Stupid question perhaps. Maybbe I should re-phrase it: Which experiences do amateur pianists have when comes to improving the techinque and mastering new music after reaching the age of 50, 55 or 60?

I'm 59 now, can play quite a few pieces, but would like to learn more and be able to play my repertoire even better. Do you consider this mission impossible?

No.

Go ahead and try it!

Certainly pianists learn new pieces at all ages. A few years ago, I was tuning for one of my customers who had just recently performed Ellington's Sacred Concert with her big band and a senior church choir. She pulled out the music, opened it to a section where there was absolutely nothing written, and said in her curt manner, "Look at that! I had to listen to the recording over and over, to figure out what to play!" I looked at it for a while, thought about it, and said, "I can tell, you just loved learning this music!" She beamed!

Later, I saw her after a concert, and she told me she was in her 80's.

A few months later, I was having dinner with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and I told Dave this story. I added, "Isn't it great that music keeps you so interested that you still want to learn new things when you are in your eighties!" He beamed at that, and I remembered, he is the same age!

If it's "mission impossible" then I'm benightedly engaged in it. However, my teacher thinks otherwise and told me just last week that I'm playing more difficult repertoire better now than what and how I played when I started with her three years ago. And, by the way, I surpass the age categories you listed. So there!

Cheers!

What are you currently working on Bruce?

Daniel

Most recent (since this summer) and current* repertoire include :

Rachmaninoff : Preludes Op 23, Nos 3, 4, and 6*.
Chopin : Polonaise, Op 26, No 1;
- Impromptus, Opp 29*, 51 and 66*;
- Etudes, Op. 25 Nos 1, 3 (not completed) and 5*
Granados : Spanish Dances, Op 12, Nos 2* and 7* (just starting)
Mozart : Piano Trio in E major, KV542*
Beethoven : Piano Trio No 4 in B-flat major, Op. 11*
The second rehearsal of the Mozart (movements 1 and 2) and Beethoven (movement 1) takes place tomorrow.

Regards,

Holy crow, Rocket, you gave me a scare. You should have quoted it so it came out this way:

Rather than the way I read it (looking at subject line)

Piano Trios? Do you get to rehearse / play with a cellist and a violinist? (probably silly question!).
I have been listening to a gorgeous recording of the Arensky Trio in D minor (Op.32) and Tchaikovsky A minor (Op. 50) in a recording with Cardenes, Solow and Golabek. Highly recommended.

As for age, well 60 is the new 40 ..
A family member amateur pianist and organist resumed playing only after he retired at the age of 64. He is now 80 and his playing has sky-rocketed to performance levels in the past 5 years. He is very much in demand to play in the local churches and cathedrals (lives in Europe). In fact he just got an invitation to play a recently restored historic organ somewhere in Southern Germany. Of course he practices daily for hours and plays a service or two every sunday. So if you are willing to put in the effort, you will undoubtedly improve.

Yes, I'm rehearsing with a violinist I worked with last year and now a cellist, wanting to perform chamber music, has joined us. Performance(s) will ultimately be determined on how well we can work together, but, initially, it's great fun.


My philosophy!

Regards,

I was hoping it was the new 50, but hey, that's even better!

You should see this movie if you get a chance:

http://theycametoplay.com/

It's a documentary about the Cliburn amateur competition.

(Warning: link plays music, so turn volume down if you're at work.)

Point is: a large number of the competitors are well over the age of 60, and they are still seriously practicing and learning.

I started playing again at age 50 after a hiatus of 25-30 years. I'm now 55, and my playing has improved dramatically in every way. I don't know what will happen from now on out, but I don't see why you can't improve. I played pieces from Debussy's Estampes, Scarlatti Sonatas, and a Liszt selection in recital recently. I couldn't have done that 5, or even 2, years ago!

seems like many of the best pianists are quite up in years.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I don't think it's a simple "yes" or "no" answer.

I'm not a teacher but I think pianists have varying degrees of potential ability. If you are in your sixties (as I am) and you are still quite far from reaching your maximum potential, then I can't see any reason for not making further progress. If, on the other hand, you have been at a plateau for many years, then further progress seems unlikely.

I have a feeling that I "plateaued" in my late forties or fifties. In spite of continued effort, the pieces that were too difficult back then (e.g., the Handel Variations of Brahms) are still too difficult even though I now have more time available for practice. It's some consolation to me that my playing hasn't gotten worse.

My eyes give me more trouble these days but I think my dexterity is unimpaired. I have noticed that memorizing music is much more difficult for me now.

But you don't really know what your maximum potential is. You may have been at a plateau for years, but still be not playing to your maximum potential.

Besides, "improve" encompasses a lot of things! Many aspects of my playing have improved through my fifties, and I've been playing since I was a small child, and accompanying professionally for years. I don't really see any reason why that improvement needs to stop when I hit 60, unless some physical thing like arthritis hits.

currawong's statement that "Improve, encompasses a lot of things" is important. I am 67 and am starting to get some arthritis in some of my fingers. As a result, I probably will not improve as far as difficult finger twisting pieces go. However, I believe I have greatly improved and continue to improve in my musicianship, interpretations, expressiveness, improvisation, polish and all the other parts of playing that can make music more beautiful and fulfilling.

I am not discouraged about my future decreasing technical ability. There are plenty of areas to improve and I intend to work on those.

I'm still improving, and I'm sixty-five. Each year, over the past five or six years, I have successfully learned repertoire that is progressively more difficult. At some point I'm sure I will start to decline, but there will still be lots of progressively less difficult music that will be enjoyable and well worth learning. I see no reason at all to hang it up.

Tomasino

I think 63 is much better than 60 Piano-wise and other wise -

Cathy

58 and going strong. I took my last piano lesson when I was 18. I restarted 5 years ago and my progress has sky rocketed. I think age adds both depth to interpretation and a fully engrained work ethic.


It's not going to be in my area and Netflix doesn't have it yet.

Yes, most definitely. I'm living
proof of it.

But as I implied in another
of your threads, you'll have
to chuck those salon pieces
and other miniatures you've
been playing and dig right into
the big stuff, the stuff that
you'd be playing if you were
to improve big-time, as you
seem to be saying you want to do.
If you want to just keep playing the
type of pieces you've been playing
and keep polishing them, then
you can just do what you've been
doing without changing anything.
But if you want more, then you'll
have to play more challenging
stuff, say, the first or third
movements of either of the Chopin
concertos.

You're not going to improve by
continuing to play things you
can handle easily. Like an
athlete, you'll have to push
yourself if you want to improve,
and that means playing big-time
stuff, not salon pieces.

For example, I just dug into
the Chopin op. 14, with only
below average talent and sketchy
instruction as a child. This
is one of the most difficult pieces
in the repertoire, and the book
says I could not even dream of
playing it, but after years of
brutal, repetitive effort I
can play it so that someone
familiar with the piece would
recognize it.

Note that if you do this, you'll
need a digital piano, and you've
got to be willing to spend many years
working up a difficult piece,
because if you're asking this question,
then you don't have sufficient
talent to work up big-time stuff
fast, like a conservatory player
can. If you try to do that, you'll
burn yourself out big-time.
You'll need to start on a big
concerto at a rate of only
a few measures per day initially.
Anything more than that and you'll
fry your nerves on the difficult
material. Only after you've
developed sufficient strength
and experience can you increase
the pace to, say, a page a day,
and so forth.

Is that the same one that's been stuck at "75% speed" for years now?



Yeah, I'd love to see someone play Rach 3 on a digital and get through it without breaking keys and/or knocking the thing over. I think a digital is a good second instrument, but it's plain silly to suggest that it's the only thing you need.

well, i don't know about the digital piano Gyro, but I do know practice make perfect .. or nearly so.

i've improved a lot these last couple years in spite of pretty extensive cancer treatments, not much practice time, and advancing years.. 53 and 54.

Speaking of treatments, how are you doing these days?

In my experience the problem is not that I don't make improvement or learn new things in middle age -- the problem is that it's so slow. I can still remember piano pieces I learned as a kid, and which seemed to take a matter of hours. Now it takes me an hour to memorize one bar of music (literally an hour, and it isn't getting any quicker). I have to spend a lot of time figuring out working fingerings, when in my youth I would just throw my fingers in the right general direction and they would usually land where I wanted.

In one sense it's probably better for people who start playing the piano from scratch in their fifties: they at least don't have their younger selves to compare themselves unfavourably to.

I can't speak from experience since I'm rather young (32), but I do recall my father (above 70) who mentions that for any intelectual thing (for example anything to do with computer) he has to write it down, otherwise he will forget.

If technique is an issue for some older people (I hope the term older people does not insult, cause I certainly wouldn't want that), maybe other areas of music might be more interesting? Like composing pieces that one CAN play (since it's theirs, it will be easier)? Of course one can't expect to write like Chopin or Rach, heck nobody should expect that, but still the pleasure might double/triple/multiple if you play your own pieces.

(This is what I did when I was really young (around 7-ish) and all I had in front of me was Czerny (thus my dislike of the guy... :D). I just decided that I preffered my own works and kept composing, while advancing my technique (somewhat), my own pieces! I still love some of my young ones, no matter how naive and silly they may seem now).

Just an idea I guess...

Kevin: Would provided fingering help? Also would analytical notes on the score help (for example, my students are always helped when I comment on the repetitions, how simmilar things are in some places, etc, so that it's easier for them to grasp the more general notion of the piece)?

You're right, Currawong. Improvement can take many forms. Perhaps there has been a qualitative improvement in my playing. I'm not sure I could say in what way.

What I had in mind by improving was advancing to the more difficult works in the piano literature. For the past decade I have been playing mostly Bach, Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven, and the easier works of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. But my attempts to play the "big" pieces respectably (Appassionata, Waldstein, Wanderer Fantasy, Carnaval, etc.) invariably hit a wall.

For example, I worked for a long time on Beethoven's Tempest Sonata. I started practicing very slowly and carefully, increasing the tempo by small increments only when I could play a movement with no more than a couple of mistakes per page. But at some point well before I attained what might be regarded as a suitable tempo I simply couldn't avoid turning the whole thing into an utter hash of wrong notes. Would you say that I had tried to exceed my maximum potential?

Copake, I don't know your background so this may be completely off. I've had virtually no training in piano, and was self-taught as a teen. Almost 40 years later I got a piano, and had maybe 6 lessons, but had also started studying another instrument. By learning different ways of doing things or approaching them, what I was able to do, and how well, took a sharp upswing. The focus shifts from advancing to harder pieces, to advancing in approach and technique - which then lets the harder pieces fly.

Some of the things that brought me forward on the piano will seem simplistic to anyone who has had years of formal lessons. Examples: * hands closed for 5 note spans, and open for octave spans - rather than in a stiffer readiness-for-anything stance. * being aware that from point a to point b I am covering C4 to A4, preparing and placing my hand there, then from point b to c I am covering a different area, and preparing that the same way - that had a significant effect on accuracy, speed, and less tension. In turn I was able to play more difficult pieces which sounded better. Without a teacher I can't get technical help, but even this made a significant change.

A while back a friend who is a professional musician told me that he always studies the rhythm before anything else. Switching my approach to this also improved what I could do. I think it's this kind of thing which (if you don't have it) can let you progress more than if you play harder music, approaching it as you have always done.

For my part, I'm happy for _any_ part of the process I would have to follow myself to be done by someone else. Well, short of pressing the actual keys But in practice I find that analysis of a piece contributes only a little to my ability to remember it. Sadly.

Sorry! I realized that later, and was going to change it, but hey, a little adrenalin rush is good every now and then.

"I'm 59 now, can play quite a few pieces, but would like to learn more and be able to play my repertoire even better. Do you consider this mission impossible?"

I know people who are doing it. As it happens, most of the people I know these days are on the wrong side of fifty.

There are things I can't do anymore (without paying the price physically), but I'm glad that continuing to learn is still possible. Research studies indicate that keeping the mind active staves off senility. Your mind may not effortlessly sponge up everything that comes its way, the way a young child's does, but making the effort to keep it active does improve memory retention and keeps the "thinker" alive.

Children experience frustrations too; then comes the challenge of trying to learn during the hormone storm of adolescence; then come the can't-find-a-minute-to-practice years... some of the barriers are out of the path at this time of life. I say, go as far as you can.