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Over the last few years, I have started to question the notion that if I practise a certain difficult passage enough, I can guarantee that it won’t go wrong under the pressure of a public performance. That is to say that thorough preparation = success, whatever the weather. The England rugby star
Johnny Wilkinson once said, “You can’t always succeed. But you can always DESERVE to succeed.” And I think the same is very much true for us as instrumentalists. What I’ve learned is that I actually perform better when I take the pressure off myself, in that I focus not on the idea of ‘playing well’, but just playing. That said, it only works if we think about ‘playing’ in the right way.
The mindset I have found helps me grasp this better is where, in preparing for any given performance, I think of it as a) an opportunity to share the work of a composer and b) a chance to communicate to the audience exactly what it is I personally find interesting/ pleasing/ satisfying about the music. I’ve found that I perform better when I try to take the focus off of me.
I find it helpful to have some questions in my mind such as, what might the composer have been thinking about when he/she wrote this? What emotions were they feeling and trying to show in the music? Why? These are the sorts of questions which tend to get my artistic/ imaginative juices flowing and thus move my attention away from the idea of my playing abilities being on show for people to critique.
Now it must be said, there is no getting away from the fact that the paying public has come to see YOU play. What I’m suggesting is that there should be a sense of perspective.
