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Episode Summary
While it could be easy to just layer students into a recital program based on the order of age or repertoire difficulty, it may not result in a pleasing experience. Crafting a program that is positive for students, the audience, and yourself as a teacher (a.k.a. recital stage manager) requires a lot more thought, attention, and careful consideration.
Items Mentioned
Episode 016 – Recital Planning Made Easy
Episode 017 – Recital Program Formats: Pros, Cons, Ideas, and Resources
Piano Safari Mini Essay #18: Recitals
Transcript
You’re listening to episode 118 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. Today’s episode on recital programming considerations is the perfect example of how you, my dear teacher friends, are always on my mind.
As I was programming my studio’s upcoming Spring Recital, a lot of different factors and considerations kept popping up as I chose the order of performance, and I had to share them with you today.
It’s been a couple of years and almost 100 episodes exactly since I discussed specific recital-related factors here on the podcast. The other two episodes, numbers 16 and 17, cover the overall planning process and various program formats if you want to check those out.
The logistics we’re discussing today are focused on the order in which you place student performances and how that can affect the overall experience for the students, the audience, and yourself as you oversee the performance.
By the way, I’m Amy Chaplin, host of this podcast. You’ll find me every Tuesday morning in this space sharing with you thanks to a crew of teachers on Patreon. If you enjoy this content, please consider joining at PianoPantry.com/patreon
Let’s get going.
Laying out a recital program is not as easy as it may seem. There are a lot more factors that need to be considered outside of just age or difficulty of repertoire. While you can certainly use this basic measurement of planning, the result may not be as pleasing of an experience as it could be if we were to put more thought and attention into it.
Before we talk about some of these intentional thought processes, let’s consider the pros and cons of simply ranking students by age, years studied, or difficulty of repertoire.
It certainly makes for easier work laying out the program for us as teachers—that’s a benefit. The audience might also enjoy seeing the progression of difficulty as students grow. Beyond that, though, I’m not sure there’s much more benefit. The latter item – seeing and appreciating growth as students mature in their playing – is something that’s easily noticeable without being intentionally placed in that order.
Now for the cons. If you have a longer recital and all of the short, quick pieces go at the beginning, it can really make the end of the recital, which is full of the longer repertoire, feel like it’s dragging on at just the point when we might be struggling to keep our audience’s attention.
The beginning of a recital is when everyone’s attention spans are fresh. Placing longer pieces at the beginning or at least mixing lengths throughout can help balance the audience’s attention. Placing shorter pieces at the end will help the recital feel like it goes faster.
Refraining from placing younger students—especially beginners—at the very start will allow them to see others playing and perhaps help them not feel as nervous as they would be if they had to be the very first.
Another possible shortcoming of placing students in order of advancement is that older beginners might feel awkward being placed alongside elementary students while seeing their peers playing more challenging music. Mixing up the order of age and difficulty helps obscure any feelings of embarrassment that could result from emphasizing these factors.
I’m always careful about what students I place next to others. If I have a student who I know may have potential struggles in performance, I place them next to a student who will make them feel proud of themselves in comparison.
For example, if I have a student who plays at the late elementary level and maybe plays with some obvious unsteadiness but is still performing at their best for that time, I put them following a student with a much simpler piece so that their piece presents with more of a “wow” factor rather than placing them after a student who I know will play a much more complex piece to absolute polished perfection.
Does that make sense?
I truly believe the order in which we place students can impact their feelings about their performance. It’s not totally black and white, but it does matter.
OK, let’s talk about some more specific considerations.
The next thing I like to think about is the order in which students performed the previous year. While I factor in the order from the last performance—which was usually Christmas—it’s more important to me that I shuffle the order from spring recital to spring recital since it’s our big one, where everyone plays.
I never want anyone to feel like they always have to go first or that someone else is always the featured last performance. Having a featured last performer is unspoken, of course, but we all know that the goal is always to end with a strong performer. I’m sure our students sense that as well. Yes, I always try to start and end with a strong performer, but never the same ones. Usually, they’re my students who have been playing for five more years.
The third factor to consider is logistics—literally—mostly related to the use of a pedal extender. As the teacher, do not go into your studio recitals expecting to sit back and be an audience member—our role should be more of a stage manager. Be there to help with both bench height and the pedal extender adjustment placement. Ensure bench height is suitable—especially for younger students but really for all students. Even those who have been through it for a while sometimes forget to adjust. Do your best to also minimize how often you have to move and adjust the pedal extender.
Almost every spring recital, I have all students do one solo and one duet. Generally, I do all the solos first, then the duets at the end, but this year, I decided to intertwine them a bit more to keep it interesting. I split up the recital into two segments. Solos – Duets – 10-minute intermission – Solos – Duets – Recognitions. The first group of duets prior to the intermission and the first group of solos following intermission both utilize the pedal extender.
I placed my smallest student, a 5-year-old, first in line so I could then lower it for the rest of the kids who needed it at a shorter height rather than placing him in the middle of that group. Doing all the solos that require a pedal extender back to back means we don’t have to move it around for duets. It will remain in the same place for each segment.
This brings me to the fourth consideration – incorporating a variety of music. This is not necessarily a hard and fast rule as sometimes we might do specific themes, but when we can, I think it’s nice to include a variety of classical repertoire, contemporary compositions, and music people know.
This year I have students playing Grieg’s Cradle Song, the Main Theme from Interstellar, It Must Have Been Love by Roxette, Mozart’s Fantasia in Dm, Burgmuller’s The Storm, Satie’s Gymnoedie, No. 1, pieces by contemporary composers like Martha Mier, Melody Bober, Catherine Rollin, Andrea and Trevor Down, Piano Safari, and tons of Disney duets by Carol Matz.
As you’re programming your order and considering everything we already talked about, like mixing up the difficulty level, consider mixing up the order of slow and fast repertoire. My general rule is to not put more than two slow pieces in a row before throwing something more upbeat into the mix.
I know the work that goes into planning recitals is a lot, you guys, but don’t shortchange the thought process needed to design a program that flows nicely. Every year I start this process, I shift the order around two or three times until I arrive at what feels like a nicely-ordered program.
It took me 3 hours to put the program together for this year’s recital, including plugging everyone into the program slideshow. Each slide lists the piece, who it’s by, the performer, their headshot (basically the photos I take at the start of the year for our studio photo board), and a note in the bottom corner about who is up next.
Since I don’t include a printed program anymore, I also place a note showing which performance number the next person is. For example, it might say, “Up next: Daniel Smith,” and then in parenthesis (3/26), so everyone has a gauge of where we are in the program.
Make sure you are 100% sure of the order of performance before putting a slide show together!
I did print out a hard copy of the performance order that I laid out in Microsoft Word in a very basic numbered text list for the rehearsal, and I let the students take it home so families could see it ahead of time what their order was going to be.
This is the kind of work, my friends, that no one has any clue but us that goes on behind the scenes. Even though it takes a bit of time, I enjoy the thought process and creativity of planning a well-thought-out recital program. I hope you find it rewarding as well!
When I first started teaching and was seeking advice on recital planning like you are today, I gleaned a lot of great tips from a mini-essay written by Julie Knerr, one of the creators of Piano Safari. Mini Essay #18 has tidbits of advice that greatly influenced and made a huge difference in how I thought about approaching recitals these past 14 years.
You can find the link to that, as well as anything else mentioned in today’s episode, including the link to sign up to support the podcast on Patreon at PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode118.
