What is your experience in preparing for a piano competition? By Gabriel Su (Ms. Nancy's ARSM Diploma Piano Student)

When I first heard about a piano competition, which was the Golden Classical Music Award hosted in USA, I felt reluctant at first. This is because I was in the midst of preparing for my ARSM piano diploma exam, leaving me with little time and energy for anything else piano- related. However, my initial doubts disappeared when I realized that I can just use one of my diploma exam pieces as a submission for this competition. This significantly eased the stress on finding what pieces to play in the piano competition while preparing for a huge piano exam at the same time. When selecting which diploma piece I would play for the competition, I had to be aware of what the time limit is for the submission video, which in my case was about 5 minutes. Out of all my pieces in my diploma program, 4 in total, 2 were long 10-minute pieces that were way above the 5 minutes limit, so those were out of the way. With only 2 pieces left to choose, I debated between which I believed was more confident in, until I reached the decision to pick one which was the first piece on my diploma program. I chose this piece because as the very first piece I would play in my diploma program, I will have had ample practice with it compared to the other piece. Now that my piece has been selected, I would go back to doing my regular diploma preparation, but with more time spent on the first piece. When it was time to record my diploma program, I decided to do a single recording of my first piece, both as a warmup and to get a submission ready for the competition. Once the recording for the submission was complete, I then submitted it to the online website for the competition, leaving me with a weight off my shoulders. After that, I continued to record my piano diploma program, until about a month later, I received words via email that I have won a position in 1st class, which brought a huge sense of satisfaction to me. Overall, I would say that it is a very tough, but memorable experience, especially with having to juggle my piano ARSM diploma exam with it. One word of advice I would give when you are going to participate in a piano competition is to try and use a piece that you are very familiar with, as it will greatly diminish the workload you will have.