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Guest post by David Lake

(This article first appeared on Facebook as a comment in response to my article Let classical audiences be quiet.)

The truth is we do have a problem. But we’re not solving it in the right way (in my very humble opinion! ). So, let’s break it down….

The problem: Younger audiences are not going to ‘traditional’ classical concerts.

The reasoning from the concert management: They want to see something more akin to a non-classical gig where they can interact with musicians in ‘real-time.’

The answer from the concert management: turn the classical concert into a gig. We know how to do this because most pro musicians don’t see music as a segregated genres but as a continuum so for many, whether it is Femi Kuta, The Manchester Collective or the Berlin Phil doesn’t actually (musically) matter and in fact just like a good diet, one should have a bit of everything.

But where this all falls down is when you get to the Great Paying Public who are obsessed with labels, genres, types, etc. and a total mis-understanding of the process of ‘musicking’ and how it applies to the different genres.

And the fact that our classical concerts are just TOO expensive starting from the ticket prices and the devious tricks the venues play to increase the price (‘convenience fees’ on an emailed ticket which by definition only exists so they don’t have to spend money printing and posting it!), horrendously-priced food and drink (glass of very mediocre red at the RAH is now heading towards £15), virtually non-existent public transport (endless strikes, endless cancellations and very expensive) – this is pricing out the younger punters unless they live within easy striking-distance of a TfL station (and many of my 50-something compatriots seem to have just given up and retired to remote locations which may as well be on the Outer Hebrides).

Several things I’ve done these past few weeks have brought this in to sharp focus. First, I went to a fabulous concert at Bold Tendencies by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy – tickets around £15 each, food (excellent) at Peckham Levels about £25 for 2, drink cheap, views from the rooftop free and To Die For. Age-range 9-99 – all colours, shapes, types, dress, etc. and massively respectful to the music and artists. Brilliant. Second, Glyndebourne; Semele. Ticket (cheap seats) over £150. Food – brought our own but had to pay for the table. Venue, utterly gorgeous. Music, world-class. Audience; old, white, rich, entitled and actually a good number who just seemed to be there for the event rather than the music (including the people behind us who chatted ALL the way through). Would I go again? Yes. Does it need to change? Yes or else it will simply turn into another corporate junket.

Then late-night Prom – Iestyn Davies, English Concert, Bach… Utterly amazing, totally silent, respectful, engaged audience. And they had to be because the pianissimo at times was SO pppp that you just HAD to listen.

The takeaway for me is that at events where the audience is engaged and sufficiently educated and invested they will, by nature, be quiet, be respectful, be interested. I don’t think the problem is with the true audience per-se; it is that we’re not putting on the right things in the right way at the right price point to attract them much of the time and many promoters are lazily programming stuff that they know that the rich, older audience will just tip up to because that is the only way the venues can survive.

What I’d like to see, alongside the ‘big ticket’ items, is the kind of diversity that organisations like Through the Noise run and promote throughout the country, and then making it easy and cheap to get to the city-centre venues by cheap, available public transport, fair-priced tickets and good quality, inexpensive catering (RAH ‘sausage’ roll – I’m looking at you in shame).

David Lake is a research scientist, engineer, pianist, concert-goer and choral singer and sees the barriers between art and science as purely artificial and unhelpful.  He is currently studying for his Licentiate Diploma (piano) and recently achieved a first in his BA from the Open University, whilst carrying on with the science-stuff in 6G mobile networks for the “day-job.” He also writes for The Cross-Eyed Pianist’s sister site ArtMuseLondon.com

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… PLAY THE MUSIC !

Guest post by Alberto Ferro

Inspirational yet enigmatic, the recommendation to NOT PLAY THE NOTES is typically given in music classes of conservatories all around the world. It suggests that a musician should forget about technical things and focus on the poetic content of the music. Easy to say. And it doesn’t even remotely hint at how that shall be accomplished. How can one play the music without playing notes? Is it perhaps figurative speech?

What is the relationship between music and notes? Music is a way to communicate ideas, emotions, aesthetic content, and the notes are a notational device that helps reconstructing the complex series of actions necessary for music to be performed. While music is an undefinable, ephemeral phenomenon, a musical score is an inescapable, very tangible instruction manual that conveys in a rigorous way how to produce refined combinations of sounds on your instrument. The score (and every kind of musical notation) is a practical tool instructing on practical operations. What scores don’t show are the poetic intention, and they never will.

A note is possibly the smallest item we can identify in a score, a small brick in the architecture of a piece. The similarity with written language is striking: like notes, letters are meaningless by themselves but necessary to form words and phrases of content. In language, for a sentence to acquire meaning it must be organized properly at the level of letters, words and above; syntax, content, punctuation, vocabulary, etc.

Musical notes are grouped into motives, phrases, periods that are dynamic, contextualized by further levels such as harmony, organized in rhythms, sections, according to proportions, characterized by articulations, etc. The score presents all of it in visual form, through black dots on white paper: it takes some years of musical education to see all of that just by studying the score. Even more significantly, seeing doesn’t exactly translates in hearing, and even less easily transforms in performing.

Notes and music belong to two quite different dimensions: instrument and art, instruction and expression, gesture and intention. The ability to maintain the former at the service of the latter is possibly the highest way of conducting ourselves in music.

When you listen to music, do you hear notes or do you pay attention to the music? What is more rewarding, to connect with the poetic message or to detect intervals, tonalities, chords, and notes? Any listener knows that music is relevant when it goes beyond its means of production: every score looks the same, black dots on paper, how uninteresting, but every piece of music is unique. The most passionate listeners don’t hear pianos, cellos, oboes, but emotions, art, sublime ideas, pure creations, etc.

As instrumentalists, when do you stop playing notes and start playing the music? As you practice, there is a point where you have grown so much familiarity with the piece that the score stops showing notes and starts presenting an emotional roadmap, a poetic journey, an aesthetic design. What makes a piece of music exciting are the ideas, colours, gestures, the human characters we find in it, so we must practice it until these emerge, until sound projects ideas, colours, gestures or characters.

‘You must learn by memory, then forget’. The score ought to be forgotten so to express the human message that is in the sound and missing from the score. Or, only when we ‘play without thinking’ music acquires a deeper meaning, since thinking is the very process by which we inhibit more instinctive ways of expression, and the number one reason we get distracted while listening to music.

Start with one bar, one phrase, one chord, and when it works build up from there: the bar, the chord, the phrase, will at once become a vision, a gesture, an emotion, and that means you are not playing notes anymore. There is only one way for the magic to happen and requires that everything is ready in place, solid in your fingers, clear in your heart, and you, the performer, must be free of concerns.

No doubt it is hard, but there isn’t any more valuable route in music. As listeners, for music to reach out and move us, it must be really a special mixture of unique qualities. For musicians the process is backwards: we first try figure out what is it that we are trying to say, why this music matter for us, what is the composer telling us, and keep trying until the exact balance of ingredients (gestures, ideas, visions, intentions, etc.) emerges to align in a perfect, magical mixture.

Alberto Ferro is a composer and pianist. Current Creative Director at the London Contemporary School of Piano, Alberto holds a Piano Performance Degree from Milan Conservatory and a Master in Music from Washington State University, U.S.

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The release of a new piano syllabus is always met with excitement and interest from piano teachers, and students too, and the latest release from Trinity College London (TCL) will not disappoint.

I have been a fan of TCL’s piano exam syllabus and approach to music exams for a long time. When I was teaching, my students enjoyed the range of repertoire on offer which seemed to suit all tastes and ages, across the grades, and the emphasis on performance rather than technical exercises. From a teaching point of view, I always valued the exercises included as part of each grade’s syllabus, which assist students in understanding and honing techniques which directly relevant to the pieces they were studying.

The new release of Piano Pieces Plus Exercises from TCL encompasses a wider range of styles and genres at every grade than ever before, offering an engaging, imaginative and highly varied selection to satisfy the tastes of any pianist, be they children, teenagers or adult learners. The grade volumes are immediately appealing: the attractive cover has a striking illustration of a grand piano, while inside there is heavyweight cream paper and clear, unfussy engraving. Each volume, colour-coded according to grade (as per previous syllabuses) and available in print and e-book format, includes comprehensive Performance Notes which offer important context to each piece and aspects to consider in learning, interpretating and performing the music. The major addition for 2023 is the ‘Extended Edition’ for each grade, offering a handsome volume of 21 appealing pieces from Baroque to present-day, plus exercises and scales and arpeggios. These are available in addition to the standard exam repertoire books of 12 pieces. The Extended edition also includes access to broadcast quality downloadable demo tracks (via a download code) so that teachers and students may listen to each piece and the exercises, performed by a cohort of well-respected pianists, including Yulina Chaplina, Greg Drott and John Paul Ekins.

In addition to the books, TCL has produced accompanying resources – Theory of Music Workbooks, Introducing Theory and Specimen Aural Tests from 2017 to support teachers and students. Detailed information about these e-books can be accessed via QR codes at the back of the repertoire books.

And what of the repertoire itself? Teachers really appreciate the importance of finding pieces that will encourage students to practice, and – more importantly – enjoy their practising, and also foster a love of music. Variety is key here, I think, and a good selection of repertoire will enable teachers to find the right music to suit each individual student. If students are engaged by the music they are learning, practicing can be enjoyable and stimulating. It is particularly important to provide teenage students with repertoire which they feel is relevant to them and their interests (e.g. pop or video game music). Some of course will want to play pieces by composers from the “core canon”; while others will make more leftfield choices.

And that’s fine, because ultimately we want students to enjoy their piano playing – and it doesn’t matter if they’re playing Bach or Bieber (Justin!), so long as they find pleasure and stimulation in the music.

If the 2021 piano syllabus widened the repertoire boundaries, the 2023 syllabus has extended them even further to include a highly appealing and imaginative range of well-known/popular pieces from:

  • classical composers ranging from Scarlatti, J. S. Bach, Haydn, Schubert and Chopin to Margaret Murray McLeod, Roxana Panufnik and Ludovico Einaudi
  • jazz and Latin artists such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Chick Corea
  • pop artists such as Ed Sheeran, Bono, Adele, Coldplay, BTS, and Pharrell Williams
  • films and TV shows such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, La La Land, Doctor Who, and Pokémon, classic Bollywood films such as Woh Kaun Thi? and Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai, and Studio Ghibli films such as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke
  • video games such as The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Super Mario Bros

In addition, as in 2021, TCL has commissioned brand new repertoire for every grade from some of the most exciting international contemporary composers, drawing on diverse musical influences from around the world.

The significant inclusion of music by female composers, including Helene de Montgeroult, Dora Pejačević and Florence Price, and those from historically underrepresented backgrounds ensures as diverse a range of repertoire as possible.

Drawing on the success and appeal of their ground-breaking 2021 syllabus, TCL will no longer be retiring repertoire and these volumes will be available indefinitely, offering a rich and ever-expanding repertoire collection, which will, hopefully encourage students to continue performing the music they love for as long as they like. Trinity’s 2021 Piano books will also remain valid for use in exams indefinitely and can be used alongside the new 2023 books, resulting in the largest selection of repertoire yet with 42 pieces across the 2021 and 2023 publications for candidates to choose from.

Appreciative of the wishes of students, and teachers, TCL offers a flexible syllabus, allowing candidates to take their exams in-person or digitally. They may select three pieces from across the syllabus, allowing them to play the music they want to play and demonstrate their own musical identity. There is also the option to play their own composition. To support students and teachers, TCL offers a range of free online resources, produced with professional musicians and educators, to help students develop their performance skills and musical knowledge.

In conclusion, TCL has produced perhaps the most impressive, comprehensive, wide-ranging and appealing piano syllabus yet and one which I am sure both teachers and students will enjoy exploring and playing.

The new piano syllabus is available from 4 September 2023.

For full details of exam entry requirements, and more, please visit TCL’s website: https://www.trinitycollege.com/qualifications/music/grade-exams/piano

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If you’ve enjoyed Orchestra of the Swan’s intriguing and imaginative “mixtape” albums – Timelapse, Labyrinths and their latest, Echoes, then you’re in for a treat with this film of members of OOTS performing at The Grange, Northington, a beautiful Neo-Classical stately house, now in a rather sad yet gracious state of disrepair. (The building is used as the backdrop for the annual Grange Festival Opera.)

The stunning music, much of which is arranged by OOTS leader and AD David Le Page, is complemented by atmospheric interior scenes in the building, creating an arresting and absorbing visual and aural experience.

Watch ‘Echoes’ here

https://youtu.be/SA0lEc-KGaY?feature=shared