Building Your Bach, Understanding Rubato & The Suzuki Method
The Piano Teachers’ Course UK is pleased to offer a new series of online workshops for piano players and teachers. Hosted in partnership with Informance Publishing, these workshops will give you new ideas, inspiration and practical tips wherever you might be on your pianistic journey!
In our third set of workshops in this series which took place on Sunday 5th March, Beate Toyka and Kris Worsley discussed bringing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier to life, understanding tempo rubato and what makes the Suzuki method different from others.
Schedule
Building Your Bach (11:30am – 12:30 GMT)
Falling in love with the Well-Tempered Clavier
As a complement to her video series “Step into ‘the 48’” on the Online Academy, Beate Toyka shares her journey through this project and the reasons behind it. In this session you will discover how rewarding it can be to explore playful preludes and tackle fiendish fugues. It’s all a matter of ‘step by step’ and here Beate will follow the chart of difficulty that she is basing her recordings on. Starting with the easiest pairs, you will get lots of hints on articulation, technique and colours of touch which will help you to bring these masterpieces to life!
Understanding Tempo Rubato (13:00 – 14:00 GMT)
Tempo rubato is often used only instinctively and intuitively by pianists as a means of putting ‘personal expression’ into a performance. However, this can lead to a very limited understanding of its expressive potential as it becomes a feature which is added to the performance, rather than being an intrinsic part of the music.
In this session, Kris Worsley examines different types of tempo rubato which have been in use from the Baroque period through to the 20th century. Kris will discuss various means by which composers left clues in their music (often missed by modern performers!) for how tempo rubato could be used in performance and how learning to read such clues leads to a more advanced understanding of the musical language and of the works themselves.
Suzuki Piano Teaching and Learning (14:15 – 15:15 GMT)
What makes this ‘method’ different from others?
As well as a ‘traditional’ piano teacher, pianist and PTC tutor, Beate is also a fully trained Suzuki teacher and has run a successful Suzuki studio alongside her various other musical activities for many years. In the last session of the day, Beate will explain the rationale and background of this teaching philosophy, also often called ‘the mother tongue’ method, the technical elements such as tone production, performance and memory, while presenting the backbone of the Suzuki repertoire. She will also outline what is expected from parents and children who enroll on this programme.
Format & ticket options
If you missed this event, you can still purchase access to the recordings to watch at your convenience. The videos for the sessions have been created from the footage recorded in the studio and therefore are significantly better quality than the streamed versions.
Tickets for all three sessions cost £50 (Online Academy subscribers and PTC Alumni get 40% off) and can be purchased here or individually for £25 (£15 for Online Academy subscribers & PTC alumni) via the following links:
Further information and links to purchase recordings for the previous events (4th December 2022 & 29th January 2023) are available here.
Please click here for more information about how our online events work or click here to contact us if you have any other questions.
About the Piano Teachers’ Course
For 16 years, the Piano Teachers’ Course UK has been on a mission to raise the bar in piano teaching standards across the country. We’ve helped hundreds of teachers inspire in thousands of students and deep love of music that reaches beyond the pages of a tutor book. Click here to find out more.