This might be slightly off topic, but I heard about it on the radio and thought it was interesting. The pianist was expecting a different Mozart concerto. When the music starts playing, she has a look of despair on her face but managed to pull the entire piece out of memory on a minute’s notice.
That’s a great post @Josh, though I’d probably use it for leadership coaching rather than in the context of feats or memory. I think you can tell a better story by looking at what the conductor does quietly in the background rather than what is happening so obviously in the foreground.
Let’s not forget this is Maria João Pires we’re talking about:
Her first recital was at the age of five, and at the age of seven she was already playing Mozart piano concertos publicly. Two years later she received Portugal’s top prize for young musicians. In the following years, she studied with Campos Coelho at the Lisbon Conservatory, taking courses in composition, theory, and history of music. She continued her studies in Germany, first in the Musikakademie of Munich with Rosl Schmidt and then in Hanover with Karl Engel.
Not to take anything away from her performance, but let’s say you’ve been to New York, Paris, and Hong Kong for a month each over the course of the last year. (You know spatial, memory palaces, and such.) Now I say I’ll drop you off in Paris, but instead I drop you in Hong Kong. What would happen?
You’d probably switch from French to English, which is something that you’d also do for New York (…don’t forget it’s still Mozart). You’d use the MTR instead of the Metro when you want to use the subway. You use an Octopus card instead of a Navigo Pass to get in and out of stations. Taxis and buses work pretty much the same. You pay in Hong Kong Dollar rather than Euro, but it’s still money.
More importantly, you’ve been there before and once you start walking down the streets, things will come back to you. We could branch out and discuss what would have happened had I dropped you in Singapore instead: Singapore Dollar instead of Hong Kong Dollar, the MTR is called MRT, EZ-Link card instead of Octopus, language mostly the same… get a map, you should be good.
Of course if you’ve never left the country (never played piano) that is still not relatable, but if you’ve traveled a bit in your life you can see the point in the above… that is “only” the pianist playing the piano though… meanwhile, the conductor is playing the orchestra and to his credit, this is not a “memory feat under pressure”. He makes her feel very comfortable.
The obvious thing to the outside is of course that he gives credit to her instead of saying what a great management job he did. He’s also not working against her when he finds out that she didn’t come prepared (or prepared for the wrong thing if you prefer). Rather he finds the time to engage in a dialogue with her, understands the problem, and gives encouragement founded in logic all whilst still conducting the orchestra. This is not pressure, this is quite the opposite.
The most incredible thing though is his timing. Watch the dialog starting at 1:30 where he does all I just described. The incredible part starts at 1:40 when he raises his hand, says “listen” thereby telling her, I’m about to say something important and 1:42 “I’m sure you’ll do that”.
Listen to the music change at 1:42, his words to her, and his body language… talk about your Rocky moment. That’s what music does when the montage comes to a conclusion and the hero is about to win. Absolute insane sense of timing on his part.
Now imagine a conductor (rookie manager) yelling at her “What do you mean… you did what!?!” I’m sure that would end differently and then you could talk about “trying” to perform under pressure. Some people would be so good at intimidating that she wouldn’t even start to play and then they’d finish the argument with “well, I was prepared but my staff wasn’t”.
You see why I’d use this in leadership coaching rather than in the context of feats or memory.
1 Like