Twelve minutes, thirty days: building a performance programme
A candidate has thirty days before the Intermediate performance examination, which allows a maximum of twelve minutes of music. The programme is: (A) a Baroque binary allegro marked ♩=120, secure at ♩=96, with a memory lapse at bar 34 on roughly every third attempt; (B) a slow Romantic character piece lasting 5:10, secure and musically settled; (C) a twentieth-century movement in 7/8, target ♩=112, secure at ♩=100 only when practised daily. A also has an exposition repeat worth 1:40 that the candidate has never played in performance. Current timings are A 2:50 without the repeat, B 5:10 and C 3:15, giving 11:15 in total or 12:55 with the repeat. The teacher's advice is that the marking rewards accuracy, control and stylistic sense more than raw difficulty, and that a breakdown in C would be very exposed because the 7/8 pulse is unaccompanied for long stretches. The candidate practises about 45 minutes a day.
1. Decide the final programme, including the repeat question, and justify the decision against the time limit and the marking priorities.
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Start with the arithmetic. Without the repeat the programme is 11:15, which leaves 45 seconds of headroom. With the repeat it is 12:55 and over the limit before any exam-day slowing, so the repeat cannot be taken. That resolves the repeat question on a rule, not a preference: the limit is absolute and a candidate who overruns may be stopped.
Next, the 45 seconds of margin. It is thin, because nerves usually slow a performance rather than speed it up. The remedy is not to cut a piece but to raise A's tempo: at the marked ♩=120 the Baroque movement shortens from 2:50 towards roughly 2:20, which both improves the margin and earns credit for a tempo closer to the marking.
On the marking priorities, keep all three movements. Dropping C would remove stylistic contrast and the twentieth-century item, and the remaining two pieces would show a narrow range. But C must be played at a tempo the candidate actually owns - 100 rather than 112 - because an exposed 7/8 collapse costs far more than a few beats per minute. The same logic applies to A: solve bar 34 rather than hope. Raw difficulty earns less than control, so the programme should be the three pieces at reliable tempi, not two and a half pieces at target tempi.
2. Allocate the thirty days across the chosen pieces, explaining what gets daily work, what gets maintenance, and which specific risk each activity is buying down.
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Allocate by fragility, not by preference. C is the most fragile - it collapses without daily contact - so it gets the first and most consistent slot, about 15 minutes a day: slow practice of the 7/8 bars with a metronome or a tapped pulse, then 100, then 104, moving up only after two consecutive clean days. The risk being bought down is a public breakdown on an exposed unaccompanied pulse.
A's bar 34 gets a short daily slot, about 10 minutes, worked from a few bars before the lapse rather than from the beginning, hands separately, then hands together, then with a random starting bar so the passage is not memorised only as a sequence. The risk here is that the lapse survives because it is always approached the same way.
B is secure, so it gets maintenance: every other day, about 10 minutes, keeping the interpretation alive rather than re-learning notes. Once a week, run all three in order with a stopwatch, because transitions and tempo drift under performance conditions are what eat the margin.
Two checkpoints matter. Around day 15 and day 25, record a full run-through. If C is still not clean at 104 by day 20, that is information, not failure - it is the trigger for the contingency in the next answer.
3. State a decision rule that would make you change the programme, and explain why that rule follows from the marking priorities.
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The rule: if C is still not clean at about 104 by day 20, drop C, and use the recovered time either to restore A's repeat or to add a short, secure contrasting piece.
Why it follows. The timings then allow it: without C, A at the marked tempo takes roughly 2:20, the repeat adds 1:40, and B takes 5:10 - about 9:10, comfortably inside the limit with room for tempo drift. A repeat taken properly is also a musical decision that can earn credit, since it restores the binary structure the composer wrote. What must not happen is keeping C out of stubbornness and playing it at a speed the candidate cannot control, because the marking rewards accuracy and control over raw difficulty, and an exposed breakdown contaminates the examiner's impression of the whole recital.
The rule has to be written down in advance precisely because it is hard to apply in the moment: on day 20 the candidate will feel that one more week will fix everything. A pre-committed trigger converts an anxious judgement into a scheduling decision, which is exactly the kind of judgement the examination is testing.