Why I failed my final recital at music college (and what this has to do with speaking English)

If you are reading this blog, it's very likely that you are learning English as a foreign language. As I hope you know, I'm an English teacher with a particular interest in supporting my clients to overcome their painful thoughts and feelings about speaking English.

This interest was sparked my numerous conversations with clients who had a good, often excellent, level of English, but who suffered from terrible anxiety about their language skills. I realised that most of the problems they were experiencing, such as underperforming in exams or being silent in meetings, were not down to their level of English but rather to the way they thought and the expectations they had.

Although I have experience of living abroad and struggling to make myself understood in a second language, I have also struggled with crippling performance anxiety. It's only recently that I've started to wonder if maybe this was the subconscious reason I was so drawn to people's stories about the fear of performing in English.

In this blog post, I'm going to share a true story that was incredibly painful for me at the time and which I am only now, almost thirty years later, starting to understand fully.

When I was at music college studying piano performance, I had the worst stage fright imaginable.  I had all the physical symptoms - shaking hands, feeling sick, and, bizarrely, a runny nose which resulted in some loud sniffs during my recitals!  And to accompany these unpleasant sensations, my mind would run at 1000 miles an hour, doubting whether all the work I had done would be enough and predicting a disastrous performance.  

While there were occasions where I was mysteriously able to overcome all this and put on a reasonable performance, there were many occasions where I played well below my abilities and left the concert hall feeling ashamed and frustrated at my inability to perform.

The worst performance was during one of my final recitals at music college during my honours year.  I had learnt a particularly difficult piece (Scriabin's 9th Sonata) and had spent about 9 months preparing for the 40-minute recital. 

Although this was a 'closed' exam (i.e., not a public one), it was very important in terms of my final grade and was to be assessed not only by the head of piano but also by distinguished visiting professors.

To say I was terrified is an understatement. 

I went into the eerily silent concert hall feeling sick, cold and sweaty. I couldn't see the examiners well, but I knew they were there waiting, I thought, to deduct marks for each and every mistake I made. I felt as nervous and jittery as a deer which has scented a wolf in the air, and as I started to play, my mind kept up an incessant commentary, none of which was in any way positive.....

Terrible start! What the hell are you doing?

Ooops! That was a big mistake there! For God's sake, concentrate!

If my hands sweat any more, I won't be able to play

Now I really need to blow my nose, I can't stop sniffing

Christ, that bit was awful!

Thoughts like these do not contribute to successful performances or increased feelings of confidence. Instead, I felt worse and worse about my playing, believing (wrongly, as it turned out) that I was playing so badly that I was literally failing.

About halfway through the recital, I stood up and announced to the examiners that I was not going to continue before walking out of the concert hall to a somewhat stunned silence (I later learned that I was the first person in the history of the music college to ever do this which is a claim to fame I could have done without).  I went to the secret toilet that no-one used, locked myself in and cried my eyes out.

Although I asked if I could resit the exam, I was told that this was not possible.  I was also told that my playing had been adequate, if not brilliant, and that I should have continued as I would have passed.

I failed the crucial recital all because I didn't know how to control my thought and emotions.

Although I continued to play and teach the piano, I was never able to deal with performing and eventually stopped music, not starting again until 20 years later. 

In the intervening period, I spent 10 years travelling in Asia, learning taiji and teaching English which brings us back to the beginning of this blog post because my English students suffered from the same anxiety around performing that I had experienced at music college, except that their anxiety stemmed from worries about their language fluency and accuracy, rather than getting the notes right and not having a memory lapse.

I wish I could give an absolute and concrete answer to the question "How do I overcome my fear (terror) of performing?", but in all honesty, at the moment I can't. I do question how a four-year degree in piano performance could have completely neglected any work on improving the students' ability to perform under pressure or on supporting students such as myself who were clearly struggling. To my mind, that is just ludicrous, if not negligent.

However, since coming back to the piano earlier this year, I have found a ton of research into performance anxiety among musicians (where was this when I was 21?!) which you can be sure I'm going to explore deeply. I'll be looking for ideas that I can use to improve my ability to perform (because maybe the time is coming for me to get back on stage), but also that I can utilise in my English language teaching.

Watch this space........