My First Piano Recital

After thoroughly enjoying piano lessons for a full academic year my sophomore year, I decided to continue taking lessons junior year. I was mostly playing exercises from Czerny: Selected Piano Studies Volume 1 and small pieces from John W. Schaum Piano Course, B: The Blue Book to get a grasp of all the basics: hand independence, dexterity, dynamics, etc. My instructor thought I was making really good progress, especially during the sping of sophomore year, and eventually taught me how to play full pieces. I was able to play them well enough to the point that he encouraged me to play two of them at a recital the music department hosts for students taking lessons for any musical instrument. The two you can hear in the video above are a classical piece called Gymnopédie No. 1 composed by Erik Satie and a video game piece composed by Hiroki Morishita.

I was really intimated the first time my instructor asked me to perform in a recital. He said that it wouldn't be anything too serious and that the stakes were low, but I was still nervous considering I never really played in front of anyone besides him at the point. Regardless, I agreed to it. I'd be lying if I said being asked on the spot didn't make me feel a little bit pressured, but I was legitimately curious what it would be like to play in front of a large group of people.

I remember my heart racing like crazy all throughout the day. I'd only been playing for about a year at that point, so I was pretty much, and still am to this day, an amateur. That fact became more clear as I realized the other performers had been practicing some form of music for years. The director of the instrumental music program, who was pianist of many years, himself played as an accompaniment to the other students too. If all that wasn't enough, I was the last person to perform too, Needless to say, I was nervous as my turn to perform slowly approached as the recital went on.

My introductory explanations for the pieces was a bit awkward and I made some really slight mistakes here an there, but it was still pretty good. I decided to play Gymnopédie first because it was a piece the leaps with the left hand made it more difficult and I wanted to get it out of the way. I wanted to finish with You May Call Me Marth because I have a lot of memories attached to the game its from and playing it makes me feel calm despite its somber atmosphere. I was also sure not many people would know it, and thus wouldn't be able to notice mistakes.

All that said, I feel like I did pretty well for my first perfomance, and my instructor and my friends said as much too. The face mask was I wearing made my breathing really loud in my ears, I was almost suRprised I was able to hear myself play. Sometime during the middle of Gymnopédie I was able to relax more seeing as though I didn't have any mishaps. By the time I got to You May Call Me Marth, I was actually enjoying myself. After it was over, I felt really proud of myself. It felt genuinely good to see how much progress I made in the span of a year, and to see it culminate in performing two pieces I really liked in front of a group of people.

After that day, I still sort of dreaded recitals in some regard, but more of me looked forward to them for the satisfaction of being able to perform.