Spring Repertoire Project

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

---

The Spring season is a time of dynamic reawakening and renewal. That which has remained quietly dormant is reborn, joining the fresh abundance of new life. I’m surely not the only one who finds this the most vibrant and beautiful time of year!

There’s perhaps no better time for embarking on exciting new piano projects, but let’s also remember to give our perennial Active Repertoire a fresh ‘spring clean’.

Our Active Repertoire is the music we can play with confidence, fluency, and expression, for our own and others’ enjoyment, and preferably from memory.

Through my teaching, and here on Pianodao, I encourage players to always have three or more pieces that are performance-ready, and to support this goal I offer a quarterly project sheet for you to freely download:

---

Our Active Repertoire is our point of peak strength as pianists. Even so, some pieces can become tired and worn, in need of refreshment, while some others we might simply want to replace.

Time to refresh

The music we include in our Active Repertoire is never static. We will become tired of some pieces, while those we’ve worked on more recently become ripe for inclusion. And whether we want to continue playing them or not, our Active Repertoire pieces can sometimes become, well, a bit stale.

So let’s consider how to deal with our favourites when they have gone off the boil. Here are some practice suggestions for refreshing Active Repertoire pieces that you want to continue playing:

• Play one or more pieces of Active Repertoire a day, either at the start or close of your routine piano time.
• When you notice your performance declining, set aside a practice session later that week to focus on tidying up and perfecting your performance again.
• Try playing the piece at half speed, with a metronome, hands separately, etc. Variety is key: don’t just “go through the motions”.
• Remember which passages were a challenge when you first learnt the piece, and go back over those to check they are wholly secure.
• Return to study the notation, looking for any details previously neglected.
• Use quiet moments to hear the piece in your imagination, strengthening your aural memory and reflecting on your interpretation.
• Record yourself playing, preferably from memory. Listen back to identify any musically unconvincing moments.
• Consider how others have played and recorded the music. Try ideas you like, selecting those to keep or discard.
• Finally, play your Active Repertoire visualising an audience, and give them your best performance!

Time to replace

It is always worth asking ourselves why we want to keep a piece on our Active Repertoire. Sometimes when it has gone stale, or become riddled with new mistakes and slips, it’s simply a sign that the time has come to retire it.

While we may have performed a piece wonderfully in the past, we perhaps no longer enjoy playing it as much. Sometimes, it can be positive to draw a line under our current Active Repertoire selection, and work towards building up a new one.

I find it interesting to discuss this with students. I believe that it is important for them to choose which pieces they keep in their Active Repertoire; I merely advise and support. Spending time exploring their choices can help their development as pianists, and inform my continuing work with them.

Pianodao’s regular seasonal Active Repertoire Sheets encourage us to learn new repertoire, a continuing cycle of pieces to join our Active Repertoire as others are retired.

By developing and continually refreshing our Active Repertoire, we become more positive learners and players. Our playing becomes rooted in success, and in expressive musical engagement.

We more quickly memorise favourite pieces, overcome the anxiety associated with playing to others, and begin our piano time each day in a position of confidence, enthusiasm and satisfaction.

To download your FREE Spring Sheet, simply click this link:

---

Have an amazing Spring!
And here’s some other timely posts which might interest you:

---

---

Pianodao offers over 700 articles and reviews that are FREE to access.
If you appreciate this content, please support and follow the site here:

---

---