Another Piano Festival Come and Gone

The piano festival took place yesterday. For this one I was determined not to be nervous, and I tried not to "overthink" the pieces I was playing (that's what happened last time). However, the problem was I wasn't sure if I was supposed to play one or two pieces, and if I did I didn't know how many I was supposed to do from memory. Just in case, I worked hard on memorizing both of them, but as our car inched closer and closer to the building the notes to the songs started leaving my head one by one. By the time we got there I was extremely panicky and starting to wish I was on another planet.

Fortunately (or not so fortunately) soon after we arrived it was my turn to play. Even though the judge seemed much nicer (and a bit more relaxed) than the one last time, I was still extremely nervous and I started feeling kind of faint. To relax myself I thought, "What's the worst thing that can happen?" Well I can do so horribly that I'll get booed off the stage and my piano teacher will be humiliated for the rest of her natural life....Yeah that reasoning didn't help to calm me too much.

As soon as I got up there I expected the guy to grab my book from me right away. Instead he leafed through it for a second and started making comments on some of the other songs in the book. Now at this point I was so nervous that I really wasn't in the mood for this, but of course I had to smile and make comments back because you don't want to get on the bad side of a judge after all. Then after he was done he told me to start, and to my shock handed me back my music. So I didn't have to play from memory after all. I was so relieved and happy that I almost hugged the judge right then and there, but luckily I refrained from that. So I played my piece (it went much better than I thought), heard a few comments, and then exited the stage as fast as my legs could carry me. Then just as I was leaving, my piano teacher piped up, "Hannah, don't you have one more song to play for him?" I almost hyperventilated then and there. Sure I didn't have to have it memorized, but that song was wayy harder than the one I had just played and I really didn't want to go through all this stress again. Luckily another teacher there explained to my teacher that we only had to play one song each. Thank heavens for that.

Now that the festival is over you'd think that all my stress would be over right? Wrong. Next Sunday there's a recital where I have to play a duet with another girl (we actually got to go over it yesterday afternoon for the first time together), I have to sing something, plus I might have to play both (or just one) of my solo piano pieces. At least that's what I think. With my piano teacher who knows.....