Music Video Lesson: What Happens to Child Prodigies When They Grow Up?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with a really important viewer question. And it's a long question. I'm going to read it to you because it is so important and I think that you're going to get a real kick out of this one. It's got a lot of implications. So let me just read this question to you right out of the gate and then we'll kind of have a little reflection on it and see if I can shed some light on this important subject. I have just seen on YouTube yet another student under the age of 10 playing like a concert pianist. My question is what happens to these children because they can't all become concert pianists.

Yes, some can become teachers but there still seems to be a lot more than that when I was a child.

A former family friend had their daughter learning the double bass and she was well on the way to joining an orchestra. Then one day she suddenly stopped and hasn't played since. So I'm told. I also learned that her parents literally pushed their child to do the necessary practice. So I truly wonder what happens to these children in the long run because the girl in question is now doing a job assistant job and I'm sure she could be doing a lot more than this. It is truly very sad.

Okay, that's the question, all right? And you know, indeed there are countless musicians coming out of conservatories all over the world hoping to become professional performing musicians but the reality is there just aren't that many positions available for the high number of highly qualified musicians.

Now some people will change career paths.

You know that there was a study years ago of Juilliard graduates 10 years after graduating and 80 % of them were not performing musicians, were not in music as a career. It is a very great challenge. Now some people will find a way to creatively incorporate their instrument into something that they can monetize and make a career. It could be something as simple as a combination of teaching, accompanying, improvisation for dance studios, playing in bands.

It could be coming up with music, composing for websites. It could be a lot of things. But if you really look around at the people who are really out there concertizing, now of course there are a handful of world class artists who are touring playing with all the major symphonies but you know for every one of those there are literally hundreds of highly qualified people who could do that also. Would they do it as well? Some of them would, absolutely. I mean you go to any major conservatory and you'll hear phenomenal instrumentalists of every instrument.

And when the international piano competitions, you know before they start narrowing it down to the semi -finals even, they all are extremely accomplished. So it's very hard to be noticed. Think about this.

Let's say you're a pianist and you're playing the Pathetique Sonata or the Goldberg Variations or any of the seminal great repertoire on the piano.

For every one of those pieces that you play there are dozens of world class artists who have recorded them, people going through history.

And what do you have to say about that music that's so profoundly different from what others have said or others are saying? Now we all have our conviction and that's what drives us to practice, to be able to bring to fruition, to bring to life the concept of the music that we love so much. But to the average listener the difference between one Beethoven Moonlight Sonata and another can be somewhat significant. But think about the artist who creates a whole new genre of multimedia or doing something with video or something in live performance combining different art forms with dance and something really memorable, somebody who's actually bringing something that's new and fresh that you've never seen before. The whole concept is creative, not just within this confine of how can you play the standard repertoire better or differently from somebody else but somebody who actually creates something new, a whole new experience.

And that experience could be a live experience or it could be something utilizing technologies, it could be multidisciplinary, multimedia with different art forms. These are the real things that capture people's attention because it's not subtle.

Because while there are those who can appreciate the difference in performances of absolutely cream of the crop pianist let's say compared to a very, very well schooled student.

I mean they're both doing the same thing, they're playing all the notes, they're playing the score but one just does something to you that the other one doesn't. It's very, very difficult even to find.

So some children who were child prodigies eventually come to accept or reject their identity later in life. It can be a tremendous challenge because when you're eight years old or ten years old and you're playing concertos and you're wowing everybody, everybody is so impressed but if now you're 20, 24 and there's lots of people who can do that, how do you stand out, how do you carve out a career? Well my teacher Ruth Slanchinska who was one of the great child prodigies of the 20th century, she did indeed at one point because of a very, very challenging and that's putting it mildly childhood being forced to practice and playing concerts from the time she was four years old and studying with all the great pianists of her time from Rachmaninoff to Hoffman to Schnabel on and on. She actually did give up the piano at one point as a young adult and went into psychology and then came back to it. It wasn't away from it all that long but she did have to have a reckoning to be able to come to terms with being a concert pianist as an adult after having an abusive childhood in the piano, having to practice the piano hours and hours a day. It doesn't come naturally to most kids by the way. It's very difficult to get kids to develop a virtuoso technique at four or six years old or eight.

There are some though who are just drawn to it and sometimes it's a positive experience that's not all abuse. There are some kids who love it and they thrive on it and they have nurturing parents who help them develop and that's the way it should be. And when they become adults, whether they had a nurturing childhood or an abusive childhood, it is their decision whether to embrace music as a career as an adult or not.

And that's what I believe and leave comments if you have any experiences to share about your childhood or people you know who are accomplished pianists or other instrumentalists as children and how they evolved. This is a fascinating subject you can go on and on with. Again I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos .com, you're on the LivePianoStore. Thanks so much for all your subscribers. Look forward to seeing you next video.

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