Hi,

I have been posting on here for about year and this week I had an ephinany, lol. Some background: I decided a in August 2011 to start learning to play piano so I grabbed my kid's method book and started on page 1 and went from there on my own. I completed up to ABRSM Grade 2 this way with some help from this board. With some skill under my belt I enrolled for community college private lessons this fall. It started okay using the Alfred Adult All-in-one book which is not really my thing as I want to play standard classically trained rep with some Christmas carols thrown in. I made it almost through the Alfred book and scales, just plunking along.

Last lesson we selected my pieces for my final exam jury. One piece, Waltz by Kablesky, we worked on intensely yesterday. Wow. I had played the sheet music and listended to the CD recording, but didn't really hear it until yesterday. The teacher explained so many things that the sheet music doesn't tell: have the right hand lead with the left quietly following infinitesimally behind and you put a slight emphasis on the second beats in the phrase as you ascend in volume. The dynamic markings don't give you that level of detail - that comes from study of the period and genre of the peice. Who knew? I think those without a teacher would have missed a lot of these subtlies. Well, at least I would have been content with following the written dynamics and hitting the right notes.
Needless to say, I will be working with a teacher for as long as I can afford it Looking forward to my jury next week!
BTW - now that the teacher has a good grasp on my ability, we will be ditching the Alfred and moving onto rep in the next semester - yeah!

Is that the Kabalevsky Op 36 n 13 Waltz ? If so, I know exactly what you're talking about!

What an exciting moment, for sure.
I'm having similar moments of "oh joy!" with my new teacher and I'm so glad I decided to continue having lessons.

I bet you see tremendous improvement over the next few months! Do let us know how things come along!

Nancy, thank you for you very helpful post, and best wishes for your piano journey.