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Maggie Cole
Maggie Cole

Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, fortepiano and harpsichord and make music your career?

We had a piano in my family home and it called out to me at an early age. My much older brother played a bit of jazz piano. This sounded great to my 4 year old ears and made me want to play. Much later, after years of playing “modern” piano, I became very intrigued and then passionate about the possibilities of sound and phrasing that the harpsichord and fortepiano suggest. The instruments themselves have somehow always been my main teachers and inspiration.

Who or what were the most important influences on your playing? 

I loved J S Bach as a child and happened to be growing up when Glenn Gould was making such an impact with his playing of Bach. Other huge influences came from non-Classical music. I was glued to the radio waiting to hear what people like Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gay would do next. My first piano teacher was also a huge influence particularly for the degree of seriousness with which she took my young self!

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

Staying with it. There have been many moments when I’ve felt that perhaps I could be of more use in the world doing a different job. This has faded with age and I feel extraordinarily privileged to have music as my profession.

Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?  

I particularly like the recording of Haydn trios that I made on fortepiano with my very dear colleagues in Trio Goya – Kati Debretzeni and Sebastian Comberti. It still sounds “right” to me and that is an unusual feeling.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in? 

I’m always happiest and most interested when I play in places that don’t get live music very often. Little islands in the very north of Norway stand out as a memory – the audience mostly arrived by boat. Also, the performances that I do in the States in facilities for young offenders are very dear to me. We (the Sarasa Ensemble) can be in a room with terrible acoustics and often, I will be playing a beat- up electric piano but the exchange of creativity with the young people that grows out of these performances is always moving and very exciting.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to? 

To play: The Goldberg Variations – always a journey, always rewarding.

To listen to: it’s still really jazz for me. Like many others in the world, I’ll always come back to “Kind of Blue” for sustenance. Also,Nigel North playing Bach on the lute.

Who are your favourite musicians? 

There are way too many to list. A very random and short list would include Tony Levin, Steven Isserlis, Michael Chance, Dionne Warwick……. I could fill many pages!

What is your most memorable concert experience? 

Playing Bach at midnight in the Court of Myrtles at the Alhambra. As I played, a black cat crossed the stage, bats swooped overhead and a pine martin rustled in the myrtle hedge looking for dead birds. Unforgettable.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians? 

Keep remembering to use all of your experience as food for what you create musically. Paintings, the natural world, cinema – whatever it is that touches you can inform what you play.

What are you working on at the moment? 

Schubert Trios, Bach Preludes and Fugues, Haydn Sonatas and Trios.

What is your most treasured possession? 

Good health. It isn’t to be taken for granted but at the moment, I feel full of energy and able to do all the things I love doing.

Maggie Cole enjoys a richly varied musical life with performances on harpsichord, fortepiano and piano. Born in the USA, she began playing the piano from an early age. A keen interest in early keyboards led her to England where she now makes her home. Maggie’s teachers were Jill Severs and Kenneth Gilbert and she is pleased to be part of this harpsichord “family tree” which began with Wanda Landowska. Best known in Britain through numerous recitals on BBC Radio 3 and appearances at leading festivals, abroad she has performed in venues from Seattle to Moscow, and from Finland to India. In addition to solo recitals – with Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’ a speciality, given in London, Paris, Cologne, Basel, Mallorca and Chicago – she frequently performs in duos with partners including Nancy Argenta soprano, Michael Chance counter tenor, Philippa Davies flute, Catherine Mackintosh violin and Steven Isserlis cello. She is also particularly devoted to the Classical chamber music repertoire and explores this with her fortepiano trio, “Trio Goya” (Maggie, Kati Debretzeni, violin and Sebastian Comberti, cello).
 

www.maggiecole.net 

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Pianist Clare Hammond (photo credit © Angela Dove)

The Monday Platform at Wigmore Hall, presented by the Park Lane Group, showcased the impressive and varied talents of the Lawson Trio and pianist Clare Hammond.

This was an enjoyable programme which combined the elegant and witty classicism of Haydn with the intimate lyricism of Schubert, the mercurial passions of Schumann, Bach’s Italianate arabesques, and the earthy nationalism of Ginastera. The mix of ensemble and solo piano works made for an extremely satisfying concert experience.

Read my full review here

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Ronald Stevenson

A concert exploring a selection of piano works written by two distinctive voices of Scotland’s classical music scene in the 20th century. Ronald Stevenson, whose 85th birthday year it is, is a recognised giant of British Music and an authority on the life and work of Ferruccio Busoni. Perhaps most renowned as a composer for his gigantic Passacaglia on DSCH, the programme will feature some of Stevenson’s smaller piano works.

Ronald Center

Stevenson is honoured in conjunction with a composer rarely heard of even within Scotland during his own lifetime, Ronald Center, whose centenary passed this April. Ever a reclusive character, it is only recently that his music has begun to re-emerge with the first ever survey on record of his complete piano music, by Trinity Laban’s Richard Carne Junior Fellow in Performance, Christopher Guild. A classicist at heart, Center’s music, with its influences of Britten, Prokofiev and Hindemith, stands very much in contrast to much of Stevenson’s.

This FREE, unticketed concert will appeal anyone with an interest in British Music, and those with a passion for making musical discoveries.

PROGRAMME:

Ronald Stevenson: Komm, Susser Tod
Ronald Stevenson: Sonata Senerissima
Ronald Center: Giglot and Toccata
Ronald Center: Six Bagatelles
Ronald Stevenson: Wegenlied aus Alban Bergs Oper ‘Wozzeck’
Ronald Center: Piano Sonata

Performed by:

Alex Lewis, Madelaine Jones, Sally Halsey, Clare Simmonds and Christopher Guild.

Venue:

Thursday 27th June, 6.30pm, Peacock Room, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, King Charles Court, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London SE10 9JF (public transport: DLR Greenwich Cutty Sark, Riverbus Greenwich Pier)

Pianist Christopher Guild will feature in a forthcoming Meet the Artist interview.

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I have recently taken on a new student, a boy of 11 who is preparing for his ABRSM Grade 2 exam in mid-July. He’s been having lessons at school (in a group lesson with another child) but his mother felt he would benefit from regular one-to-one tuition with me. A few days after the first lesson, the mother wrote to me:

“He came home with a ‘that’s the best piano lesson I’ve ever had’ and a fantastic great big grin on his face!”

Showing appreciation for your piano teacher is important, and while I enjoy the support of a wonderful group of parents to my students, a personal thank you like this means a great deal.

Pianist and writer Melanie Spanswick offered an appreciation of the piano teacher on her blog recently, highlighting the important role of the piano teacher in a student’s success or failure. A good teacher knows how to encourage and support his/her students, to get the best of out them, and to help them develop into rounded musicians, with a proper appreciation of the piano and its literature, rather than inexpressive “typists”.

Many parents, and students, and others, fail to appreciate just how much a piano teacher does, not only in lessons, but in all the time spent preparing for lessons, submitting exam entries, organising extra-curricular events to stimulate and interest students, and generally managing a teaching practice and all the admin this entails. These activities are not, generally, included in the teaching fee – just as all the lonely hours of practice a professional concert pianist puts in are not covered by the recital fee. But we have to do these things to ensure we run an efficient studio and to offer our students the best possible learning experience. Not all teachers put in this kind of effort, and it always upsets me when I come across a teacher who does not feel these additional aspects of the job are important or beneficial.

Sadly, the profession of piano teaching is not regulated, and there are charlatans out there: I know, because I have met one or two, both as an adult student and a teacher. As Melanie stresses in her blog article, it is very important to choose the right teacher, and while personality counts for a lot, proper qualifications and experience are crucial. In my opinion, simply having Grade 8 piano does not qualify one to teach advanced repertoire. Conversely, the best concert pianist in the world may not be the best teacher: some of the finest performers are not natural teachers/communicators. However, a good piano teacher should have performed at some point in their career: a teacher who performs, whether professionally or in an informal capacity, will be able to tutor his/her students in the art of performing and how to deal with performance anxiety, important skills for success in exams, festivals and competitions. An ability to communicate, at all levels, from young children to adults, flexibility, good humour, and endless patience are all key skills too. Above all, a good teacher will convey his/her passion and enthusiasm for the piano and its literature: this is my main motivation for being a piano teacher, and if I had to distill my mission statement into a snappy one-liner, I think it would probably say “I love the piano!”.

Good teachers don’t rest on their laurels and their exam successes, and devote time in their busy schedules to ongoing professional development – honing their craft by attending courses, lectures, and masterclasses, and keeping abreast with the new thinking and writing in piano pedagogy (and with the wide availability of such material online, there is really no excuse for not doing this).

So, the next time you meet a piano teacher, either as a student or parent of a student, spare a thought for the huge amount the best teachers put in outside of their teaching hours, to ensure their students get the best out of their lessons.

Just as a post-script, I would like to mention some of the people with whom I have had the very good fortune to study. Apart from my own regular teacher, Penelope Roskell, who studied with Giudo Agosti, Maria Curcio, Vlado Perlemuter and Peter Feuchtwanger, amongst others, I have also studied with former students of Peter Wallfisch, Nina Svetlanova, Leon Fleischer, John Barstow and Phyllis Sellick. For more about the benefits of studying with teachers at this level, please see my earlier post on Teachers and Mentors.