Tips for Improving Your Sight-Reading
Improving your sight-reading is not just about getting a good score in an examination. It enables you to derive more pleasure from your playing through discovering new music and broadening…
The New ABRSM Syllabus – Grade 4
Continuing my exploration of the new ABRSM syllabus, this week I am having a look at the pieces in the main book for Grade 4 (click here to view my previous…
The New ABRSM Syllabus – Grade 3
I’m currently in the process of producing an extensive collection of resources for the syllabus on my Online Academy. These include detailed video walk-throughs providing practice suggestions, tips on style and…
Online Workshops Update
We’ve expanded our increasingly popular online workshops programme further this month by adding sessions on several new topics. The first of these were on developing sight-reading skills and healthy piano…
The 2021 & 2022 ABRSM Syllabus
It was a pleasure and a privilege to be part of the initial selection committee for the 2021-2022 piano syllabus (grades 5-8), published last week. Along with two colleagues from…
Why a Healthy Technique is Important
This weeks’ guest blog post by Penelope Roskell looks at the importance of a healthy technique and how to go about acquiring it. *** *** *** Should we suffer for…
Voicing in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata
Beethoven’s Sonata in C# Minor (Sonata quasi una fantasia), Op. 27 No. 2, is surely one of the most famous pieces of music of all time. Completed in 1801, it…
New Online Workshops
Our online workshops and events programme for the next few months features a combination of repeats of popular events and new sessions based on requests and feedback from our participants…
Burgmüller’s La candeur
At first glance La candeur, the first of Burgmüller’s twenty-five studies, opus 100, looks like any other elementary study in C major - with a stream of quavers (8th notes) in one…
New Study Editions for Burgmüller’s Op. 100
As readers of my blog will know, I am not a great believer in too much separation of the study of technique from real music. Therefore, when I recommend studies…