# Does Playing A Piece Making You Love/Hate It More?



## KevinW (Nov 21, 2021)

Hello Enthusiasts,

I joined a youth orchetra recently and we've been working on Brahms first symphony. I found that I start to like the piece more and more as I play it (I actually don't practice a lot and sight read around 50% of the rehearsal...), which is actually somehow counter-intuitive to the experiences I had when I was a child. I used to hate a piece as I play it, since it soon becomes boring and all the beautiful music will be associated with the hardness I go through during practices. But now, I start to learn more interesting details in the music as I learn and play it, and I would like to think more from the perspective of the composer while rehearsing. For Brahms first, I can sort of hear the struggle of Brahms on his perfectionist ideas and his attempt to make his own symphonies greater than those of Beethoven from the variations as well as the focus of deatils in it. I would like to learn your opinion on whether playing a piece will make you fall in love with it or break up with it, especially from those of you who are professional musicians that play in an orchestra or ensemble. Please share your stories here! 

KW


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

It definitely makes me love it more, except if I don’t like the piece to begin with, then I will hate it more than before. So I guess playing it has a magnified effect on what you’re already feeling in my experience. And the best thing is discovering new music through playing it. Really cool that you guys are playing Brahms’ first symphony!


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Another vote for "love it more". I'm an amateur pianist and I've reached a reasonable standard, so my teacher doesn't feel the need to require me to play stuff I don't much like, though fortunately there isn't a lot of that anyway.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

This is how I got into Bach...I never cared for his music very much when I was younger, but as I grew as a musician and started to play more of his works, the more I enjoyed them. 

My son is a guitar player (metal) and used to make fun of "radio pop" music. I encouraged him to try to learn a few "hits," just to see how they were put together, and he had the same experience.


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

Some yes and some no. But I've never learned any piece in depth, I mostly sightread them and memorize them. Some pieces like The 4th Ballade I could never play so I kind of hate parts of it. But Bachs works I always learn to love. Short melodies but always beautiful than impressive.

I'd definitely like a piano teacher to keep me on track. But the teachers in the music faculty in a university are too expensive and the teachers with no more than an undergraduate degree don't seem to like me pestering them with 100 questions.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

"Love it more"

As you learn it you become familiar with it, and notice all the clever things in it the composer left for you to discover in his future.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Depends. There are some things I used to dismiss as rubbish, but then when I got to play them they burrow into my psyche and then there's a sudden WOW! moment when all of the sudden I really start to appreciate and love the work. Schubert's 8th, Dvorak 7, Beethoven 8, Elgar 3, Atterberg 3 and others. Then there are some that I've played that I really hate all the more: Monti Czardas, Radetsky March.


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

KevinW said:


> we've been working on Brahms first symphony. I found that I start to like the piece more and more


This is normal. The more familiar you become with a piece the more you enjoy it. You can simply listen to it, you do not need to be the one playing it. This effect has been documented in neuroscience.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

SoloYH said:


> Some yes and some no. But I've never learned any piece in depth, I mostly sightread them and memorize them. Some pieces like The 4th Ballade I could never play so I kind of hate parts of it. But Bachs works I always learn to love. Short melodies but always beautiful than impressive.
> 
> I'd definitely like a piano teacher to keep me on track. But the teachers in the music faculty in a university are too expensive and the teachers with no more than an undergraduate degree don't seem to like me pestering them with 100 questions.


Might there be a halfway house between those two alternatives, some kind of community college whose faculty members might be more understanding than those at a university who have grown too big for their boots?


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## SoloYH (8 mo ago)

Animal the Drummer said:


> Might there be a halfway house between those two alternatives, some kind of community college whose faculty members might be more understanding than those at a university who have grown too big for their boots?


I feel like it's difficult to find good music educators that are in between the two. The former seems to love to teach amateurs and beginners, and work towards a goal. The latter seems to expect to be paid well and also expect you to be skilled enough to follow their (sometimes) ramblings.

The middle is somehow not good for much. Its like winning silver, not quite gold.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Years ago, I played a performance Webern's. cerebral and complex." 6 Pieces for Orchestra " under the late Maurice Peress, who is probably the most wonderful conductor I have every played under over the years . As the rehearsals proceeded , this daunting work came to make more and more sense to me , and I learned to love it . Mind you, this is the kind of piece which makes many of the older and most conservative subscribers to orchestras write angry letters to the conductor or the orchestra's administration saying how they are canceling their subscriptions !


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Both...in over 50 years of professional orchestra work ive played so many pieces...repeated so many, played new ones, done premieres, performed works under different conductors, etc....
Ive found that in some cases playing the works greatly enhanced my enjoyment and love of those works, in other cases decreased my enjoyment and exposed serious shortcomings in those works...


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## EvaBaron (Jan 3, 2022)

Heck148 said:


> Both...in over 50 years of professional orchestra work ive played so many pieces...repeated so many, played new ones, done premieres, performed works under different conductors, etc....
> Ive found that in some cases playing the works greatly enhanced my enjoyment and love of those works, in other cases decreased my enjoyment and exposed serious shortcomings in those works...


Can you share the pieces in which you found serious shortcomings? I’m genuinely curious


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

EvaBaron said:


> Can you share the pieces in which you found serious shortcomings? I’m genuinely curious


Rachmaninoff orchestral works are pretty much a wasteland, imo...i never listen to them, and playing them is really a chore...very badly orchestrated...way too thick and muddy...he writes some interesting inner parts but them totally obscures them with overly heavy, thick sonic murk [would have been interesting to have Stravinsky or Shostakovich re-orchestrate them!!]....they also wander about formally too - awkward transitions, episodes that go nowhere...my only beef with the cuts made in Rach'ff Sym #2 is that the cuts are nowhere near extensive enough ...[this subject has come up before and got pretty contentious, so I don't want to start another brawl]

Not fond of Tchaikovsky syms 4 and 5...overexposure, I guess....it just seems so over-the-top with all the hair-tearing, chest-beating melodrama...I do enjoy lots of Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker, Swan Lake [PIT at his best in the dance, imo], Syms 1-3, the Pfe and Vln Concerti, etc...

I don't think much of Delius, either....starts nowhere, goes nowhere, ends up at same place....


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Personally, in the times I've played with orchestras back in my college days (playing saxophone on Gershwin and Rorem pieces and woodwinds in several musicals), I tended to love the piece more because I could see how my little part fit in with the whole.

In wind bands, I always hated playing Wagner transcriptions, because for a saxophone, it involves 50 bars of rests and three bars of playing, but now I love them because somehow all that sitting and counting let the rest of the music embed in the back of my head. 

Even choir music is that way. I hated every minute of the year I was in college choir, but now the pieces we sang are interesting because the bass part that I was singing didn't turn out much like the way I thought the piece actually sounded.

Of course, back in my college days, I usually sat by/around some very attractive women, and maybe my feelings about a piece were affected by my lingering on some pale blue eyes. But as they say, the memory is past but the music remains.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

I was never a fan of the Franck symphony and learnt to hate it after playing it in an orchestra thirty years ago.
OTOH, I defy anyone to play Brahms and not love it more afterwards.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Usually more or the same, but sometimes less. I loved hearing Debussy's Reverie for piano before, but when I actually got to playing it, I found the material somewhat underwhelming, as well as Ravel's short Prelude. With Mozart and Bach, it's exactly as I heard it, when I start playing (or trying), no surprises. With Beethoven, it's usually liking it more.


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