Tales of Piano Sightreading
Sightreading on piano is considerably more difficult than on any other instrument.
As someone who plays violin, viola and piano, I can testify to the enormity of the difference. It seems grossly unfair that, while other instruments can follow a single line of music, as a pianist I must read a zillion notes at the same time, jump wide distances with both hands in opposite directions, all the while looking attentively at my chamber music partners to follow entrances and cutoffs. I am also expected to help other group members come in, from the score in tiny print.
There is some consolation in knowing that I am not alone in finding piano sight-reading to be a challenge. Evidence of this is seen in CMNC's long history of special treatment for piano assignments. We work with pianists to choose their assigned pieces around five weeks ahead, to give them a chance to prepare. When there are cancellations, we swap around other players as needed so that the pianists can play the pieces they have looked at. Sight-reading is not a challenge for all pianists. Some lucky people appear to be born with the ability to sight-read piano. This includes my brother, who played a lot of four-hand music with my father. Both of them were excellent sightreaders. So should the rest of us throw up our hands in despair that we were not born under the piano-sight-reading lucky star? Not at all. As with most other skills, those of us to whom it does not come naturally may need to devote some focused effort but can most certainly improve.
As evidence for this, here are some of my experiences over the last 30 years that have helped, tiny bit by tiny bit, to advance my sight-reading skills. When my mother began to teach Suzuki violin, I was in my teens, my brother was off to college, and my father had long since moved across town (my parents divorced when I was 3). So that left me as the sole resident pianist to accompany my mother's students. In Suzuki Book I, the piano parts are quite tame, so I was able to manage them without difficulty. Over time, the students graduated to later books and I did my best to keep up with them. This was my first regular activity that included sightreading.
Then my brother moved to Israel, and my father was stuck playing four-hand music with me. Not a happy experience. Fortunately, my father was supportive of my (at that time very poor) violin playing, just as my mother was of my piano playing. My piano teacher encouraged me to choose pieces to learn, so, rather optimistically, I dived into the Schumann piano quintet. This was a sobering experience. I knew the level of technical expertise needed from years of turning pages for my father and for the pianists who played with my mother's groups. I was nowhere close. So I set aside piano for a while and moved to California, where, as a poorly paid Ph.D. student, I did not even own a piano for two years.
In California, I did find people to play string quartets with. Then one day we had a violinist fail to show up, without calling ahead to warn us. We were at the house of the cellist, who did not own any string trios. She had a piano, but owned only one piano trio—the Mendelssohn D minor, known for its sweeping string melodies and fearsomely challenging piano part. Having enjoyed reading the Mendelssohn violin part in the past, despite my father's griping about the piano notes, I agreed to give the piano part a try. We played at an extremely moderate tempo, and I stuck to the melody lines, leaving out almost all of the triplets. Much to my surprise, my friends on violin and cello were both tolerant and encouraging of my piano playing. With the support of these and other friends, I began to work on piano parts to Beethoven Op. 1 trios and other works that seemed within reach.
It definitely helps if one can be lucky enough to find supportive friends, preferably somewhat inexperienced players who are un-familiar with the standard piano chamber music literature. If you are supportive and encouraging to them and provide good food, they may be more patient with your piano struggles.
My next chamber music surprise was discovering how hard Mozart is. The notes are a lot easier than Brahms', but they are far more exposed, with many solos in which the other players have nothing to do but listen to the pianist's wrong notes. In this regard, Brahms can be easier. The other players have so much to do that they do not have much attention left to notice how many notes the pianist is getting. It is unfortunate that some pianists may get discouraged by negative experiences with Mozart and give up on doing piano chamber music.
There is an unfortunate chicken-and-egg problem with sight-reading. To improve, one needs practice, and the best practice is to read in a group, not alone. For the longest time, I would apologetically explain that my sight-reading was not very good and pass up opportunities. But every now and then situations would arise in which there was no escape; I would just have to dive in and do the best I could. In this respect, pure pianists have an advantage over me, because my easiest escape was always to switch to violin or viola.
One no-escape situation I landed myself in was doing rehearsal accompaniment for a local Gilbert and Sullivan group, the Stanford Savoyards. They are much in need of pianists, and I learned a lot from the experience. Singers are far less forgiving than instrumentalists when it comes to tempi. With no possibility of playing slowly, I was forced to figure out ways to approximate. And with far too many notes in the full opera score to learn them all, every rehearsal had a significant sightreading component.
Another was the Humboldt chamber music workshop. This can be terrifying, because, unlike in CMNC, pianists receive zero advance notice of what music they will play and have to perform for the entire workshop. But everyone is encouraging, which helps a lot. The Humboldt coaches threw pieces at me that I would never have had the nerve to try on my own. Finding that I could make enough sense of them so that the groups were reasonably happy did a lot to improve my self-confidence.
Over the years, there is no question that my sight-reading has improved, although it may never be as good as I would like. I hope my stories might be encouraging to others to keep working at it and to sign up for operetta accompaniment or Suzuki student accompaniment or whatever else comes your way that might be helpful.
See also Piano Sightreading: Technical Tips