Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to answer a really interesting question from a viewer: Does it take longer to become a concert pianist or a doctor? Both of these fields obviously require many years of study. So I’m going to break it down for you and give you an idea of what each of these career paths entails.
You have to spend many years in school to become a doctor.
To become a doctor, you will first need an undergraduate degree in some field, hopefully related to the medical field, perhaps biology or something. That’s followed by four years of medical school. So there is a big chunk right there. But is that it? Far from it! After that, there’s a residency, which can be anywhere from 3 to 7 years. Now, unless you’re becoming a general practitioner, there’s also a specialization with a fellowship that usually adds another 1 to 3 years. So you have anywhere between 11 and 14 years of studying before becoming a doctor.
What about pianists?
Pianists typically start at a younger age than doctors. In fact, most concert pianists on the scene today started as children between the ages of 4 and 7. There are some outliers outside of that range, but the vast majority are going to be somewhere in there. From the time they’re very young children, they’ve been practicing every day for at least an hour or two a day. As they get older, they’re probably practicing 3 to 5 hours a day. Most of them will go to a conservatory or a university program specializing in piano performance in order to study with the best teachers. If they’re expanding their repertoire, it’s likely that they’re practicing for at least 3 to 5 hours, more likely 6 to 8 hours if they’re entering competitions and things of that nature, because the repertoire requirements are so immense. So altogether, they’re probably going to spend easily 15 to 20 years of private instruction; that’s even more than the 11 to 14 years typical for doctors. It’s a long haul!
What about the continuing studies in each of these fields?
Doctors are always learning from experience. They need to keep abreast of the latest technologies and procedures by reading journals and possibly attending conventions. Pianists, on the other hand, are constantly learning new repertoire. They can’t keep playing the same solo recitals again and again. They have to have new music so people keep wanting to hear their performances. If they’re collaborating with other musicians in chamber music or accompanying, they have to learn the music that people want to collaborate with them on.
Concert pianists are constantly learning new music.
If they have the opportunity to perform concertos, they have to learn new concertos. A lot of pianists will also have original contemporary works commissioned for them, which they have to learn. For example, concert pianist Jeffrey Biegel, who was one of my father, Morton Estrin’s students. He’s carved out a whole career getting works commissioned for him, and he collaborates with orchestras all around the world. He has been doing it for years. This entails a tremendous amount of work, and you don’t even have the benefit of listening to recordings to hear what the pieces that you’re going to be performing sound like first! My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, performs a lot of new works here in the Cleveland area, helping out composers so they can have their works performed.
There are many avenues for both doctors and concert pianists, but concert pianists have a longer haul, starting younger and working longer in order to carve out a career.
Even going through everything I outlined for becoming a concert pianist is no guarantee that you’ll be a touring artist. There are just so many people who are highly skilled at the instrument, and a very limited number of people ever get to do it. Whereas for a doctor, if they go through all those different courses, degrees, and residencies, then chances are they’re going to find some place where they can practice. However, no matter how nerve-wracking performing the piano is, nobody dies. So we have a deep respect for doctors as well as pianists for the rigorous training that’s necessary in both of these fields. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store
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7 thoughts on “Which Takes Longer: Becoming a Pianist or a Doctor?”
As a surgeon and a life long amateur pianist, I respect both the physician and pianist professions. But those years the young pianists were practicing several hours a day the young physicians-to-be were studying to achieve the credentials to gain admission to the competetive programs at every level. And the years of internship, residency & fellowship are made up of mostly 20+ hour days and the worry over the last and next day is constant. Then when formal training is finished, there is gaining experience, continuing medical education to maintain one’s license and reading journals to make sure one is abreast of new thoughts & best practices. While I have nothing but admiration for the talent and work of the musician, the demands and pressures are different for the two fields. No pianist ever caused harm to a client.
I appreciate the rigours of pursuing and maintaining a medical career. “Nobody dies” is at the end of the video and article.
I was a Ph,D. research scientist (molecular biologist) who is now retired as a professor at a midwestern medical school. The education/training for such positions is also similar to that for an M,D, specialist. In my case it was 4 years undergrad, 2 years for the Masters degree , 5 years for the Ph.D. and 3 years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
For all the incalculable hard work that leads to a musical performance, I think the payoff IS that impossible-to-quantify feeling of connecting with an audience and with fellow musicians when you’re up there on stage. Performing live is IT. For doctors I don’t know what the ‘payoff’ is, or if the deepest satisfaction that comes devoting your life to medicine happens in some other way. Certainly in both cases you work very hard to get there!
I imagine there could be great satisfaction from procedures that change people’s lives, and even save people’s lives
There’s also a similarity between being a piano teacher and a doctor? Diagnosing problems and issues based on observation. In fact, I read a book called “The Piano Practice Physician’s Handbook” by Nicola Cantan.
That’s interesting! There is also a parallel with helping people choose a piano. You must diagnose people’s needs and prescribe a solution to their piano problem!