Not Quite, My Dear

Her fingers slide smoothly from chord progressions though sometimes they catch on the edges of keys because she does not lift her fingers high enough. The bright and shiny chords Mozart wrote into the movement are not as bright and shiny as he meant them to be. Her touch on the keyboard is light, but in a tame and weak way, rather than an ornamental bubbly way. She does not bring the best out of the piece as brightly as she should. She does not make it shine.

Her attempts cheapen the Mozart more and more with each try. I do not understand if it is because she is lifeless, or if she sees the music as lifeless. There are moments when I play out phrases and bars to show her when I cannot tell her and she watches, fascinated, enchanted by how beautiful the music can be. Then she plays immediately afterward and it falls flat in comparison. It gets duller and duller until it goes back to tarnished metal, rather than the airy and polished gold it should be.

Even worse, she reads the music and plays wrong notes. She makes elementary mistakes. She does not practice and iron out those kinks. She does not practice.

I do not know what to do with her. She will not pass with her repertoire the way it is, but she or her mother, it does not matter who, insists on playing the exam in August. It is possible to be ready by then, if she practices several hours a day. I will not pretend to believe she will.

(Celebration Series Perspectives Piano Repertoire 10. Royal Conservatory of Music. Canada.)

Edit (an insert at the end of the second last paragraph).

Where there are markings for the use of pedal to draw out every last bit of sweetness and brightness in the left hand, she completely ignores. She cannot seem to read what is not in pencil. She is woefully inept. And she forgets much of what I tell her regarding the musical context as well as the kind of sound she should learn to produce.