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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

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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

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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

 

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Self-Portrait (Yo – Picasso), 1901 Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 60.5 cm Private collection

Picasso’s creative breakthrough in Paris in 1901 is charted in an intelligent and focused exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. It demonstrates how the artist developed his personal style and artistic identity by taking on and transforming the styles and subjects of major modern artists of the age, including Van Gogh, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, and features pictures which marked the start of what was later called his Blue period, and his emergence as a major artistic force of the twentieth-century.

Read my review here