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The decision to leave one’s piano teacher and move on can be a difficult one, especially if the relationship is longstanding. I have written more about this subject here. 

Ann Grogan, a poet and adult pianist, contacted me after reading my article to share her own thoughts on the issues surrounding the decision to leave a teacher, and I am sharing a excerpt from her article on this subject here:

In appreciation because they help me reach my goals, I fall into a kind of deep music-love affair with each of my teachers. Music and piano lessons open up my heart and emotions, and make me feel raw, vulnerable, and exposed in a way that other kinds of art lessons have never done. Music is special in this way, at least for me.

THE DANGER OF BEING OVERLY IMPRESSED: Sometimes this specialness causes me to set aside what I note is out of place in a lesson or in the teaching relationship, in favor of long-term hopes and dreams. That is usually never a good thing to do. I’ve learned to speak up earlier and more often when I’m fairly certain I’m not enjoying something I am trying to learn or a particular approach the teacher insists I apply.

In one case, I’m certain that I was initially overly-impressed by a teacher’s many published CDs featuring original compositions and pianistic talents in a preferred musical genre that was not mine, and another teacher’s stature as a well-known professional pianist with ubiquitous “how to” vlogs. However, I failed to do my due diligence and had no clue about their teaching ability in general, or if their approaches and policies were compatible with what are certain basic requirements I have for piano lessons.

For many seniors, the process of learning the piano is critical, in that it must function in the nature of a partnership and not a top-down affair. Being overly-impressed hinders my ability to observe what is happening as lessons unfold. I stray from my desire to learn in partnership with my teacher. Sometimes I continue studying with the teacher beyond what is reasonable and productive.

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9-16 June 2023

Principal Artist: Emma Johnson, clarinettist

Box office now open

Hertfordshire Festival of Music celebrates live classical music in Hertfordshire with an exhilarating programme of magnificent classical music, both traditional and modern – an opportunity to enjoy world class music in the heart of Hertfordshire.

“The friendly, accessible vibe of Hertfordshire Festival of Music was accompanied by the very highest level of music-making and extremely imaginative programmes in beautiful locations.” – Judith Weir CBE, Master of the King’s Music

With a theme that explores the fascinating relationship between music and art, HFoM will unite the local communities of art and music lovers through illuminating talks and imaginatively devised concert programmes. The Festival will also mark the Coronation of King Charles III with two special events.

HFoM is honoured to have Emma Johnson, one of the world’s finest clarinettists, as this year’s Principal Artist, performing a captivating recital with the talented pianist Gregory Drott. There is also a special opportunity to observe her artistic insight in a masterclass for young and aspiring players at the beautiful Queenswood School in Hatfield. Emma Johnson will also be in conversation with Artistic Director James Francis Brown to talk about her musical journey, her passions and her interests, and to share insights and opinions on music, art and life.

Featured artists at this year’s Festival include:

Emma Johnson, Katya Apekisheva, Gregory Drott, Jack Hancher, Hertford Chamber Choir, Manvinder Rattan, Rossetti Ensemble, Daniel Swain, Litsa Tunnah, Daniel Grimwood, William Whitehead, ZRI

Highlights of this year’s Festival include:

Coronation Celebrations in Hertford

HFOM marks the coronation of King Charles III with two special events in Hertford. At Hertford Castle, the HFoM Community Concert Band musicians will perform arrangements of music associated with royalty in a fun, relaxed performance. The Hertford Chamber Choir and Manvinder Rattan take up the theme in a special performance at All Saints’ Church, including exquisite solo works for organ performed by William Whitehead.

The ever-popular ZRI ensemble return to HFoM with their genre-bending and audience thrilling ‘Cellar Sessions’, recreating the atmosphere of the legendary Red Hedgehog bar in Vienna, at the McMullen Brewery courtyard in Hertford.

Pianist Katya Apekisheva makes her Festival debut performing one of the war horses of art-inspired music, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Festival newcomer violinist Litsa Tunnah shares her passion for music and colour in a recital, and she will be in conversation with Artistic Director James Frances Brown exploring the rare phenomenon of synaesthesia, where sounds can trigger colours or shapes, and discussing how music can create visual impressions.

Guitarist Jack Hancher returns to Hertford with a solo recital of music inspired by art, and there will also be a special appearance of the highly regarded Rossetti Ensemble in a performance of music by David Matthews and Festival Artistic Director, James Francis Brown.

Emma Johnson
ZRI
Jack Hancher
Litsa Tunnah
Daniel Grimwood
Rossetti Ensemble
Gregory Drott
Katya Apekisheva
Manvinder Rattan
William Whitehead

HFoM plans 15 events/outreach projects in community venues, anticipating engagement with around 1,500 individuals (performers, audiences, participants/beneficiaries).  Eight of the events are free, with discounted ticket prices for concessions where possible.

As part of the Festival, and with the support of community sponsor, Network Homes and collaboration with Sing from the Heart, HFoM’s Music in Mind project offers a series of interactive sessions for people living with dementia, as well as their carers and families, in selected care homes across Hertfordshire. These sessions are led by specially trained musicians who share the gift of music with compassion and sensitivity. Music can have a positive impact on the symptoms of dementia, as well as bringing joy and happiness to those who participate.

In addition, HFoM is delighted to continue its vitally important education projects with exciting plans to get schoolchildren up and singing, in collaboration with Hertfordshire Music Service and Queenswood School, taking place later in the year.

Full details of this year’s Festival at hertsmusicfest.org.uk

Hertfordshire Festival of Music is the vision of the late Tom Hammond and composer James Francis Brown, and is registered as a charity supported by a board of Trustees and a team of volunteers.

Now in its eighth year, HFoM has grown rapidly from a small weekend event to one of the UK’s major summer music festivals, featuring international artists and ensembles alongside innovative outreach and educational projects, all based in and around the attractive historic county town of Hertford. Since its launch, HFoM has presented concerts that have inspired extraordinary audience responses to artists such as Tasmin Little OBE, Dame Emma Kirkby, Stephen Hough CBE, Steven Isserlis CBE, Ben Goldscheider, the Carducci Quartet, the Galliard Ensemble, Chloë Hanslip, ZRI and The Prince Consort.

HFoM is fortunate to receive support from a number of charitable trusts and foundations, county, district and town councils, while a growing Friends Scheme allows individuals to play an important role in supporting the Festival and furthering its scope and potential.

The Festival offers affordable ticket prices, several free events, concessions for those under 24 in full-time education, free tickets for the under 8s and a complementary ticket for a carer accompanying those patrons with access needs.

HFoM exists to celebrate and nurture exceptional music-making, featuring some of the world’s finest performers. The Festival also supports professional and young musicians from Hertfordshire, presents fascinating music by living composers and devises major, innovative projects for education and participation. Hertford is just over twenty miles from central London, easy to get to by rail and road but nestled in the beautiful countryside of the Lea Valley. Most concerts take place within a ten-minute stroll of the town’s centre, which boasts excellent restaurants, many independent shops and accommodation.

Website: www.hertsmusicfest.org.uk

Twitter: @HertMusicFest

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hertsmusicfest/

Instagram: @hertsfestofmusic

Registered Charity Number 1175716

For further press information, please contact Frances Wilson | frances_wilson66@live.com

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Mathilde Milwidsky (violin) and Annie Yim (piano) at Dorset Museum, Dorchester

  • Robert SCHUMANN Three Romances
  • Claude DEBUSSY Sonata in G Minor
  • Eugène YSAYE Sonata No 3 in D Minor
  • Lili BOULANGER Deux Morceaux
  • BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata in G major No 10 Op 96

When, in spring 2018, I told my music-loving friends that I was leaving London for the depths of west Dorset, many exclaimed “but how will you cope without the Wigmore Hall?!“, knowing that London’s “sacred shoebox” was (and remains) one of my favourite, regular concert venues. When I moved, I was determined to find music down here, and shortly after moving to the Isle of Portland (the southernmost tip of Dorset), I discovered all sorts of music-making, festivals, opera and more. And in autumn 2019, I took over the concert management of Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts, working with the pianist Duncan Honeybourne.

There is, in fact, a feast of music outside the capital, if you know where to find it.

Dorset Museum Music Society, now in its 48th season, presents 6 concerts per year in the wonderful Victorian Hall at Dorset Museum in Dorchester. I’d known about the music society for some time, so it was serendipitous when the pianist Annie Yim invited me to a concert given by her and violinist Mathilde Milwidsky in the beautiful Victorian Hall at the museum.

The concert was well-attended; like the Weymouth lunchtime series which I run, these regional music societies tend to have a loyal local audience. The venue and ambiance were friendly, and the interval wine pleasant.

The music was exceptional. Mathilde has recently been named as a Classic FM Rising Star: 30 under 30 (this is a prestigious shortlist narrowed down by industry experts) and Annie Yim has already established a reputation as a thoughtful and imaginative musician whose programmes showcase lesser-known repertoire and make connections between music and art.

This programme paired two of the greatest sonatas for violin and piano – Debussy’s mercurial and elegiac sonata in G minor, the composer’s last work, and Beethoven’s uplifting Op 96. These works were interspersed with shorter works by Robert Schumann, Lili Boulanger, and virtuoso violinist and composer Eugène Ysaye.

The Romances by Schumann were attractive, contrasting introductory pieces which quickly gave a taste of the talent on display and the mutual understanding between these two musicians. In Debussy’s Violin Sonata. Mathilde and Annie gave us shimmering colours, vibrant rhythms and a clear sense of the music’s poignancy. It’s very much an autumnal farewell, yet its finale is, in the composer’s words, “filled with tumultuous joy” with the violin spinning off into a new episode and the piano following to bring the music to an ecstatic close. It was a wonderfully imaginative and engaging performance.

Two short works by Lili Boulanger followed, somewhat in keeping with the nostalgic nature of the Debussy (Lili Boulanger’s short life was beset by illness and she died in 1918, the same years as Debussy). Here, an elegant, songful nocturne contrasted with a spirited little morceau.

The second half of the concert opened with Ysaye’s Violin Sonata No.3 in D minor, written for solo violin and dedicated to Georges Enescu. It’s a work rich in technical and musical challenges, in two movements but played as a continuous work, almost like a fantasy. Mathilde demonstrated not only fine technique, but a real command of this highly virtuosic piece, bringing to it spontaneity, colour and drama.

Beethoven’s last sonata for violin and piano was composed in 1812 and dedicated to his most favourite pupil, the Archduke Rudolph. A work of serene beauty and lyricism, characterized by its intimate and conversational nature, violin and piano engage in an almost seamless dialogue throughout – the perfect vehicle for these two musician friends who play with such natural understanding and synergy.

There was so much to enjoy in this concert. Mathilde is poised, direct and committed, with understated vibrato and a clean yet warm tone. She was amply complemented by Annie’s sensitivity and glowing, elegant sound. Despite a small grand piano, the shape of the Victorian Hall at Dorset Museum (very nearly a Wigmore shoebox) produced a wonderfully resonant and bright acoustic, well-suited to these fine musicians.

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‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ at English National Opera

The final work in ENO’s 2022/23 season, a staging of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, made for a poignant, beautiful and moving close to a season beset with anxiety about the future of ENO in is current home, the London Coliseum, after Arts Council England (ACE) slashed its funding and demanded that the opera find a new home outside London. This is all part of the government’s so-called “levelling up” policy, but for many of us who care about such things, it – and other acts of desecration by ACE – feels like an attack on culture and also on excellence.

These points were more than touched upon in an emotional pre-performance speech by Stuart Murphy, outgoing CEO of ENO, who warned Nicholas Serota, Michael Gove and others that “history is watching you”. Murphy’s speech garnered enthusiastic support, with a few shouts of “Tories out!” from the balcony.

What followed was a performance which demonstrated exactly why we should value ENO and what it does – and what makes it distinctive from London’s other great opera house.

Of course Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is not an opera. It’s an orchestral work in three movements by Henryk Gorecki (1933-2010), a composer hitherto almost unkown outside his native Poland until this work hit the classical charts in the early 1990s in a recording featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw with the London Sinfonietta. The album remained in the charts for weeeks and weeks, and is one of the biggest selling contemporary classical pieces of all time.

The music is minimalist in style, approachable but also highly affecting, with an insistent pulse throughout which could suggest a human heartbeat. The only voice is that of a soprano, in the ENO production Nicole Chevalier, who in three meditative movements offers a triptych of motherhood – the first a lament of the Virgin Mary, the second a message written on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell, and the third a mother searching for her lost son. The production was presented in Polish with Englisha and Polish subtitles.

The work lends itself to a theatrical presentation and is rich in religious imagery, in particular the Pietà and figures at the base of the cross from the Crucifixion, both of which were referenced in the opening movement. A simple set with two apertures of light overhead created the sense of a cavernous stone tomb. At the back, a figure lay on a suspended slab while a woman dragged a cloth from a grave. Gathering it up in her arms, the cloth became at once a cradled child and a shroud. Throughout the performance, extraordinary lighting and video effects projected tears or waves, and the fuzzy images from an ante-natal ultrasound scan, which served to enhance and reinforce the message of the music and the words.

In the second scene, in a Gestapo prison cell, we see that the stone walls are in fact a series of closely-meshed ropes through which mysterious, masked figures emerge and depart. In the final scene, the tangled ropes suggests the mess and fog of war as the mother searches for her lost son. The resonances with the war in Ukraine were very obvious here and this made for a very moving episode in a work freighted with a visceral sense of poignancy and loss.

Nicole Chevalier’s translucent yet rich soprano brought power and tenderness to Gorecki’s long-spun lines, while conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and the ENO orchestra gave an unsentimental but not less committed and absorbing reading of the score which appreciate the narrative arc of the individual movements and the work as a whole. The overall effect was compelling, deeply moving and yet ultimately uplifting: the closing moments of the final movement, the mother spreads her wings and ascends towards heaven, in an image redolent of the art of William Blake.

An ambitious, imaginative and haunting production from ENO, which demonstrates exactly why we must treasure and support this organisation.

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs continues until 6 May