A young piano student has many obstacles to overcome before his first piano recital. Where then do we set the bar and doing well? We say the answer is within each young piano student to do their best.
Doing well at a recital means you did your best. Since “your best” is different for everyone student recitals are as varied a rainbow. Every teacher has their own thoughts and ideas about how to get a student to perform, but my favorite advise is to teach students their playing for the piece itself. In doing this you give life to the music. It also seams to take away playing for mom or dad or even themselves. When a student can see the piece of music as the important entity they can slip out of the environment of glaring eyes and ears, snapping camera lenses and squeaky audience chairs. If a piece has life, then it also has character, and playing the character is the key to giving a good performance.

In this video you see a young man doing his best. You can tell this piece has life to him. He’s not worried about whats going on around him or even making a mistake, he’s playing the part. All that’s left is getting him to take a nice bow at the end of his performance. For that, “there’s always the next recital”.