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Just for fun, a discussion topic: checked out a Mendelssohn book and was delighted to come across Prelude in E minor (never even knew it had a fugue, also; when I learned it, I just had one of those 3-pg. octavio-style copies). Anyway, have not played this particular work on over 20 years, and it was such fun to have it just flow freely from my fingers; first time through, I'd say it sounded basically comparable to how it did all those years ago, with the caveat that I wasn't 100% accurate with it back then, either. Now, I realize it is written in a very player-friendly way, but I also realize that fast arpeggios aren't one of my strongest suits as I don't play them all that often. I thought it was just so interesting that this piece came back to me almost as if I'd just played it last week, when things that I've worked on very much in the last year can deteriorate and need a good refreshing even just months later, if they are set aside (assuming they took some true effort to learn in the first place).
This isn't the first time I've noticed this phenomenon; in fact, I was under the illusion (for a few years, mid-20's) that my piano skills had stayed at the same level, despite playing only a handful of times a year, until I was in a position where I needed to start learning new material again, and found that things that I would have assumed to be reasonably easy, or comparable to other works I've played, were a lot harder than I'd have expected them to be, 10 years prior! It really seems that the simple muscle memory I operated under in my youth has "stuck" in a way that it does not, now. Has anyone else experienced this? Stories to share, or tips for ingraining the muscles more quickly and thoroughly? It is really very ironic, because I feel I use much more of my brain now than I did then, in terms of knowing the theory behind things I play rather than rote learning, but it seems to take more daily interaction to keep everything "fresh".

I think the main thing that makes a piece stick with you is, if you learned it when you were pretty young; at least for me it is. If it's something I learned later on, forget about it -- it's almost like learning it from scratch if I've let it go for a few years. I mean, not exactly -- but sort of.

Also, as you hinted, the nature of the piece has a lot to do with it. The simpler the piece and its figurations, the more likely that it stays with you and the quicker to pick it up again.

Another factor is how intensely you worked on it in the past. I think the only way to do anything extra to 'ingrain' a piece better is to spend more time and effort on it while you're learning it -- i.e. basically "overlearning" it.

Things like knowing the structure of the piece and understanding some of the theory always help in learning pieces faster and better, but I think we're still at the mercy of mostly having forgotten pieces from the past, if we haven't kept them up -- unless they're from when we were pretty young.

Good input, Mark, as always, and thanks for sharing that you've experienced some degree of this yourself! I guess it just makes me feel melancholy for the "old days", which is appalling, because I can look back on myself as a younger pianist and know how STUPID I truly was, how everything I ever "memorized" was simply a circus act of doing it until it was "in" my hands and muscle memory. Now, with a new crop of material each semester, (none of which has to be memorized at all), the harder it is for me to play, the more I memorize it, and at performance time there might be several of the hardest passages I could transcribe for you from memory; I "know" this stuff as well as I can imagine knowing it (and it goes without saying that I've played it more times than I can count). But, 6 months later if we have to reprise something...it might take some brushup. It's a new kind of stupid, and very annoying.

From my own experience, your observations are very accurate. I too am presently revisiting some works that I learned reasonably completely many years ago -- and, as you say, it doesn't take all that long to recapture the physical demands, once the considerable mental cob-webs have been cleared away. And, indeed, it's gratifying to note that passages that previously seemed difficult or impossible, both musically and technically, now seem very manageable -- i.e., both technique and musical understanding have IMPROVED over the years. In my present experience, I would say that a mix of old and new is most productive in a practice regimen, with a slight nod towards the old -- since, like you, I'm finding new material harder to assimilate than I used to -- but probably because I'm now wiser and "fussier".