Pre-performance Anxiety

March 15, 2007 at 10:39 PM

Daylight Savings Time did screw me up a little bit. It is indeed harder to get my sorry butt out of bed in the dark.

But that shouldn't be an excuse. In the last week before my performance I am not that motivated to practice. I kind of run through the pieces to make sure they haven't gotten any worse since yesterday, and work on some shifts and rough spots that have given me trouble in the past, but basically I'm kind of scared to take anything apart and break it down, or try anything new (like a new fingering, for example) in case I can't put it back together in time.

How do you practice a piece in the days before a performance? What do you think about to keep from getting distracted? What are useful goals that can be realistically accomplished in 2-3 days?

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on March 15, 2007 at 10:54 PM

Greetings,
just perform.
Play through your program at the time you are expecting to play it, int the clotehs you are goign to wear, preferably in front of people.
Play through three times.
Play through in your head, with mime just before you get into bed.
The rest of the time just do regular techncial work.
You are a success,
Buri

From Anne Horvath
Posted on March 15, 2007 at 11:00 PM

You will be fine. Good luck! Drink your wine AFTER you are done playing.

I have also been out of sorts this week from Daylight Savings Time.

From Chris Dolan
Posted on March 16, 2007 at 5:51 PM

Karen, for some reason daylight savings time has thrown me for a loop as well. However, I have nothing to do other than practice so I simply am staying up a bit later to adjust.

I am new to the violin, but in my classical guitar experience all one can really hope to accomplish in a couple of days is to polish off a rough spot or two. I would not recommend a new fingering so close to a performance unless there is a very obvious need for a change. That is too radical a change to adopt in such short order, especially as you may loose some of your ability in performance. It could be done, I suppose, but I would not recommend doing so. I once changed my fingering of Leyenda (or Asturias as some call it) rather radically, and even though the new fingering was quite an improvement, it still took almost week to accomodate and polish all of the changes.

Good luck, have fun, and don't worry too much about the rest. I always play so much better calm than I do frazzled.

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on March 17, 2007 at 1:02 AM

Stay calm and enjoy your performance. I'm sure you'll do great.

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