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Cathy 294-smallWhat is your first memory of the piano? 

When I was around 5 years old a piano appeared in our house. I can’t remember now how it came to be there – I think it may have been inherited from my grandmother. I can remember watching my father play the piano by ear. I would stand at one end of the piano, joining in playing notes too, fascinated by the effect. Not long after I began to make up little tunes of my own. The ability to play by ear and to improvise has stayed with me all my life.

Who or what inspired you to start teaching? 

My first introduction to teaching piano was teaching the two young children of some friends while I was studying piano at Auckland University in New Zealand. I was really quite novice at it then and can’t imagine how effective I was as a teacher. However later when I came to study and work in London it eventually became a necessity to earn part of my living as a piano teacher and gradually my ability to teach developed.

Who were your most memorable/significant teachers? 

A number of teachers remain very special to me. My first significant teacher, Mary McClafferty, was a very fine musician, who took me through my advanced piano grades and diplomas whilst I was at school. She was so modest – she would have never told me at the time but in her obituary I read that the great Henry Wood invited her to play in the proms when she was young. I remember she always spoke very fast – perhaps trying to fit in as much as possible in the time allotted!

When I went to Auckland University to study music I had the unique experience of studying with two piano teachers simultaneously. This was only possible as one had been the pupil of the other. They worked in perfect tandem, covering a wide range of solo and chamber repertoire between them with each student. Janetta McStay (who sadly died just recently at the age of 95) was not only a great teacher but a really world class musician and performer. During the 1970’s I heard her play as an equal with many wonderful musicians during their visits to New Zealand and it was not surprising that the Borodin Quartet especially requested her to join them on a tour of Russia. I also studied with her former pupil, Bryan Sayer, also an excellent pianist and teacher, who had studied in Paris with Vlado Perlmuter. They have both remained lifelong friends and mentors.  In the five years I studied with them I learnt such an enormous amount from them: about technique, style, detail and precision, beauty of tone and phrasing. The list goes on…

Later in London I was privileged to study with the late Peter Wallfisch – a very special pianist and musician and so incredibly generous: he would think nothing of giving a three or four hour lesson, if he felt the music required it. He had such wonderful imagination and made you really think about interpretation in a very deep and creative way. In his teaching I felt there were connections back to great teaching pedagogues such as Artur Schnabel.

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

All of those wonderful piano teachers have left their mark in different ways through their generosity, high professional standards and complete commitment to their art.

I am also influenced by the playing I do with other musicians as I am being constantly challenged to remain open to different ways of working, which keeps me fresh.

I find much can be learnt from observing master classes.  Andras Schiff, Richard Goode and Murray Perahia have all given me much to think about. I am also fascinated by less conventional approaches: Nelly Ben–Or is a pianist who offers a unique take on performance due to her training as an Alexander Technique Teacher. William Westney (American pedagogue and prize winning pianist, influenced by the teaching of Jacques Dalcroze) also offers a completely original and refreshing approach to practising and performing. I recommend reading his inspiring book The Perfect Wrong Note (published by Amadeus).

Lastly and certainly not least I am always learning from my students!

Most memorable/significant teaching experiences?  

Whether modest or momentous I find there are regular moments of satisfaction and delight with teaching that are too numerous to recall. It is always a joy when a student experiences a break through, whatever level they are at.

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

I have a number of adult students these days and enjoy very much working with them. Sometimes it is necessary to make their aims more realistic – “Schumann’s Carnival is a great work but let’s start with exploring some of his shorter piano pieces first”! However, age needn’t be a barrier to progress and playing the piano is great exercise for the mind as well as for physical co-ordination. It is also self-sufficient and there really is a fantastic repertoire to choose from.

What do you expect from your students?

Enthusiasm, commitment and a willingness to try something new.

What are your views on exams, festivals and competitions? 

They have their place and can be an excellent goal for students and of course some students thrive on competitions although I believe they shouldn’t be the end all. All performance opportunities are important however– what is music if not communicated?

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

The teaching of beginners can be much underestimated in importance. It really does require careful planning and patience to teach well at this level and deliver a sound and well balanced programme of musicianship and technique. Elements such as pulse, rhythm and pitch need to be broken down and taught in small achievable steps. Introducing the sound before the symbol is so important- too many tutor books immediately push notation first.

To make the journey towards artistry the advanced student needs to be encouraged to develop their interpretive ability as well as their technical proficiency. It’s about having something individual to say as a musician.

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

I believe one helps the other. How often when I teach I find I am telling myself what I also need to take on board in my own playing. Playing oneself gives one the ability to empathise with the student, to understand the process. I will regularly demonstrate in my teaching to make sure I have offered a clear aural model of the ideas I am suggesting.

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

There are too many pianists to name but I listen to them to be inspired. We are lucky to have a rich heritage of recorded performances of many great pianists of the past to draw on. There are still a lot of wonderful classical musicians out there playing live. I am also drawn to jazz – there is so much creativity happening in this field, which harkens back to the era of composer/ performers.

Catherine Riley graduated from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, with an M.Mus degree in Performance, with first class honours.  Following successes with the two major New Zealand concerto competitions, she recorded for Radio New Zealand and undertook several professional piano concerto engagements.   

A grant from the NZ Arts council enabled her to continue with post graduate studies at the Royal College of Music with Kendall Taylor and Peter Wallfisch.  Several awards led to concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and Fairfield Halls.  She has also given performances in the Barbican Centre as well as St. John’s, Smith Square and St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  

She has performed as both soloist and chamber musician and given numerous recitals and chamber music concerts in the UK and in Europe and has recorded the complete works for violin and piano by Grieg with American violinist, Christopher Collins Lee. In 2007 she formed the Johannes Piano Quartet with colleagues who are fellow tutors at the Centre for Young Musicians, in London. She has also recently formed a duo with the pianist Graham Fitch.  

Catherine is also very active in the field of music education and is Head of Piano at the Centre for Young Musicians as well as being a principal tutor for the EPTA Piano Teaching Course. 

UPCOMING CONCERTS:

26 May 2013 The Johannes Piano Quartet with guest Lynn Cook perform piano quintets by Brahms and Granados.

The Colour Theatre, Merton Abbey Mills, SW19 (www.mertonabbeymusic.com)

31 July 2013 Piano Duet recital by Graham Fitch and Cathy Riley

Markson Music and Wine Evening: St Mary Magdalene Church, NW1

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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.