Great Pianists on Piano Playing / Study Talks with Foremost Virtuosos. A Series of Personal Educational Conferences with Renowned Masters of the Keyboard, Presenting the Most Modern Ideas upon the Subjects of Technic, Interpretation, Style and Expression

by James Francis Cooke

Do Not Attempt the Impossible

"To those who are still in the preparatory stage of development I am glad to give one word of advice. Do not play pieces that are away beyond your grasp. This is the greatest fault in our American musical educational systems of to-day. Pupils are permitted to play works that are technically impossible for them to hope to execute without years of preparation. What a huge blunder this is!

"The pupil comes to the teacher, let us say, with the Second Hungarian Rhapsody of Liszt. It takes some fortitude for the conscientious teacher to tell the pupil that she should work with the C Major Sonata of Haydn instead. The pupil, with a kind of confidence that is, to say the least, dangerous, imagines that the teacher is trying to keep her back, and often goes to another teacher who will gratify her whim.

"American girls think that they can do everything. Nothing is beyond them. This is a country of great accomplishment, and they do not realize that in music 'Art is long.' The virtuoso comes to a great metropolis and plays a Moszkowski concerto of great difficulty. The next day the music stores exhaust their stocks of this work, and a dozen misses, who might with difficulty play a Mendelssohn Song With Words, are buried in the avalanche of technical impossibilities that the alluring concerto provides.