My Last Piano Recital

Since this was going to be my last recital at college, I was honestly more sad than nervous. The difficulty of the pieces definitely should've made me feel stressed, but really I was just amazed at how my time at Amherst, and performing at recitals, was coming to an end. I was more disappointed that I couldn't perform more pieces that I was also interested in. So this one has always been bitersweet to revisit.

I only played two pieces this time, one classical piece and one video game music piece. The classical piece was "Pathétique" Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 - II. Adagio cantabile composed by Ludwig von Beethoven. The video game piece was Overworld, or the Super Mario Brothers Theme, from Super Mario Bros composed by Koji Kondo.

I was intimidated by how long and complex the Pathétique looked when my instrcutor suggested playing it, but he seemed to really believe in how far my skills have developed over the years so I decided to give it a try. Looks can indeed be deceiving because it really wasn't as hard to play as I thought. I was prgressing with it really fast. So fast that me and my instructor spent most of the time trying to perfect every nuance he could thing of I could incorporate into the performance. Perfecting the transitions between loud and soft parts, distinguishing the melody brightly enough from the harmonies the supplimented it below, etc. While not perfect, I was very satisfied with how the last classical piece I performed turned out.

I wanted the last recital to be special, so I thought what better way to end my recital performance by performing the most iconic piece of music from one of my favorite video game franchises. The rhythm for the piece was fairly unintuitive for me to get used to for how popular it was. I basically had to fallback on how familiar I was with how the music goes to get it down. I played it at a noticeably slower tempo than what it's usually played at, which is still kind of awkward to witness. There's also one section at the beginning where I took, let's say, liberties with people may or may not notice. All that being said, I'd say it went pretty well. I still had fun and enjoyed myself.

Everyone from my friends, all the professors I invited, and other students I knew enjoyed my last performance. All in all, I felt proud by the amount of progress I made in the three academic years of learning to play the piano. Before then, the last time I played an instrument was the ukulele in 8th grade and the recorder in 3rd grade. Despite only being an amateur my instructor, friends, even those who were familiar with playing music, were always impressed with my skills. Even if I wasn't aiming to become a professional, or perform in more public events, or anything like that, I was looking forward to playing the piano more. I was excited to search for more pieces to play and honing my skills on my journey as a pianist.