We recently celebrated Piano Day 2021 with a festival of online events and workshops over the preceding weekend. Over 100 pianists and teachers from literally all corners of the globe – Australia, Indonesia, Europe, Canada and the USA (even Hawaii) participated in what was our biggest ever online events line-up! In this week’s blog post we bring you a write-up of a selection of the events from the weekend.
Keep Going No Matter What!
Our programme kicked-off with a presentation by Ken Johansen on how to maintain a steady pulse when sight-reading. Ken discussed how to find a good tempo and provided some tips and tools for tackling rhythmic difficulties such as dotted rhythms, syncopation and polyrhythms.
Click here to view in your library if you purchased a ticket or click here to purchase access to the event recording and resources
Making Good, Healthy Sound – Even at the Softest Dynamic Level
The next event saw William Westney discuss one of his favourite topics: demystifying the technique of playing softly. William used examples by Schumann and Kuhlau to demonstrate how to find a satisfying, reliable approach that sounds and feels good.
Click here to view in your library if you purchased a ticket or click here to purchase access to the event recording and resources
Note Learning, Maintaining Repertoire & Solving Problems
Saturday’s programme started with two interactive practising workshops. In the first workshop, Graham Fitch gave a hands-on demonstration of a selection of practice tools for learning new pieces and maintaining repertoire. The workshop included break-out sessions with exercises to give participants an opportunity to try out the concepts themselves during the session.
The second workshop focussed on solving musical and technical difficulties within pieces. In this workshop, Graham worked directly with a few volunteers who had submitted specific questions or problems in advance from works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
The workshop recording and resources are available via the following links:
- Note Learning & Maintaining Repertoire – click here to view in your library or click here to purchase access to the event recording and resources
- Solving Technical & Musical Problems – click here to view in your library or click here to purchase access to the event recording and resources
Haydn’s “English” Sonata – A Fantasy Analysis
On Saturday afternoon, Graham took us on a journey back to Haydn’s last visit to London. In the style of his “Fantasy Analysis” of Brahms’ Intermezzo in A (Op. 118 no. 2), Graham analysed the Sonata in C, Hob. XVI/50 with a creative narrative to bring the music to life in an imaginative way.
Click here to view in your library if you purchased a ticket or click here to purchase access to the event recording and resources.
Other Events & Resources
Click here to view a write-up of the other events, including a session on inventing exercises directly from pieces, a performance-lecture on the harpsichord and workshops on building speed and Baroque music followed by an online performance workshop.
The full programme and event details can be viewed here. All of the resources for the events for which you’ve purchased tickets are available under the events tab in your library. If you missed any of the events then you can still purchase access to the recordings and resources from the programme listing or from the events page on our store.
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