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I have recently taken on a new student, a boy of 11 who is preparing for his ABRSM Grade 2 exam in mid-July. He’s been having lessons at school (in a group lesson with another child) but his mother felt he would benefit from regular one-to-one tuition with me. A few days after the first lesson, the mother wrote to me:

“He came home with a ‘that’s the best piano lesson I’ve ever had’ and a fantastic great big grin on his face!”

Showing appreciation for your piano teacher is important, and while I enjoy the support of a wonderful group of parents to my students, a personal thank you like this means a great deal.

Pianist and writer Melanie Spanswick offered an appreciation of the piano teacher on her blog recently, highlighting the important role of the piano teacher in a student’s success or failure. A good teacher knows how to encourage and support his/her students, to get the best of out them, and to help them develop into rounded musicians, with a proper appreciation of the piano and its literature, rather than inexpressive “typists”.

Many parents, and students, and others, fail to appreciate just how much a piano teacher does, not only in lessons, but in all the time spent preparing for lessons, submitting exam entries, organising extra-curricular events to stimulate and interest students, and generally managing a teaching practice and all the admin this entails. These activities are not, generally, included in the teaching fee – just as all the lonely hours of practice a professional concert pianist puts in are not covered by the recital fee. But we have to do these things to ensure we run an efficient studio and to offer our students the best possible learning experience. Not all teachers put in this kind of effort, and it always upsets me when I come across a teacher who does not feel these additional aspects of the job are important or beneficial.

Sadly, the profession of piano teaching is not regulated, and there are charlatans out there: I know, because I have met one or two, both as an adult student and a teacher. As Melanie stresses in her blog article, it is very important to choose the right teacher, and while personality counts for a lot, proper qualifications and experience are crucial. In my opinion, simply having Grade 8 piano does not qualify one to teach advanced repertoire. Conversely, the best concert pianist in the world may not be the best teacher: some of the finest performers are not natural teachers/communicators. However, a good piano teacher should have performed at some point in their career: a teacher who performs, whether professionally or in an informal capacity, will be able to tutor his/her students in the art of performing and how to deal with performance anxiety, important skills for success in exams, festivals and competitions. An ability to communicate, at all levels, from young children to adults, flexibility, good humour, and endless patience are all key skills too. Above all, a good teacher will convey his/her passion and enthusiasm for the piano and its literature: this is my main motivation for being a piano teacher, and if I had to distill my mission statement into a snappy one-liner, I think it would probably say “I love the piano!”.

Good teachers don’t rest on their laurels and their exam successes, and devote time in their busy schedules to ongoing professional development – honing their craft by attending courses, lectures, and masterclasses, and keeping abreast with the new thinking and writing in piano pedagogy (and with the wide availability of such material online, there is really no excuse for not doing this).

So, the next time you meet a piano teacher, either as a student or parent of a student, spare a thought for the huge amount the best teachers put in outside of their teaching hours, to ensure their students get the best out of their lessons.

Just as a post-script, I would like to mention some of the people with whom I have had the very good fortune to study. Apart from my own regular teacher, Penelope Roskell, who studied with Giudo Agosti, Maria Curcio, Vlado Perlemuter and Peter Feuchtwanger, amongst others, I have also studied with former students of Peter Wallfisch, Nina Svetlanova, Leon Fleischer, John Barstow and Phyllis Sellick. For more about the benefits of studying with teachers at this level, please see my earlier post on Teachers and Mentors.

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What is your first memory of the piano? 

Aged four, coming down the stairs in our house to hear my ten year old sister playing the piano very fast. Then I knew that I wanted to play-the-piano-very-fast!

Who or what inspired you to start teaching? 

The discovery that music, more even than dancing (I had wanted to be a ballet dancer), was my love, aged fourteen. I also knew that the psychology of it: the relationship with the teacher,  as well as the music, was intrinsically important. By that time I had had a critical teacher who’d put me off, and a relaxed teacher who taught nothing much, but didn’t criticise, which was more successful. And I wanted to explore, understand and develop piano teaching from all of these points of view.

Who were your most memorable/significant teachers? 

They all had something very valuable to offer in very different ways. If I were to pick one, it would be Joan Barker who taught me as a postgraduate at Trinity College of Music after I had gained my piano teaching Diploma as well as my Degree. Her superb technical teaching (completely in line with the body’s natural movement) and inspirational musicianship gave me all the tools I needed to perform and teach securely and successfully.

Most memorable/significant teaching experiences?  

Seeing students having Aha! moments, grinning from ear to ear, able to play and do what they’ve always wanted to be able to play and do.

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

Helping them to play the music that they love, as soon as they can, with fingers that have never done anything like it before.

What do you expect from your students? 

That we work together: they tell me what they want to learn, and I help them get there.

That we are realistic: they turn up to lessons even when there has been no time to practise, and we focus on encouragement and support throughout.

What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions? 

These are all wonderful if they motivate students, and if students feel that their playing is valued and appreciated. But they can be enormously damaging when students feel unfairly criticised, unappreciated and unsupported.

All such events should be a celebration of the student’s achievements and focus on the positive: If students are told what they have achieved, and what they can do, they do it even more and even better. Nothing else needs be said in a public or formal situation.

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

Most piano players want to be able to sit down and play wherever there is a piano, whether or not they have any written music with them. So I teach my students to play by ear and improvise, in a very simple step-by-step system, which involves important concepts such as pulse, tonality, harmony, phrase and form. That way they are always to play something whether at home to relax, or in a friend’s house, pub or hotel foyer.

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

Martha Argerich for her sheer passion and lightening speed at the piano!

“A teacher and facilitator at heart, I help people help themselves, identify aims and issues, make connections, add depth, develop strengths and skills, and succeed.”

Lucinda Mackworth-Young

For further information please visit Lucinda’s website

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What is your first memory of the piano?

My mother played, I crawled on the floor

Who or what inspired you to start teaching?

My passion for the piano

Who were your most memorable/significant teachers?

Gyorgy Sebok. Vlado Perlemuter, Merete Soderhjelm

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

The pianists above

Most memorable/significant teaching experiences?

The wordless understanding, manifested in the liberated playing of the student

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

Their high expectations, their self critical attitudes, difficulty in taking risks

What do you expect from your students?

Commitment, honesty, willingness to experiment, daring…

What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions?

Exams – I have very mixed feelings about these. Especially the early grades: is it not much better to create a learning programme suitable for each learner, instead of relying on a syllabus? Performing is part of being a musician, so I am all for non-competitive festivals, and also competitions but only if the adjudicator is someone who can be trusted to speak in a positive way to all competitors.

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

Early stages – music as expression,  physical freedom before reading notation; advanced students – music is a form of art and the text needs to come alive: technique is the means to express.  Also, memorising comes high on my list as memorising means reflecting on what you play.

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

I could not teach performance skills without first-hand experience of performing.

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

Cannot think of anyone in particular, I have heard so many really great ones, and learn from each and every one.

HELI IGNATIUS-FLEET, ARMCM, Dip Sibelius Academy has studied the piano extensively: in addition to her music college studies (both in Finland and England) she has performed international masterclasses and worked with Austrian, American and French piano professors. During her studies she started building up her wide repertoire which covers all the main genres of classical piano music.

Now resident in Cambridge, she is a much sought after teacher. Her pupils range from professional musicians to beginners and regularly include music undergraduates. Heli creates individual learning programmes for her students: while these are not necessarily based on exams, her record of excellent exam results, including diplomas, is extensive and impressive.

A regular and popular piano course tutor at Little Benslow Hills, she aims to inspire and encourage adults, whatever their level of pianistic competence. She is also a former director and a present principal tutor of the EPTA UK Purcell School Practical Piano Teaching Course: this involvement means keeping abreast with the most recent developments in piano teaching.

Heli performs regularly: she has appeared on Finnish radio and TV and in many locations in the UK. As well as playing solo piano repertoire she has built up a reputation as a chamber music player.

Her unique lecture recitals are rooted in her life-long interest in art and her desire to illuminate musical experiences through visual parallels in paintings.  They have been well received by audiences in universities, schools and art galleries.

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What is your first memory of the piano?

An upright piano in the family home

Who or what inspired you to start teaching?

Abandoned the unrealistic idea of being a performer!

Who were your most memorable/significant teachers?

Henryk Mierowski, John Hunt (pupil of Schnabel) and Harold Rubens.

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

Harold Rubens

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

Their wide-eyed curiosity and eagerness to learn.

What do you expect from your students?

Hard work, self-discipline and RESPECT!

What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions?

All useful in their ways but only as a means to and end and not as an end in itself (often the case)

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

Respect for the composer above all – and the constant need to examine, intellectually and physically how things are achieved.  It is years since I have taught beginners so I’m not qualified to comment on this…

What do you consider to be the best and worst aspects the job?

Best – raising the level of achievement of a moderately talented player (the best can fend for themselves). Worst – not being able to do that, also feckless, indolent students with no care for their progress or even a modest desire to please me…..

What is your favourite music to teach? To play?

Mozart A minor Rondo or Chopin 4th Ballade 

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

Old oldies – Richter above all, Gilels, Cortot. Schnabel. In the case of Richter, sound and integrity.

John Humphreys studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Harold Rubens, and in Vienna on an Austrian Government Scholarship. He made his Wigmore Hall debut in 1972 with Busoni’s rarely heard Fantasia Contrappuntistica and since then has led an active life as a teacher and performer. He has broadcast on BBC Radio3, and played throughout the UK, in Iceland, Hungary, Austria, Holland and the USA. He is a Diploma Examiner for the Associated Board and both Artistic Advisor and jury member of the Dudley International Piano Competition. His recording (with Allan Schiller) of the complete two piano music of Ferrucio Busoni was released by Naxos in December 2005 and in March 2007 they recorded major works of Schubert as part of Naxos’s ongoing complete Schubert duet series due for release in January 2008. In January 2006 he and Allan Schiller were invited by the Wigmore Hall to present a recital on the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. In 1998 he received the honorary award of ARAM from the Royal Academy of Music for his ‘distinguished contribution to music’.

www.schiller-humphreys.com