By |

What is your first memory of the piano?

My bare feet cooling on the cold pedals of the piano during the hot summer. Another is playing the piano and singing to my grandfather and grandmother on a Sunday afternoon.

Who or what inspired you to start teaching?

Teaching has always come naturally to me. I found that when I am passionate about something I can explain it comfortably. So when I started teaching during my undergraduate studies I realised that I enjoyed teaching and learned a lot about my own playing at the same time.

I suppose I also subconsciously took in a lot about teaching techniques from the way my teacher taught me when I was growing up.

Who were your most memorable/significant teachers?

Johan Cromhout was my teacher for ten years when I grew up in South Africa. He has taken me from learning to properly read music (I started by playing by ear) up to performing and being able to comfortably discuss my programme in the viva voce of my DipABRSM. He always managed to find a balance between allowing my spontaneity to flourish whilst shaping my progress in the right direction. We listened to a lot of music as well. A part of my two-hour lessons in later years included a cup of tea and listening to CDs.

Martin Katz was my teacher during my study at the University of Michigan. He is a fascinating teacher and the way he can put every scenario in context of today is inspiring and admirable. Charles Owen taught me about focus and economical use of technique to acquire a better result.

Who or what are the most important influences on your teaching?

The teachers I studied with influenced me greatly as I mentioned above. I am also very much influenced by Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) where (said in an immensely simplistic way) the imagination is used to build an awareness of what one wants to achieve and then following that path your imagination has set out already. I am not giving it its best explanation, but it is fascinating to learn how we can open up various avenues for ourselves by imagining it all in as much detail as possible first. I try to introduce visual art and literature in my teaching as well. It just helps to get students thinking a bit differently about all those black dots.

Most memorable/significant teaching experiences?

I was teaching a very talented 6 year old. He had been taking lessons for a year and I introduced B major to him. He experimented a bit and worked out C major and D major on his own. I shall never forget the excitement and marvel that he was filled with. He realised that he can create things on this white and black maze. This reminded me of the importance of not only to always try and convey this to my students, but also to remind myself of this lesson.

It has been said many times before, but it is also very true for myself: I constantly learn from my students.

What are the most exciting/challenging aspects of teaching adults?

I enjoy working with adults because they often have their own ideas from the beginning and then open themselves up to more ideas. Challenges can be that old habits die hard and as teacher one has to find an individual barometer for each student to keep the balance between encouragement, alteration and guidance. Where children often take things at face value, adult students often ask more questions, challenging the teacher. I like that – it makes both of us think!

What do you expect from your students?

A motto I try to instill in my students is to have dedication and discipline in accordance to one’s goals. Some adults I work with want to play for relaxation and do not have careers as a musician in mind. For me it is important that they still have certain expectations of themselves and live up to them. For my students studying music degrees I expect them to aspire to the same motto. They are often in a place in their careers where they are trying to find where they fit in in the musical world and so it is important to keep one’s head. I think this motto can help them to be inspired, but also impresses upon them the responsibility associated with their work. The children I teach (often second study pianists) often have this motto naturally build in, but I think it is the result of the fact that they have learnt the lesson by learning one instrument already.

What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions?

Any experience of performance is important and influences the development of anybody learning a musical instrument. Each of the above brings up its own challenges as a performer, but I think students are not often enough reminded of how different these experiences can be. Competing against oneself in an exam vis à vis competing against others in competitions and some festivals often make performers react when in the heat of it all. Performing in a concert is also different. Some people prosper better in some scenarios than others. I think it is important as a teacher to find which of these different performance setups work best for each student and then encourage them accordingly.

What do you consider to be the most important concepts to impart to beginning students, and to advanced students?

For beginners I think the most important lesson is to be disciplined and meticulous – count, check rhythm, play correct notes and learn sensible fingering as (hopefully) set out by the teacher.

For advanced students I would actually say the same and on top of it to read as much and as widely as possible, trying to put the works they play in social and historical context.

What are your thoughts on the link between performance and teaching?

Both performance and teaching is a way of communication, similar to two dialects of the same language. Some are well-versed in both dialects, others are fluent in one and proficient in another. It is the individual’s responsibility to find his or her feet in either or both dialects.

Who are your favourite pianists/pianist-teachers and why?

Argerich for fire, Barenboim for colour, Schiff for philosophy and Perahia for surprise.

South African-born pianist Nico de Villiers is an accompanist, teacher and coach, based in London. He holds degrees from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the University of Michigan and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Read Nico’s full biography here

By |

So, the trouble all started when a friend asked to park her Bechstein upright in our house, 21 years ago. Pregnant with my first child and lit up with enthusiasm, I applied my hands, but the brain failed: it had been too long since the Grade 5 exam in 1974. So the lid went down. This was London, where nobody confessed to an enthusiasm they couldn’t back up with expertise. Why spend hours toiling away at an activity you were clearly not talented at, when there were so many other distractions or annoyances to attend to? Also, the really cool people who could turn their hands to the keyboard played improvised blues or at least popular songs that everybody could sing to after a glass or three of wine. What on earth was the point in making painful, grinding progress with a piece of Schubert that anybody who was interested could listen to at the flick of a switch, played by Paul Lewis or Mitsuko Uchida or any other of the great contemporary pianists of the day?

Then when I hit forty, the desire to learn kicked in. We now know that music lights up circuitry in the brain that cuts across most of the areas understood by magnetic imaging. Listening to music does that: learning even more so.

With a gradient that started at Distinction in Grade 1 (aged 9), plateaued at Pass in Grade 5 (aged 12), things weren’t looking promising for my efforts, at the age of 40, to rise to the challenge of Grade 6. That Grade, incidentally, carries with it the humiliating requirement that you have to have passed Grade 5 Theory. This meant that I had to take time off to sit the exam, along with 6,000 13 year olds, in some LSE exam warehouse behind Bush House where I worked, to the puzzlement of my boss (“Didn’t you do that when you were at school?”). Anyway, I passed, and the rest is history. After Grade 6 was the “gentle” Grade 7, which real pianists don’t bother to do because it’s such a small gradient. I thought I might get some leeway from the examiner when I staggered into the room on crutches with a knee injury – perching the damned things on the piano in order to wind down the seat after the 6 year old who’d preceded me – but ABRSM assessors are, quite rightly, armour-plated against individual appeals to mercy. I was despatched with barely 10 points over the pass mark. By Grade 8, I was slaveringly grateful to have passed by 1 singular point.

So why do I do it? Alan Rusbridger puts it so well, and his book led me to this site. The activity is a forbidden fruit, in a way. Not just the classical repertoire, but the attendant costs of the space needed for such a demanding piece of furniture. Of course it attracts accusations of elitism. But Rusbridger puts it so well when he describes his working day as somehow incomplete without the slight adaptation of brain chemistry that results from just twenty minutes at the keyboard. We don’t understand it yet, but I suspect when we do, the unglamorous process of struggling to learn a piece of music, or even playing a scale or an arpeggio, will have the same status as the celebrated endorphin release that we get from a long run or session at the gym.

And of course it’s so much more than that – the business of learning a piece of music gives you a view of its underside, its working parts. Even if you never reach the level of competence that enables you to play the damned thing to yourself, let alone anybody else, it opens up an entirely new dimension when you listen to the expert rendition. So that’s how that scale works! Ah – the bass chords there are a pianissimo rumble, not a statement. Oh, a dotted rhythm, not a triplet? Interesting interpretation!

Thank you, Frances, for this site. Let’s hope that Alan’s book – which celebrates, amongst many other things, the online amateur pianist – will be the source of many exchanges. Piano playing is one of the most privileged and interesting pursuits, but quite solitary in its way. For those of us not able to sightread our way through dazzling trios, or to pop in and out of duets, this online community is a source of encouragement for a hobby that seems to the rest of the world as eccentric in the extreme.

Rosalind is a former academic who now edits the Human Rights and Public Law Update online Journal and undertakes comparative and public law research for members of chambers. She also records and edits audiostreamed seminars for the resources section of the Chambers website. She edits and contributes to the National Health Legal Service’s Authority’s Human Rights NewsLetter.

Rosalind lives in Norfolk and takes lessons with pianist Christopher Green Armytage.

In another incarnation, Rosalind runs the annual Burnham Market Literary Festival in North Norfolk.

UK Human Rights Blog

Twitter: @rosalindenglish

By |

For his first concert in London, presented in the recital room at prestigious Steinway Hall (which boasts a fine Model D), Rutland-based pianist Fraser Graham offered a broad chronological survey of some 250 years of classical music from Bach to Adams, and taking in works by some of greatest composers for the piano – Mozart, Schubert and Chopin.

Bach’s Prelude & Fugue in C from Book II of the ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’ was a pleasing opener, a “settling in” piece, for audience and performer. The Prelude was elegantly turned, unhurried and tastefully pedalled with some delightfully mellow bass notes. A lively Fugue ensued, and if some of the contrapuntal lines were not always clear, its uprightness and poise more than compensated for this.

Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A minor K310 is a work that confirms the second part of Schnabel’s famous quote “…too hard for artists”. It was composed in Paris in 1778, when Mozart was just 22, during a period of professional disappointment (he failed to secure a contract for an opera while in Paris) and personal tragedy (the death of his mother). Despite the composer’s age, this is a mature work, serious and turbulent, with a particular musical and emotional world all of its own.

Some pianists have a tendency to gallop through the first movement, peppering the frenetic writing with over-enthusiastic fortes. Not so Fraser whose slightly reined-in tempo only increased the sense of anguish in the opening movement. Passage work was carried off with clarity and accuracy, and throughout there was a firm command of the varying textures of the score, in particular the orchestral writing.

By contrast, the slow movement was an oasis of rich expression, with expansive melodic lines offering opportunities for some fine cantabile playing and subtle dynamic shading. The sense of urgency returns in the final movement, its swirling theme and slithering motifs all carried off with conviction. Throughout, the sonata was tastefully pedalled with fine attention to detail.

Schubert’s A flat Impromptu from the D899 set bridged the gap between the Classical and Romantic periods, with good attention to the ‘dancing’ bass figures and a climactic trio, leading us nicely onto Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Op. 9 No. 2. This is one of his most well-known and well-loved piano works, but there was nothing clichéd in this performance. Again, there was fine cantabile playing in the right hand over a serene waltz figure in the left. The ornaments and fiorituras were relaxed, giving them an improvisatory feel. This was music very much at ease with itself.

Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor was climactic and suspenseful, the contrasting moods and textures handled with precision and conviction, with a strong sense of the narrative line evolving throughout the piece, well-judged climaxes and an explosive, highly dramatic finale

The Skylark, Balakirev’s virtuoso paraphrase on Glinka’s song Zhavoronok, was romantic, liquid and expressive, with its soulful melody, delicate trills and Lisztian figurations.

Fraser finished with John Adams’ China Gates, five minutes of luminous and hypnotic minimalism, the subtle shifts of colour and sound sensitively executed – and, for me, the highlight of this enjoyable and thoughtfully presented recital.

Fraser Graham graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire in 2004, having studied under Malcolm Wilson and Simon Nicholls. He is an active performer, soloist, accompanist and event pianist in the UK. He teaches privately, and is also a teacher and accompanist at Oakham School, Rutland.

Fraser gained honours in his Guildhall recital diploma aged seventeen and went on to perform Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with full symphony orchestra aged eighteen. He was awarded his degree in piano performance in 2004 and now performs a wide variety of music. Recent recitals have included ‘An Evening of Late Viennese Sonatas’ by Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert and several performances around the UK of Schubert’s vast song cycle ‘Winterreise’ with baritone David McKee.

Forthcoming events include a programme of Chopin, Ravel, Scriabin and Prokofiev which Fraser will be touring around the UK.

Twitter @fgrahampiano

Fraser Graham’s SoundCloud

By |

I recently did an interview for Caroline Wright’s interesting new blog focusing on how and why we memorise music. The blog includes interviews with pianists and teachers, articles on memorisation techniques, and book reviews.

Read my interview here

Readers may also be interested to read my own At the Piano With….. interview, in which I discuss how I started teaching, influences and significant teachers, favourite pianists, and my views on exams, festivals and competitions. Interview here