Dear Friends,
Quick note before we start: I am playing a solo recital at Butler University on Tuesday, October 28, at 7:30 pm. If you’re in Indianapolis, I’d love to see you there! More info, including a link for streaming (which will appear on the event page shortly before the concert begins) is available here.
Late last night I got back from East Tennessee State University, where I attended my first-ever American Liszt Society Festival. I had a wonderful time meeting pianists and piano-lovers from around the world.
The ALS Festival is different from pedagogical conferences like MTNA, NCKP, and CMS: it’s three days of performances and lecture-recitals, all centered on a yearly theme.
This year’s theme was “Liszt and Women”; highlights for me were a complete performance of Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, as well as an incredibly engaging, memorable presentation by Liszt biographer Alan Walker.
What I especially loved about the festival was the shared passion for music that united everyone there. It might sound a bit “woo-woo” to say this, but sitting in that hall, I could sense a palpable attentiveness, and, well…love… that felt very healing and special to be a part of.
If you’re someone who loves Liszt, Romantic music, or simply loves listening to piano music, I’d encourage you to look into joining the American Liszt Society. Membership ($60/year) is open to anyone, even non-musicians, and helps sustain an organization devoted to “celebrating Franz Liszt, his influence, and his ideals” (from the ALS mission statement).
Next year’s festival will take place September 28-30, 2026, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with the theme Toward Re-Enchantment: Beauty as a Portal to the Sacred.
At the ALS Festival I performed “August” from Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Das Jahr, which was presented in its entirety by ten performers.
It was an interesting experience playing a single month from Das Jahr, a piece I’m playing a lot these days. Hearing different pianists perform the other movements gave me some new ideas for my own interpretation. Overall, it was fun to experience what for me is a solo project as a group performance.
When I sat down at the piano on stage and started playing “August,” one thing I noticed was that when I’m playing the cycle on my own, I’m usually quite settled by the time I get to that month, because the adrenaline from the nerves has worn off by the eighth movement. But jumping right into it, and playing for an entire roomful of professional pianists, as a newcomer to this festival, was pretty stressful!
Right around the time I got to the last page, I felt like I was finding my groove and the nerves were dispersing, but by then I was almost done!
This experience made me remember how important those first few minutes on stage are. That initial feeling of anxiety fades once you get started, but the opening section of anything you perform needs to feel rock-solid, because that’s when your nerves are most likely to interfere with your preparation.
And so my advice to you today is: when you have a piece you are preparing for a performance, spend a disproportionate amount of time on the first part of it. This is when you are most vulnerable to being derailed by nerves. Make sure that opening section is bulletproof and that you are really, really secure when you sit down to play it.
Then, when you perform it, that extra level of preparation will give you confidence from the start and you will feel better and better as you continue to play.
By contrast, if you start off with a rocky beginning that felt “fine” in the practice room but where things are unexpectedly going wrong due to nerves, this can shake your confidence and create a negative feedback loop, where you feel wobbly from the start and get increasingly nervous as you keep playing.
Like with so many things in life, starting something can be the scariest part. That’s why over-practicing the beginning of your piece, so that you can reliably nail it every time, will prepare you for a confident, secure performance.
Have a great week - Happy practicing! 👋
Kate