Piano education always seem to bring up the same question from parents: “How long until my child is playing classical music?”

What I find is that many people who are not musicians have an thought that any child can be place in two years of piano education and suddenly playing something like a Mozart piano concerto. It’s as though years of fascination with the prodigies in TV commercials and YouTube has made people reckon somehow every five-year-ancient “should” be able to do the same, particularly THEIR five-year-ancient. The assumption that kids can be wedged in two years of education and automatically pop out playing adult-level classical music is dangerously inaccurate and causes much undo and unfair pressure on kids.

I’ve taught a few child prodigies and I know how quick they learn. But, the average piano lesson student is not going to achieve the same and it’s vital for parents to know this. What happens when the average student signs up for piano education is they have to learn to play with one hand and then eventually two. To play something that is actual “classical music” written two hundred years ago by a professional composer who was also a master musician and writing for adults takes far more work than most people realize. It may take the average student between three and four years of piano education before they can even play simple classical music.

What I mean by “simple classical music” is the music that many composers during the 18th and 19th century wrote particularly for their students. Because of the expense of the education, most students were adults. Once in a while, one of these composers did teach a child, and those “children‘s pieces” are just in this area the only thing written particularly for kids in the classical cannon. But, most of those kids were their students who were the most able, so the music written for them was beyond the level of the average player and written for the listening habits they