Finchcocks is a fine Georgian manor house set in the tranquil Kent countryside near Goudhurst. Originally the home of Bathurst family, the house became a centre for historical keyboard instruments in 1971 when Katrina and Richard Burnett bought the house as a place for Richard’s growing collection of historic pianos, harpsichords, organs, clavichords and more. The house and collection first opened to the public in 1976 and since has become a hub for the keyboard-inclined and a place where students, conservators and scholars can gain valuable insights into the working practices of composers and how the instruments of their day influenced how they created their music. In addition to open days, where anyone can go along and play the instruments (some 40 are in playable condition), the house also hosts concerts, jazz nights and education events.
For a bunch of piano addicts what better way to spend an early April day than to be offered free range of the Finchcocks collection as part of a private visit. After an initial introduction to the collection by visiting tutor and Finchcocks regular Gary Branch, we were let loose on the collection, with Gary on hand to offer advice about the best instrument for our repertoire to be performed in an afternoon concert. The collection includes some fine harpsichords and clavichords, square pianos (including one which belonged to Queen Victoria, made by John Broadwood & Sons), fortepianos, and grand pianos by Clementi, Pleyel, Erard and Broadwood.
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When dealing with historic instruments, I think one has to be careful not to invest too much in the idea that these instruments somehow “channel” the great composers to us. We can never accurately recreate their soundworld, because there are other social and historical factors about which we can only surmise, but by playing Bach on a harpsichord or Schubert on an early nineteenth-century fortepiano, for example, we can gain valuable insights into aspects such as dynamics and articulation, and we can experience the same instrumental colours and timbres the composers themselves expected to hear. These instruments, which were handmade right down to the tiniest parts, have very distinct and individual characters, something that has been lost in modern piano production: today it is down to the pianist to create a unique and personal soundworld.
We had a fascinating day exploring these beautiful old instruments, with a concert to wrap up the afternoon which reflected our personal discoveries and musical passions. Hear excerpts from the performances here
For more information about Finchcocks, please visit
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and pursue a career in music?
It picked me, I couldn’t keep away from the piano and when I hit my early twenties I realised I had to compose, and knew it would take a good few years to write anything I could say was original. It actually took 9 years to eventually compose eleven minutes of music that I rate; my first piano suite which is a set of seven miniatures. After that, the door was open.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
Edward Hopper, Ansel Adams, observing children set free at the piano, Rachel Whiteread, Carsten Hoeller, Dr Martin Coath’s emails to me about the speed of thought in the brain, Hussein Chalayan’s ideology that drives his designs, the passing of a close friend and musician and remembering him in a piano suite – these were all triggers, one by one, for my eight piano suites.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
It’s unimaginably difficult to get other people to play your work which is fairly usual (so many of my predecessors only started getting played after their deaths), although my work is played now more than it was – it ebbs and flows. It’s hard to get it to take off. I’m more interested in composing than promoting so I run out of time to promote my books. I spend less time than I would like on promoting my books because my composing and teaching take priority. So I would say the greatest challenge is ongoing; getting my work further into the repertoire and into the hands of many more concert pianists.
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
Always the next one.
Favourite pieces to listen to?
Bill Evans playing ‘Symbiosis’
Who are your favourite musicians?
Martha Argerich is high up in my list and I loved seeing her daughter’s amazing and intimate film about Martha: ‘Bloody Daughter’.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Maybe the one where around 5 and a half people came. I was in a tiny chapel in Hamburg, My show included films and as there was no screen, they were projected onto the amazing and antiquated wallpaper, creating the sense of a one-time-only atmosphere never to be repeated but perhaps everyone would remember on a particularly deep level.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Once you find your path, never step away from it; no matter how hard it is, do not compromise. Be brave and keep reaching out!
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve spent the last year creating “Now You See It” –a composer’s response to living in the age of climate change. It’s scored for piano and an orchestra of words featuring the voices of activists and innovators at the frontline of climate justice. I worked with co-producer Christian Dymond, researching and interviewing a number of activists around the world; then I created a word based composition using extracts from the interviews and set that within piano composition. It has its premiere in London in March and is going to Hebden Bridge Piano Festival in April, will be on at Markson Pianos Concert Series in October, with more dates coming in.
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
On a planet that has switched to renewable energy or NO energy.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Walking to my next gig; that’s when I most feel in my element.
Lola Perrin performs at Hebden Bridge Piano Festival on 18th April in a programme which culminates in her “Now You See It” – a multimedia project featuring solo piano with a sumptuous cloud film by visual artist Roberto Battista, and pre-recorded words captured from international activists, climatologists, inventors, writers, and oil rig workers; voices from the frontline of our global climate conversation. “Such a brilliant idea!” George Monbiot
Lola Perrin is a London-based, USA-born composer, pianist, publisher, and Composer-in-Residence at Markson Pianos.
She has been composing since 1992 and performs her compositions on mainland Europe, in the UK (including works for 2, 4 & 6 pianos at Lang Lang Inspires, Southbank Centre) & USA, and has published over 70 piano compositions in 8 books, distributed via Spartan Press. Commissions include silent film scores performed at Barbican, BFI Southbank and Peninsula Arts in Plymouth. She collaborates in performance with writers (including Mihir Bose & Sue Hubbard), scientists, artists and film makers.
Lola Perrin has been taken into the repertoire by concert pianists including; Elena Riu, Kevin Robert Orr, Paul Cassidy, Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble, LP Duo, Duo Gastesi Bezerra, Carles and Sofia. Her technical exercises, commissioned by Trinity College of Music, can be found in their 2015 – 2016 Piano Syllabus Grades 3 & 4.
As an increasing number of pianists and piano duos take up her piano works she is turning her attention to instrumental works. Elysian Quartet and Carlos Lopez-Real have performed her string quartet and saxophone work. Sarah Watts commissioned ‘Her Sisters’ Notebook’ (ten bass clarinets) for Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2011 and played it at Irish Royal Academy 2014. Simon Desbrulais and Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble have taken up her forthcoming Suite for Two Pianos, Trumpet and Narrator. During 2014 two instrumental works (String Quartet & Saxophone, Wind Quintet & Choir) are due to be rehearsed / performed in London.
She has been interviewed and reviewed by various media including Berliner Morgenpost, BBC Radio 3 and local stations, The Guardian, Lyric FM. Her recordings appear on radio playlists and occasionally on broadcast TV, are on general release and can be found through digital sites including iTunes (CDs: Fragile Light’, ‘By Peculiar Grace and other loves’). She also works as a private piano teacher. Pianist magazine ran an interview, June 2014, with her piano student Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, in which Lola made a sneak appearance.
As well as various composition projects, she is also currently transcribing ‘Concerto in C Minor’ by Helen Hagan, a forgotten 1912 virtuosic masterpiece still in the composer’s hand, and creating a concert programme around it.
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano and make it your career?
We had an upright piano at home as my mother studied at the musical school. I was trying to play something on it at the age of four and asked my parents to bring me to musical school.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
My teachers – Yuri Slesarev, Dmitri Alexeev, Boris Petrushansky, Oxana Yablonskaya and Aquiles Delle Vigne.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
I try to create an interesting programme, making an unusual combination of pieces or adding some not overplayed compositions. In future I want to play more contemporary music. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much time for working on it now due to learning more “core repertoire”.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
I really enjoyed playing in Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Triphony Concert Hall in Japan. Those halls have an amazing acoustics.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
I love every single piece I am performing and I am convinced it has to be like that.
I listen to a lot of orchestral and chamber music. Now my favourites are Schubert and Tchaikovsky Symphonies, piano trios by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Arensky, etc.
Who are your favourite musicians?
My favourite pianists are Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz, Dinu Lipatti, Grigory Sokolov.
Vitaly Pisarenko gave his first public recital at the age of six. His initial musical training was in Ukraine (in Kiev with Natalia Romenskaya and in Kharkov with Garry Gelfgat). From 1999 to 2012 he studied at the Central Music School and State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Yuri Slesarev. From 2009 to 2012 he also studied with Oxana Yablonskaya at her Piano Institute in Italy. Since 2012, Pisarenko has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music. He completed his Master’s degree at the RCM (with distinction) in 2014; and is currently studying at the RCM for an Artist Diploma and is an Emma Rose Scholar supported by a Kenneth and Violet Scott Award. He is also studying at the Piano Academy in Imola, Italy with Boris Petrushansky.
In 2008 (aged 21) he won First Prize at the Eighth International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht. Since then he has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras and ensembles, and as a recital soloist, throughout the world.
The Keyboard Charitable Trust is funded entirely by voluntary donations. Detailed information about the Trust may be found on its website.
Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and pursue a career in music?
I’ve liked making up music since I was young. It became the thing I most liked doing, so I just carried on doing it. Parents were always supportive.
Who or what were the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?
I worked for my uncle John Hardy in Cardiff between degrees, and still do from London. He has a refreshing, inspiring attitude to other people and to music.
Many teachers, in various different ways. The performers, writers, directors and other artists I work with. My colleagues and students at The Conservatoire.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Picking up work after finishing education. Dealing with uncertainty. Carving out time to compose in. Writing music can be challenging but it’s a relatively familiar, safe space to be in.
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?
It still feels like a huge privilege knowing that someone wants your music – that the notes you’re writing are already wanted by someone. And they’re going to take those notes seriously and invest time and energy and feeling, to bring those notes to life.
Deadlines are useful too, for helping to justify keeping other people waiting for other work!
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras?
I love collaborating with musicians and artists in other fields. Discovering some of their artistic voice, their sound, their craft, their ideas – taking these and digging into them and finding something new for both parties, hopefully.
Which works are you most proud of?
It’s always the most recent few works, so brass & percussion piece Torque, chamber piece Black Sea, short opera Adrift, unpitched percussion solo Drawing, vocal ensemble piece The Sickness of Angels.
Who are your favourite musicians/composers?
At the moment – Screaming Maldini, Richard Causton, The Organelles, Laura Mvula, Ligeti.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Thomas Ades’ violin concerto Concentric Paths performed by Pekka Kuusisto with the Britten Sinfonia in February 2012. And many Organelles gigs back to sixth form days!
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Be genuine. Be resilient. Work with the best people you can. Don’t be satisfied too easily. Say yes to everything until you can afford to say no to things. Make your own opportunities. Don’t believe the world owes you a living.
Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?
Here, but with a bit more room.
What is your most treasured possession?
Dog.
Ed Scolding is a versatile composer with a strong interest in collaboration and drama. His concert music has been described as as ‘subtle and polished’ (Bachtrack) and ‘succinct, witty and apt’ (Norwich Evening News), and film music as ‘intense but under-stated… extraordinarily effective’ (Richard Paine, Faber Media Music).
Recent projects include Thrown for Sinfonia Newydd, percussion solo Drawing which won the Nonclassical Composition Competition, Black Sea for The Hermes Experiment supported by Bliss Trust / PRS Foundation and a score featuring Dermot Crehan’s Hardanger fiddle for short film The Blood of The Bear which has been screened in festivals across the UK and Europe including at the BFI and the Barbican Centre.
Collaborative projects include short opera Adrift produced by Gestalt Arts, work with rock band Screaming Maldini and electronic producer Hem (aka Geoim), a Mozart flashmob for Welsh National Opera, music for Third Stage Dance and for Anna Jordan’s play Freak.
Ed’s music has been recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio Wales and performed by Exaudi, Music Theatre Wales, London Sinfonietta, Ayre Flutes, Aisha Orazbayeva, Ksenija Sidorova and Anne Denholm at Nonclassical, Southbank Centre, St. John’s Smith Square, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Monmouth Festival, Cardiff Music Festival, Bath Fringe Festival and Wales Millennium Centre.
A keen teacher, Ed is Assistant Director of Music at The Conservatoire, Blackheath, with responsibilty for the Saturday Music School and strategic direction, and teaching GCSE and A-Level music and music technology, theory, composition, technology courses and workshops.
Living in London, Ed keeps close links to Wales through his work as Publishing, Projects and Web Manager for quintuple BAFTA Cymru award-winning composition company John Hardy Music and sister label Ffin Records. Ed is a Council Member of the ISM and a member of the ISM Special Interest Group for composition. He examines Rock & Pop grade exams for Trinity College London, with exam tours completed in Thailand, Malaysia, UAE and Spain and throughout the UK.
Born in 1985, Ed graduated in 2008 from Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama with First Class Honours then completed MMus Composition with Distinction and the LRAM teaching diploma at the Royal Academy of Music in 2011 with support from sources including Arts Council Wales, Seary Charitable Trust, Ismena Holland Award and Harvey Lohr Award.
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