Marian Lamoureux of Hinsdale | Piano Competitions Sharpen Some Students and Break Others
Marian Lamoureux Hinsdale
A piano competition can be the best thing that happens to a young student in a given year, or the worst. Marian Lamoureux of Hinsdale has prepared students for both outcomes.
She has learned to read which student is in front of her before she signs the form. Competition is not a universal good in piano study.
Marian thinks teachers who treat it that way do real damage. The right student in the right competition with the right preparation walks away stronger.
The wrong student in the wrong competition walks away convinced they are not a musician. The cost of the second outcome is years.
What competition does well
Competition gives a student a deadline that is not flexible, an audience of strangers, and a judge whose opinion does not depend on knowing the family. That combination is hard to manufacture in a studio.
It produces a level of preparation a recital does not always demand. The student knows the piece will be heard against other pieces. They cannot hide behind the niceness of a home audience.
Lamoureux has watched students learn more in the four weeks before a competition than in the previous four months of lessons. The pressure focuses them.
The performance teaches them how to handle their own nerves on a different stage. They walk out of the event with a new kind of confidence that recitals do not produce.
The student who should not compete this year
Some students are not built for competition right now, and Marian will say so. A student who melts under any kind of pressure should not be entered. A student going through a rough year at home should not be entered.
A student whose confidence is fragile and whose progress depends on small wins should not be entered. Forcing them in produces a public failure they will carry with them.
Marian declines to enter students into events she does not think they are ready for, even when parents push. She would rather have an awkward conversation than watch a kid lose their love for piano on a stage in March.
The parent's disappointment is short-lived. The student's loss of confidence is not. Marian has had to make this trade many times.
Preparing the right way
A piece prepared for competition is not the same as a piece prepared for a lesson. It needs to survive the long pause between sitting in a green room and walking out under lights.
Lamoureux builds in repeated mock performances in the weeks before, often with siblings or friends watching, often with cold hands.
She also builds in the recovery practice. Students rehearse what to do when something goes sideways in the middle of the piece.
Where to pick up. How to keep their face neutral. How to breathe through the next phrase.
What to do with the result, win or lose
A student who wins a piano competition has done one thing on one day. Marian celebrates it and then moves on.
She does not let a win become a story the student tells themselves about their identity. That story tends to break the next time they place fourth.
A student who loses gets a different conversation. The piece they played did not deserve a worse score because of a panel decision.
The piece is theirs. They keep it. The score gets recycled with everything else from that month.
Competitions are a tool. Used well, they sharpen real skills and build the kind of nerve that lasts.
Used badly, they put a fragile student in front of a verdict they were not ready for. Marian's job is to know the difference.