How to restart our piano training after holidays
So we had a lovely break, enjoyed the sun and returned with renewed energies to continue our piano lessons! That sounds all fine until our piano students sit for the first time after a long break and try to play the pieces that they left before. And then comes the surprise….they found they can’t play it at the same speed with which they used to, the trills don’t sound as fluent and nice as before, memory problems arise in passages that we could play perfectly well just a month before…what happened? is all lost? should we re-start again from scratch?
The answer is simple: no. To recover the finesse of the muscle memory of our fingers take a little work and patience. As Maestro Juan Rezzuto suggests in his last article, “Our fast muscle response is the first thing that gets rusty after long periods of not practising. For that reason, it is good to start by working on technical exercises. When talking about warming up exercises, scales and arpeggios jump to the first rows!
It is essential to focus not only on moving your fingers but also on moving them with “finesse”. Your performance “finesse” is something you need to recover, and it is undoubtedly the most critical sign of rustiness in your play.”
So, if you want to recover all the skills you have gained with lots of effort during months, technical work is paramount. In piano tuition, this is suggested at the beginning of September before we plunge ourselves into the pieces, but beat in mind that scales and arpeggios should also be taken musically, you practise them playing soft and loud, even with some variations: going up loud, going down soft; and vice-versa. Crescendo and diminuendo playing also helps to recover the dexterity. Be creative!
Welcome back and good luck with starting your piano lessons!