Hi guys

I'm a music student, first study pianist, and I'm wondering how long it takes people to learn a piece of particular technical difficulty from scratch to memorised and a concert-worthy standard, and how you maintain the interest in the piece while having to focus so intensively on technique for perhaps the first month or two of learning it.

I find it takes me about two to three months to learn something like the Beethoven Sonata Number 7 in D Major to recital standard, but sometimes I'll lose interest in a piece before I've finished learning it. Any thoughts on how to avoid this?

Cheers! Just a ponderance (is that a word?) I had...

Jack

The range of ability for memorizing varies hugely. I know people who can read through a score of a classical society, play it a couple of times, and they have got it. I know others that don't seem to be able to learn a large scale work in its entity no matter what they do. By the time they start work on the third movement they have forgotten the first. Your two to three months seems about average - but of course something you re-study several times over many years comes out better in the end.

As for losing interest - I don't have that problem. There is always more to find in a Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven sonata, or any similar masterpiece. You just have to really look at it and ask questions about why the composer made those choices.

I used to lose interest in a piece before I was done learning it when I was younger. As one matures, one realizes that there is endless amount of details to discover in the masterpieces. It is hard to lose interest on a good piece, even when one is finished learning it! Or maybe I should say, no one can ever finish learning a good piece.

Two to three months seems like a reasonable time to learn a new, multi-movement work. But of course, it also depends on whether or not you are learning other pieces concurrently, and how much practice you do.

If it really is a major work, it takes a lifetime.

Yes but how many hours a day are you playing to get the piece to concert standard in 3 months? Everything seems to take me for ever at the moment - but I should probably be spending less time on the computer and more at the piano.........

Kate bush fan - I practise about 5-6 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. I probably dedicate about an hour to each movement of whatever it is I'm learning.

Organ Dummy - I currently have a couple of Beethoven sonatas, some exam pieces and the Visions Fugitives (spend about 10 minutes on each of these) on the go. And I've got to start learning Bach for a 30 minute recital I have to give in May... hmm. I agree with you, you never stop learning new ways of interpreting any piece, but there is a definite level of mastery at it at which you could say you've learned it.

Mad Tom - You're right, I think I need to develop more of an intellectual interest in the pieces I'm learning.

Kenm - Have you seen Horowitz playing the Rach 3 in 1978 or around then? Do you think it's an improvement on him playing it in 1930?