Just an hour and a half before the piano concert I was going to, I was asked if I could be the page turner.
March 12, 21-year-old pianist Nathan Lee held a house concert, performing solo works ranging from late Bach to early Brahms. I arrived early, and was greeted by Lee and the event organizer, who were warm and cordial.
With minimal instruction and practice, I was put on the job. It was unnerving at the beginning as I anticipated the first page turn, but soon I was comfortable and at ease.
I had to be hyper-focused on following the score rather than appreciating the music. However, up close, the power in Lee’s performance was hard to ignore. The contrast between serenity and energy in his rendition of Mozart’s 17th Sonata was distinct from any other pianist’s performance of Mozart that I have heard.
And just like that, I was distracted, and I had forgotten about the repeat at the end of the first movement. After the final cadence, the music rewinds several pages and plunges back into the turbulent middle section, catching me completely off guard. I stood up to reach for the score, panicking inside. But thankfully, Lee had pretty much memorized the entire piece and carried on smoothly. Let’s hope nobody else noticed, I thought.
When you’re up there, you’re a part of the performance. You have to execute everything more perfectly than the performer does. But you’re not the performance either. You sit there silently so the performer can shine as brightly as he can.
Throughout the concert, I spent perhaps too much brainpower thinking about the timing of every turn. Stand up now? No, too early, we don’t want to be holding the page and just waiting. Let’s give it half a second more. OK, now. Shoot, the pages are stuck together, guess I should leave more time next time…
Afterward, I asked Lee whether I had flipped the pages too late. But no, it was spot on, he said. In fact, he was much more conscious of his own performance, remembering every small imperfection. We all seem to be just a little excessively self-critical and perfectionist with things insignificant to the outside world.
But even if the picosecond of difference might not make or break the concert, you still make sure the timing is absolutely optimal, you still do your job with as much effort as possible, and you still pursue that extra bit of perfection — because that is the degree of dedication that the performer is putting in.
Objectively, page turning is probably a boring and insignificant task. But it, like many other random opportunities, does much to broaden horizons and take you places you would never expect to be.
Photo courtesy of Nathan Lee
