The wife of one of my relatives is a classical pianist. Her father convinced her to get her undergraduate degree in music teaching, rather than music performance, so she would have a fallback career in case the performance thing didn’t pan out.
Although it was a teaching university, they did have performance classes. For one of her piano performance classes, the midterm examination was a practical exam in three parts.
- The examiners choose a key at random by pulling a slip of paper from a hat, and the student plays scales and arpeggios in that key.
- The student plays a short prepared piece.
- The student plays a long prepared piece.
My friend happened to be the first student on the exam schedule. She went into the examination room, played the scales and arpeggios in the requested key, and then played her short piece and her long piece. After she was done, the examiners asked her if she could stick around and help with administering the rem
