Last week, I attended several concerts at Portland Piano International's Summer Festival and then wrote an article for Crosscut. You can read it here.
Although I did not attend Fredric Chiu’s concert, I did hear him present an unusual demonstration-lecture (July 19) in which he explained techniques for practicing without a keyboard. Chiu handed out a short piece by Mendelssohn (Opus 72, No. 1) to thirteen people in the audience. They studied the dynamics, rhythm, ornamentation, harmonic structure, and other elements of the piece before coming up on the stage and playing it. Each person only played a couple of measures and thereby completed the work from memory. It seemed to be a positive experience for all of the participants, though I think that most pianists would be careful to correct any mistake as quickly as possible.
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