• Juniper Dreams

    Posters are up and rehearsals have started. I’m feeling remarkable fortunate to be having my first musical theatre work performed by the pupils I teach. For the first time in my compositional work I have the opportunity to work with the performers over an extended period and I am finding I am also composing as…

  • After the course

    I thoroughly enjoyed my three weeks in Edinburgh. It was very much appropriate to go away and undertake such an intensive piano course away from the concerns of one’s routines and everyday existence. The final concert demonstrated that all the pianists participating had made a great deal of progress and the performances were considerable improvements…

  • Week Two – Day Two

    Very long day today and much of my practice today was slow work so I found it all rather exhausting once I returned home. There is something rather fascinating about working in ‘slow motion’ and I found myself chasing precision in the three against four passage in the Fauré Nocturne. Kenneth talked about the rhythmic…

  • Week Two – Day One

    The weekend in Edinburgh during the Festival was mostly spent at the piano but that’s not to say it was not a productive one. After a week of classes and lessons it was great to have two days to do some extended work and get ready for the performance I gave this morning. After playing…

  • Day Five

    It is not even the end of the morning session and already some interesting technical issues have been raised on Kenneth van Barthold’s intensive piano workshop in Edinburgh. The physiognomy of piano technique was most apparent in discussions this morning when the playing of octaves which in turn led to talking about curved fingers versus…

  • Day Four

    Interesting class this morning and it was clear from my play-through of the second movement of the Prokofiev my two practice sessions had yet to cement the notes to ensure they would be reliable at the tempo I chose. I was encouraged though and can increasingly see the value of making decisions regarding choice of…

  • Day Three in the “Loony Bin”

    Kenneth mentioned at the start of the week that Craighouse – where the piano course is held – was originally a mental health institution and in fact the very same institution that housed Wilfred Owen and Sassoon. It also seems a rather fitting place to be undertaking an intensive piano course where my sanity and…

  • Day Two

    Day two is over – and perhaps a little early but my hands are “drunk on notes”, to quote a fellow participant. The class only lasted the morning today and it was good to hear more from those tackling some really big works and also get the first movement – albeit an excerpt – of…

  • Getting down to practice

    Well day one on the Kenneth van Barthold Piano Course – held in Edinburgh – is over. A fascinating day of first performances by all of us undertaking the three weeks of sessions with Kenneth and his assistant Nicholas Pope. There is plenty of variety of repertoire and having multiple copies of the music was…

  • It need not be fleeting

    The Henley report emphasised the value and importance of music making as a practical skill and how much this can enrich and aid the development of young people’s lives. What was lacking from the comprehensive survey was a detailed acknowledgement of the class music lessons themselves. How important is Western Art Music in the teaching…