I know that probably everyone here has their dreams about a career in piano.
My dream is to attend either Peabody or New England Conservatory and when I'm done become a professor of piano at a great school like those or Oberlin. I want to win major competitions and perform concertos with major orchestras. This is of course only a dream. If all I had to do everyday was get up and practice, I may be able to achieve it but I have so many other things to do....
What are your dreams?

I wish I could play well. I know I'll never be a pro. (I started lessons last year - I'll be 28 next month) I wish I was a prodigy, that music came as natural to me a breathing. I wish I wasn't afraid of letting my feelings out and wasn't afraid to make mistakes. I know if I had more confidence, I'd be more motivated to practice and play more. :rolleyes:

Hilary

[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: LadyElton ]

my dream is to get into a music school, get some kind of a degree/masters... and of course to develop such strong technique so that I can play things like Ravel's Gaspard... then play a part in the performance scene... probably playing concertos like the Rach 2 or Ravel G with some famous orchestras under famous conductors (Ashkenazy?)... and hold my very own recitals... publicising the music of lesser-known composers like Faure and Tchaikovsky...

but all this, definitely, is only a dream.

I want to follow in my teacher's footsteps and master all of Rachmaninoff's music and play them with symphonies and recital halls around the country.

And it is, indeed, a wonderful dream. If you get to hold a recitial featuring Faure's music, then I'll be happy to listen. I love his music (but then again, I could be biased. His Requiem is sublime, and I had the wonderful opportunity to perform his "Cantique de Jean Racine" in public. )

Of course, if I had my college days to do over again, I probably would not have majored in Chemistry. I would have chosen music instead. But then again, my parents probably would not have helped me pay for college had I done that. And who knows, if I had chosen that route, I probably would be a poor, starving church musician today. :p

But I suppose I'm happy where I'm at. I wouldn't have spent all that time getting the Ph.D. in Chemistry if I weren't completely happy with it. But then I think of a friend who just completed his Ph.D. in Composition ... and I'm just completely blown away by his talent. So any music dreams I may have had, I live it through him. At this point, I'm just a wannabe who does music as one of many hobbies outside of the lab.

Since I'm a late starter on the piano I'm not asking much.
I wish that one time I could play well enough and be confident enough to simply sit down at any given piano and play something nice that others might want to listen to.
Hopefully that'll change with more practice and routine. Up until now I only dare to play for my family.

Better left-hand trills.

Amen Brendan! I wish my left hand trills flowed easily but they just end up being clunky.

Large enough hands to play an octave +2... no, an octave + 3!!
Nina

i wish i could play slow sections with better rhythm, like the beginning of tchaikovsky's doumka...my counting is so lousy...i have a hard time playing sections like that anyway because it's so easy to make it uninteresting to listen to.

"I probably would be a poor, starving church musician today."

I don't know about starving, but that's my dream, to play well enough to inspire worship, to play the hymns and praise choruses, to play the beautiful arrangements available for preludes and offeratories. And the duets for piano/organ, and the choir specials and cantatas....I just wish...

Late starter?? I'm 40+ and not ashamed to say so. I've worked hard to get to this point, and I wouldn't deny any of those years. But there are plenty left to become proficient enough to perhaps play for a small congregation somewhere, someday...maybe

wish: a tuned, working, nice-sounding piano to practice/play on

I agree with Nina! It would be so much easier to play Rachmaninoff!!!!!

1) A Steinway, Petrof, or Yamaha "S" in my living room; 2) working on Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto (one of my all-time favorites); 3) teaching and 4) playing small recitals. I think 2 and 3 may come to pass, and hopefully 4 too. Not sure about 1 ... but I'll keep dreaming (and scheming?).

haha... if it really does happen I'll be sure to invite you!!



wow... that's so cool!! the audience must have been very entertained... I love Cantique de Jean Racine!!

haha in the future I'll probably do a degree in... Chemistry!! seriously, it's always been my interest... and then I'll probably teach Chemistry, since I love teaching as well...

Well, if I'm ever in the area (the closest I probably would be is Manila) then I'll consider it.

And yes, we did get a lot of kudos for Cantique, in addition to some of the other pieces we performed alongside that (a couple of a capella pieces, the highlight being Randall Thompson's "Alleluia"). We're working on some very nice pieces for our Christmas concert right now, among those being Mendelssohn's "There Shall A Star ..." and Rachmaninoff's "Ave Maria."

What area of Chemistry are you interested in?

Another of my dreams is that i will actually get to go to Europe next year and do a bunch of competitions. i really hope it happens, right now i am currently (and frantically) getting the money (and my parent's approval!) together to do it! I am a little nervous though..i don't know ANYTHING about competitions..i know my teacher wants me to do this tchaikovsky one, though. He said he won it wen he was younger, and it would be cool if i won it, too. we'll see.

I'm not quite sure actually, since I seem to be interested in everything to do with Chemistry... but I guess that's because I'm in a secondary school now and the chem syllabus is rather wide... perhaps next year when I enter a junior college the syllabus might be a bit more in-depth and I might find out where my interests lie... but for the moment, organic chemistry is my favourite topic...

Going a bit off-topic here (apologies to everyone for that ...)



I did my Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. It is, indeed, a fun topic for me. Of course, there are so many areas one could study in Chemistry so it's best to explore and if Chemistry is really what you want to pursue, then that's wonderful. Someone on a Chemistry newsgroup back in the 80s used as his .sig file: "Without Chemistry, there is no life and no universe," and in a way, that is true.

yeahz... very true...

Wow, I'm truly impressed! Organic chemistry was my own personal Waterloo...

Now physics was another matter, I LOVED my physics classes and thought about majoring in it (but too much chemistry in our curriculum, even for physics majors!)

Chemistry, very interesting indeed, as well as physics. In middle school, I took several science classes, two of those classes being chemistry and physics. (The others being: General science, Geographical science, ie learning how rivers and lakes form, how mountains form, etc., and Marine Biology). I loved them all but chemistry was my favriote, followed by physics. Very interesting. I am currently taking Food sceince now in High School and we are currently learning chemical reactions in foods. I love revisiting the periodic table of elements and makeing chemical reactions, etc.


Now, as for what I wish, I wish to be a concert pianist and composer.

My fantasy career has always been an orchestra conductor!


Nina

I hope to one day be able to know enough about music, and playing the piano to be able to teach music lessons, and generate an added income from it. I would also like to of course be an accomplished pianist also with hard work and diligence. I think with my current teacher it will be very possible for me to fulfill this dream. I went from a teacher who gave half hour lessons and did not teach me the basics like scales, arpeggios, piano language, and stressing piano technique, to a teacher who gives an hour and a half lessons every week, for less money then my first teacher, who has a $33,000.00 Steinway Grand Piano that I have my music lessons on, and who is teaching me everything that she learned as a graduate from a music conservatory. There sure is a big difference in teachers out there, and if you have nothing to compare them to, you can unfortunately be mislead sometimes by someone who really is only interested in benefiting her own self, and not in really teaching her students how to play properly. It has been so much work for me to learn how to discipline myself to sit down at the piano everyday and practice the proper way, and so I hope that someday it will all pay off for me in the ways I have mentioned.
Interesting question Amy, and I am glad you asked it on the forum.
Regards:
Allen

haha that's something I always wanted to do as well... but I never considered this as a serious possibility because I guess a conductor has to have a certain level of musical knowledge and inclination in order to gain the respect of the players in his orchestra... nevertheless I enjoy conducting with recordings... and conducting my choir occasionally...

Another thing that I would really love to do is compose music and go around the country having major groups debut it. I would love to conduct them with the pieces that I write.

I would like to be a concert pianist to make ordinary people love and enjoy classical music (because i'm very, very annoyed at all the people in my school who do not CARE about classical music).

Yeah, I would like to conduct, but I don't know how to get started or anything. It sounds interesting.

I also wish I had bigger hands, lol!

In many cases, it's not size, but flexibility. Granted, if you only have an octave or a ninth, you should stay away from Franck and Scriabin, but for the most part good technique isn't heavily dependent on hand size. My hands can comfortably hit an 11th, but the size makes it difficult to play Bach, Mozart, and Haydn articulately.

Ok, first the chemistry stuff. I freely admit that chemistry provided me with one of the most enjoyable meals I ever experienced. After completing the required 2 semesters of General Chemistry in college, I happily used my chem book and notes as fuel for the grill...

As for my wish, there are several. First, I want to have a decent repertoire that I can perform from memory. And I want to play it well enough not to embarrass myself in public.

Second, I want to compose something that is enjoyable to hear and perform. I've got some ideas, but no where near the ability yet to translate those ideas onto paper.

And lastly, I want my composition to fit in with and measure up to the classical repertoire I'm working toward. This will be the hardest "wish" to accomplish without a doubt.

Regards,
Dan

wish i had 44 fingers on each hand... and maybe an extra two or three to flip pages...