ON EASY PIECES

Most students come to a stage (from 13 years of age upwards) when they ask whether they may learn Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor. After they have played it they gain a certain standing among their school fellows. (Oh, Mary’s a splendid player. She can play Rachmaninoff’s Prelude toppingly!”)

Mary’s teacher perhaps offers for her next piece Macdowell’s “To a Wild Rose.” Mary receives it with barely disguised scorn. At her next music lesson: “Please, Miss/Sir,” she says, “that piece was too easy for me. I read it straight off. Shall I play it now?” She does so!!

The poor wild rose! Before many bars are over it has begun to droop and fade; one by one she tears the petals off, and when the end is reached it is lying in the mud, trampled underfoot – quite dead.

“Yes, you’re quite right, Mary,” says the teacher; “it’s too easy for you. It needs a real artist to play easy music. Yes, I’ll give you something more difficult.”

Someone once said that “the difficulty of Mozart is that he’s so easy.”

A difficult piece, especially if you make enough noise, will usually carry itself off, but in an easy piece there is only its own beauty, and if you can’t bring that out, it is nothing.

I would give Rachmaninoff’s Prelude to 10 or 20 pupils for one to whom I would entrust “To a wild rose.”

So don’t feel insulted if your teacher doesn't give you what you consider “hard” enough pieces. When the great violinist, Kreisler played little things which sounded so easy that you could almost (or quite) play them yourself, do you think he did so because he couldn't play the harder ones? No, we all know that he could astonish with fireworks and gymnastics if he chose.

The great Cortot was not ashamed to play Schumann’s “Children’s Pieces” at a public concert. So why should we think them too easy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUynuh-tgRk