This content was created by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This content was uploaded by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This is a YouTube video titled "#pianopodrewind Is Quitting a Thing in Classical Music!?" (uploaded 2025-01-21). The excerpt is a first-person spoken segment (labeled SPEAKER A) reflecting on the culture of relentless practice in classical music versus the value of quitting. The speaker addresses Yukimi Song and recounts a personal narrative about leaving a position at the University of Chicago, being newly engaged (financially able to take a pay cut), becoming pregnant, and how quitting certain repertoire (e.g., Schumann's Ghost Variations) led to better artistic choices (switching to Kinderszenen/Arabesque).
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and her podcast, her talk was about quitting and how important it is to quit. And as I'm sure this resonates with you, Yukimi Song, we don't quit in class. We keep working on a piece until we can play it to the highest level of our ability, and then we put it down and we bring it back 6 months later to see if it's any better. And we push, push, push, push, push, and we spend hours in a practice room. We don't think about the toll it's taking on our minds and our body. We don't quit. If I had a quitting bone in my body, I may not be having this conversation with you. I would probably be— I may be a CEO of some big organization somewhere, a high-powered woman with, you know, better pay, better hours, and, you know, other things. Um, and basically she just said, if you're a poker player and you don't quit, like, you lose all the time. That alternative is you lose. And basically she was— the moral of her talk was If you quit, all you're doing is closing a door and allowing a window to be opened. And the next day I had a meeting and I said, I'm leaving this position. Now, this is another vulnerable, important thing. I had just gotten engaged to my husband at that point. So I had, you know, was soon to have double income, dual income. He has a much more consistent— he's in finance. He has a much more consistent job at a very consistent team. He has support, and I could afford to take a pay cut while having healthcare as soon as we got married. I was already on Obamacare because this company didn't offer me healthcare. So after I left the University of Chicago, I was already paying very little because I was making very little. But that's what finally empowered me to say, if I don't do this now, I'm never going to do it. And now that I'm pregnant, Boy, am I glad I've done it. Because even if I make a decision, or God forbid, even if I have a high-needs child who demands a little bit more of my, my time and my energy and my love so that I am not able to maintain the schedule that I would love to be able to maintain that I'm currently having, I've done it. I've been doing it and I know what it takes and I know how to adapt. And I don't even remember what the starting question was. No. But so, you know, that's what I tell people. You have to quit things. You have to quit things. You have to learn. You have to get good at quitting. And honestly, it's unbelievable the ripple effect that has had in my musical life. I really wanted to play Schumann's Ghost Variations, which is a magical piece of music. That I had programmed and programmed things around and like really, and I didn't play it well. So I quit and I picked up Kinderszenen or Arabesque or something like that, which suited me beautifully. And I said, good, thank goodness I quit that piece.
