful in the long run.

I'd dare to say that it's more important to meet and study as much repertoire as possible, instead of mastering a few works to 'perfection'.

Just not true.



Read a little bit about trolling.

You mean like 're-learning'?

Here's an idea - everytime you feel the urge to post a thread like this, go play through a couple of pieces you haven't played in a while.

What's with asking questions in threads?

Daviel didn't ask a question. He made a suggestion, albeit a facetious one.

Oops!!

I meant "What's wrong with asking questions in threads?"

While I think that some of the threads lead to great discussions, what people may see is the constant open-ended questions, some of which aren't very 'logical' to a pianist or musician in general.

"What is the hardest piece" and the like.

I think this is a great question though. I'd say it's important to think of your goals and what you're maintaining the pieces for. If I plan on having recitals or concerts all the time, I'd want some core pieces in every category so I can have balanced programs. If I plan on playing gigs, I may prefer more appealing short pieces (whether they be lounge piano or waltzes), etc. So, as always, there is no right answer - well, except that it's impossible to maintain every piece.

mazurkajoe:

Yes, I mean re-learning, although it's not the right word exactly. It's mostly 'remembering'. And it WILL come quicker.

Now, I also happen to think that you make quite a few threads, but personally I don't mind too much. And I certainly don't think that you're a troll in any case!

I don't make posts like that..

No you don't - and the question you raise here is an interesting one.

"What is the most difficult piano piece ever?" - sorry, I said hardest when in fact you wrote most difficult... forgive me

In any case, I don't know why someone would say you are a troll when you clearly respond to others and put an honest effort into discussions. I just agreed that I could see where some of the threads seem to have a similar, albeit not same, quality.

There is nothing wrong with asking questions in threads, or even starting a thread based on a question. It does seem to me, however, that some of the threads you have started with questions are too open-ended, too vague or just not thought through enough for people to respond to reasonably.

Regards,

Let me respond to your question with questions. If it is indeed agreed that it is "best" to maintain everything one has learned, the question is how? What degree of maintaining are you talking about? to performance level? or to a degree that a piece can be brought back to performance level in a short period of time? How short a period of time?

How would you recommend that one "maintain everything" in one's repertoire when that repertoire extends to dozens and dozens - or even more - of learned pieces?

The larger one's repertoire, the more selective one has to be about what is maintained and to the degree that those pieces might be maintained. The purpose of maintaining them should certainly have some bearing on what is maintained and how much of learned repertoire is maintained.

Regards,

Oh haha... when I read: I took that as meaning something along the lines of "list these pieces from easiest to hardest". My apologies kayvee.

If you're a professional concert pianist, you'll have several concertos and a few full-length concert programs in your memory, which maybe just requires a little polish to get them back to concert standard.

Amateurs rarely hang on to a large repertoire. I started a thread not long ago about how much music people keep in their long term memory, and it seems very little. For a long time, I only hung on to a few favorite short pieces that I can trot out whenever the need arose, but when I finally acquired my own piano, I had more time to practise, so I gradually worked up to some 45 - 50 minutes of music that I loved and decided to maintain indefinitely in my memory, by playing them regularly. Most of the music work my fingers/wrists/arms in one way or another, and are interesting technically and fast: I can sight-read slower music easily so in my mind, there's no need to keep practising them...