Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum An American piano teacher's week in China

This past week I had the fortune of visiting a hip, up-and-coming international music school in Shanghai that my undergrad classmate and her fiancé recently founded. As it happened, one of the teachers got sick last minute and I inherited his teaching load.

The experience I had confirmed what we already hear about the boom of the piano culture there: That the scope and scale of it is incomparable. (Perhaps even surpassing the pianomania that shook Europe in the 1840's when Liszt was storming the concert halls and having women trying to get a lock of his hair as a concert souvenir).

The average practice time of some of the students clocks in at 8-11 hours per day. They have studied all of the Chopin etudes. (k12 aged students). They travel hundreds of miles to come to lessons (A group of students comes weekly by train from the neighboring city of Nanjing), and after their piano lessons stay around for interactive music theory and history classes. They practice their technical studies with the same care, craftsmanship and invested fervor as if they were practicing a Beethoven sonata. The rate for piano lessons is 800 RMB per hour (U.S $130). Most notable, however , is their attitude towards study; it's completely accepted that music is something one JUST DOES, and works as hard as much as any other subject. Practicing piano taking a back seat to sports activities and school projects is an alien concept. Contrary to Western perception, despite any "pushing" that may be going on into forcing students to study music, all the pupils I interacted with demonstrated exceedingly keen and sincere earnestness to dig as deeply as they could into the music, and this alone seemed their sole motivation for studying. (It was an endearing moment to watch a young teen explain to me, even with communication gaps, how one voicing possibility in a Chopin Nocturne touched his heart more than another, and ask for advice on how to achieve that). The only places in the USA were I could imagine and equivalency to this are the pre colleges of Juilliard and Curtis.

Granted, this is a very well-established and marketed school and is by no means representative of the entire country at all. (Some of the students came as "refugees" from far stricter and more "traditional" schools in northern China, where they suffered broken noses and ears from teachers due to bad preparation in lessons) - but even within the confines of such an elite school one can feel the nation's collective surge of passion for piano music that is overtaking the place like a title wave.

During a walk in the downtown area I stumbled across a street that made me wonder if my unaccustomed American palate had reacted to the Jiangsu Cuisine in a way that induced hallucinatory visions: For six blocks (minus the occasional violin shop or bakery)..there was nothing but piano stores. There must have been about twenty total, all standard sized and stocked with traditional German, American, and Chinese brands, each store mounted one against the other.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion about this phenomena and it's connotations; but what is for sure is that if you're anybody in the piano world has never had the Chinese experience it will be the trippiest trip you've been on ~~~

Are you Carlos, or was this a quote? Regardless, it was thoroughly enjoyed. The blog post immediately prior on Emile Naoumoff's improvisations was also a good read.

Broken noses and ears?! I wonder that it is still possible to find passion for piano after suffering such abuse in the pursuit of excellence at it.

Wow, I'm not keen on the abuse aspect, but I do like seeing music's importqnce being acknowledged. I do wonder though, are these all students who wish to be concert pianists? What is the concert scene in China like? Is there more demand for concertizing there than in the rest of the world?

I hope these teachers were arrested. Surely even China has a law against child abuse.

Those are good questions. I didn't get a chance to speak with the students or parents about their career aspirations - I would guess that definitely not ALL these students wish to be concert pianists, but they practiced and prepared with the same vigor as those who you think would be preparing for a concert career. There are also more concerts, more recitals.

Western Classical Music is larger in general there, every stand selling CD's and DVD's on the street corner's had its share of classical music - at least 60%. And not just the vanilla "classical music for lovers", type thing that you might see at the sole "classical" selection at a CD stand in the USA - but actual, serious recordings of musicians like Argerich, Pogorelich, Klieber, Furtwanger; etc.

I could never practice 8-11 hours per day. It would cut into my TV time.

Off topic, but relevant, I met a young man from Hong Kong going to music school for a year in Hollywood. He was a guitar player and teacher. When asked, he also mentioned the long hours, 12 hours a day on the guitar was typical. This is his one year at an American school (at substantial cost to him and his parents) and he has to make the most of the opportunity.

I wonder what the piano teachers over in China and their pedagogy is regarding these long hours, because many teachers in the U.S. and Europe would never recommend so much time, and even strongly advise against it.

I wonder what the condition of their hands will be by the time they reach 30? They may be able to practice 8 hours a day now, but that seems like overuse to the nth degree, IMHO.

I know which place you're talking about (face art). Everything sounds right except the part about broken nose/ear. That never happened, it was just one student who used to get hit by his teacher in Beijing. Even though this was normal in the past, China is alao changing fast and it's becoming more and more rare and unacceptable. They do have a thousands years old culture and history, so it's impossible to compare China with new nations like US. It's a whole different world. And the practice time is also exaggerated. They do work hard, but more in 5 to 8 hr range, depending on age and class load at school. And they do also have lots of casual students who practice just 30 min to an hour.

???
I see some faulty reasoning here.

But it's nice to have this thread bumped up.

As for practice time, my students on average practice less than 15 minutes per day. Several of my students practice during their lessons and never touch the piano between lessons. The more driven ones will practice on average about 45 minutes a day.

But the insistence on several hours of daily practice is, in my opinion, quite ineffective. I know that, for myself, I would never practice multiple hours a day, and since I won't do it, it would be hypocritical of me to insist that on my students.

Yup, I was thinking that much practice time would only lead to repetitive-stress injuries.

Then there's the diminishing returns of spending too much time practicing without giving the brain time to process what they're learning.

This makes me wonder - what is the optimum amount of practice time? I tend to run out of attention span after about 75 minutes. I think people who practice more than an hour a day are probably doing multiple shorter sessions rather than say a 3-4 hour marathon.

Burnout might be catastrophic too. Having a life outside just practicing can help perspective. Being multidimensional up to a point is a good thing in that it can help you develop your own artistic style.

Historically the chinese have had to struggle to push their way out of the lower classes. There's a greater emphasis on just making it compared to the West where its more about doing what you are good at or what you are interested in.

Thank God for the middle class culture we've had in the West, although spoiled child syndrome is a big deal here and is also starting to show up in china as well.

Fascinating account. How is it possible for school-aged children to practice 8-11 hours/day? They must be in school for at least 6 hours a day. The Western music phenomenon seems over the top in China.

There is a long thread about Valentina Lisitsa in the next forum (pianists corner) and her political views, cut off the Toronto Symphony, tried to be silenced, racial and hatred talk, etc...

There's also some idea going around that musicians should just shut up and be musicians.

I HUGELY disagree, and can't begin to think what a person studying 12-14 hours per day piano (or any other instrument and not much else) will think of any social or political issue. Don't we need thinkers anymore? We just need robots?