About two years ago he made a real jump into the kind of literature that a pianist might keep forever. He learned Mozart's Fantasy in D minor. Many or most of you may know the piece, but for those who don't, it has three or four really wicked presto runs up (or down) most of the keyboard.

His teacher used a very effective device to get him to learn this piece thoroughly. She photocopied the piece and cut it up into chunks. The chunks were carefully selected. She wasn't just cutting it up into equally sized pieces. Each of these wicked runs was one chunk. The rest of the chunks were usually about two lines of music. They corresponded to a particular theme ...a set of phrases that made up a single musical idea.

She gave him one chunk at a time to learn. The bits she gave him were NOT sequential. He had no idea what the whole piece sounded like. I was under strict orders not to play the piece at home or to let him hear it or see it. [It's in my repertoire]

The first bit she gave him was one of those runs. He just took it apart as a set of notes. The first week was just slow going to firmly memorize a pattern. Once the pattern was memorized, he began to raise the tempo. It's amazing how quickly you can learn something seemingly impossible if the only part of a piece you play for the week is that one small chunk.