Piano exams again....Grade 8... 2009

It's been yet another year of piano music. Having graduated to grade 8 from grade 7 gives you a sense of pride, cause you know you're on the last grade and it adds up to some level of achievement. So here I was, ready for grade 8! Little did I know of the herculean effort it would involve - well, after grade 7, I thought grade 8 will be fairly easy... of course a little more difficult compared to grade 7. But certainly not as bad-ass as it turned out to be!

The examiner this year was a super-duper examiner because she was super-qualified. I remember how my jaw began to drop as I read her bio which included GRSM (London) & LRAM in piano, and LRAM & ARCM in voice!!! Besides that, she was one of the senior most examiners of the ABRSM and a highly experienced piano competition adjudicator. I did a little background check myself to establish her nature and adapt my performance (if possible). So I called my previous piano teachers from Goa and Chennai who had already finished examinations with the same examiner earlier this year - they both gave similar verdicts: liberal with marks for junior students (up to grade 5) and very strict for senior students (grade 6 and beyond). Being a grade 8 candidate who's been practicing for 9 months for this exam, I didn't feel very confident! Especially because my own teacher in Delhi didn't show any qualms in letting me know that I will very likely not pass :( So apart from being nervous as usual, I was shit scared of what the examiner would be like. Well, thanks to Ritesh Khokar (the exam coordinator in Delhi, who also happens to teach music theory and Jazz piano!!), I got to meet the examiner a few days before my exam at an interactive workshop on exam preparation organised by Ritesh! That interaction made a world of a difference for me as it familiarised me with the examiner's nature and method (to a certain extent). And she seemed like a sweetheart!

So now I was feeling a little better that my examiner was not a Beethoven alias reincarnated with far more wrath and impatience for the stumbling pianist! Well, the exam consisted of four sections - Scales and arpeggios (musical exercises for the hands on the piano), performance of pieces (consists of three musical compositions taken from three different musical eras - Baroque, Classical and Modern), Sight reading (playing a short piece that I have never seen before), and Aural tests (a set of 4 sub-tests to validate my skills of music by ear).

The scales were crazy! While I thought I was just getting the hang of scales a-third-apart, the sixth-apart scale was introduced in grade 8 syllabus. It's a killer of all motivation and perseverance for any scale-hater. The third apart requires you to play a scale (continuous progression of 7 notes.... do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti) for 4 continuous octaves - the catch is, you play with both hands, the left starting on the note "do" and the right starting on the note "mi", i.e. three notes apart. So one has to really concentrate when trying to replicate the finger pattern in each hand simultaneously!! Anyways.... regular practice and analytical thinking actually helped me overcome these hurdles. In sixths-apart, one needs to really recognise scale patterns and harmonic progressions. However much one may practice without the realisation of patterns, all will be to naught. I did get to playing the sixth-apart scales fairly well in the legato (smooth) fashion where it sounds like a flowing continuous melody. But the stacatto variant required my fingers to jump off the keys giving the impression that what played was discontinuous and detached rhythm - I still struggle with that today!

Now my pieces were quite an affair (i'd like to think). The first piece, a baroque beauty by Domenico Cimarosa, was technically the most interesting to perform because of the contrapuntal melodies and the double melody lines. Never having performed baroque in so much detail, it gave my hands to much-needed technique moves for control of dynamics (i.e playing loud and soft notes simultaneously with the same hand, different fingers). A lovely melody overall, with hardly any original music directions and most of its phrasing absent as it was composed for the harpsichord. Interpreting my own phrases was the most satisfying self-discovery I guess with this piece. Overall, a 3 and 1/2 minutes of musical pleasure.

The second piece, a classical heavy-weight in terms of style and performance by Domenico Clementi, was an equally satisfying play. The scale runs, the trills and the semi-quavered development in the middle of the piece leading right up to the cadenza, was a star-studded piece that can allow a pianist a lot of scope for a fiery and flambouyant performance. Although this was one of the most difficult classical pieces I have ever tried playing, I took up the challenge - needless to say daily practice, separate hands, in rhythms and in legato-stacatto variations - till my hands had the music movements ingrained in them. In spite of all I could do, this monster of a piece still had a few tricky sections.... the cadenza being opne of them. Also, being one of the longest peices I've ever played, it really demanded a lot of creativity from the performer vis-a-vis interpretation and dynamics - nearly 5 minutes long.

The third piece was an absolute thrill! It's one of the most wonderful jazz pieces I've ever played. Composed to a rather swift swing, the left hand chordal accompaniment was the most tiring left-hand I've ever tried out. In fact, the motions were so quick and demanding that I'd always be tired with an arm ache after practicing this piece. Hence I'd always work on it at the end. The right hand almost mocks the left hand with its fine melody line and bounce. And once you have both these contrasting and interesting scores combine, you have an amazing composition by Thomas "Fats" Waller that sounds like a drunkard competing with an piglet in a slush-stamping competition!

Needless to say I practiced everyday. I practiced a lot actually - reserving time for myself at the exam piano in the music school, practicing through the night at home on my digital piano, getting friends and colleagues to come and hear me perform, and what not. I even made recordings to send to a friend studying piano at a grad school in the USA for critical review before exams. I attended master classes with whichever pianist was visiting the music school to get their critiques on my pieces. Now my exam was scheduled for the afternoon of a weekday (Dec 7th). So I decided to take the day off from work to help me calm my nerves before exams. But my boss insisted I take only the afternoon half off! So I now had to come and work before my freakin exams! Having no other choice, that's exactly what I did: go to work with my brains going into death-freeze from nervousness, and then go for my exam. So reaching the school a good two hours before my exam, I decided to practice in one of the empty piano rooms on the first floor. My practice was cut short as there was a student waiting to have a lesson in that room. The room next door was unoccupied so I decided to try the piano in there. As I entered, I realised someone had just spent a good deal of time in that room breaking air and then left the death-trap door shut for an unsuspecting victim to wander into it. Disgusting!!! I quickly got out and looked for another room. And like my luck would have it, I found none. So I mustered the courage I needed, took a really deep breath and entered that ominous room again. As soon as I entered, I went for the windows to open them. But guess what, they were sealed shut! No chance of having them open before I ran out of breath! In the end, it was a bit of fanning combined with quick hand movements and leaving the door ajar (and just plain hoping that the air would clear) that helped me decontaminate the room. Phew!

My practice session on that stinkroom-piano was pretty good. I played well and I felt in control. The piano however sounded like a harpsichord, t'was an ancient baby grand (can't remember the brand). After practice I went out and waited outside the exam hall, breathing deep of the fresh air (what a relief) and breezing through my notes for the aural tests. It was soon time to go inside, the examiner awaited.

The scales went well, apart from one slip. The pieces were disasters - one worse than the other. I stopped playing at some point of time in between every piece. And for the third piece, I took almost forever to resume playing... I could hear the examiner sigh as I fumbled. Horrible!!!! Anyways, I moved on. Ended all my pieces brilliantly with the closing melody. By the time I got to aurals, I was completely drained mentally and emotionally because of my horrible performance. I got totally tongue-tied for the final aural question - commentary on a unknown piece of music about style, texture, rhythm, phrasing, dynamics, form, likely composer, etc. I had all the answers in my head, but they just didn't seem to come out that way... I kept stammering and stuttering about how the piece she played was a baroque Minuet, but didn't have any of Bach's traits. To my disappointment and equal relief, the examiner smiled and said "That'll be all".

I think I felt the worst at that very moment in my life. The totally contrasting feeling was a few days later, when I got a text message from Ritesh saying that I passed!! Yay! There was a lot of shouting and screaming in my house that day :) And I passed with a very large margin. I guess hard work does pay.