At a gathering in Vancouver recently, the host, who loves piano music but doesn’t play well himself, asked if I would play his favorite piece, Schubert’s Serenade. That meant, sight-read his score. Hmm. In public, so to speak, in front of my childhood piano teacher and other musically well-educated people. This was a daunting prospect for someone who has always considered herself to be a limited (what a lovely euphemism for “rotten”) sight-reader.
OK, let’s do it! Looking at the score, I saw that the melody was played by the hight hand in the middle of the keyboard and the left hand played single notes below and chords above – in other words, crossing hands in every measure! I noticed that the key was D minor and began to count inside myself, “1 and 2 and 3 and."
I played it perfectly!
So what, you might ask? It wasn’t the world’s most complex piece, was it? No, but no one can really know how awful I have always felt about my sight-reading! Reading the Serenade well was an incredible payoff for me, of my months of effort of practicing sight-reading every day for 15 minutes, using fresh-to-my-eyes music, employing the Sight-reading Checklist (the list of steps great sightreaders go through before they start to play, to be blogged next), counting out loud and reading with the metronome at a very slow tempo.
It was one of those “I felt 10-feet tall” moments.
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