Coping with surprises
By Philip Johnston

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Surprises are nice. On your birthday. Or if you win the lottery.

They’re not so nice when you’re trying to perform. But no matter how hard you practise, there are some things that you just cannot predict.

Like a light that throws a shadow across half of your music, making reading almost impossible. Or a page turner who turns two pages instead of one at the crucial moment. Or a sudden drop in temperature that throws your oboe out of tune.

Or some idiot in the audience who likes to comment while you play. “Ooooh, I love this piece”, they will tell nobody in particular. And then to top it off, they will stage whisper: “I wonder if he will mess up that really hard bit at the end?”

It happens. So do grumpy examiners. Or appalling acoustics. 

And don’t even talk to me about what pianists have to put up with. If the venue is a small one, you need to be ready for the possibility that the piano may have been wheeled over from the local pub on the day of the concert. “Yeah mate, it was tuned this morning. Couple of strings were broken, tuner didn’t have any spares with him, but it’s all ok. Jeff had some fence wire in his truck…”

Great. That’s really going to make your Debussy atmospheric. Thunk clunk thonk..

So what can you do?

Plenty. The problem is not that there are surprises. There will always be surprises.

The problem is the discrepancy that exists between the comfortable routine of your practice, and the unpredictable world of performance.

You can’t make performance more predictable.

So you are going to have to make your practice a little weirder.

Weird practice? Tell me how!