Latest Recording
My latest recording is of a piece I'm going to arrange for my Grade 2 LCME Composition Paper. It's called Das Kind ist Müde by Friedrich Blumfelder or My Child is Tired!
My Piano Story
A Late Starter
I didn't start playing the piano until very late. I never realised I was a pianist at all until I was considering music as a career in 1994 when I was about 15.5 which is late to start an instrument from scratch.
Why I started
I started piano at 16 to help with my harmony. My first teacher was Jenny Lawford and she didn't rate me very highly at all and told me to give up the ghost after battling for six whole months to play my first. piece and play five fingers up and down in contrary motion hands together. I wasn't rated at all at first. My first book was Classics To Moderns Book I and the first piece in it is German Dance by Michael Praetorius.
The Judith Inge era
My second teacher wasn't from Trinity College of Music like Jenny she was from The Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and called Judith Inge.
With Judith I got my Grade 2 within 18 months of starting by the skin of my teeth with 109 points just a straight pass nothing special.
I surprised Judith though who told me I was a very charismatic performer for having won the Junior Piano Competition at school in 1995. I played Krieger Minuet in A and I made 1 fumble but it was a very atmospheric performance. The only other candidate played tried to trounce me by playing Bohemian Rhapsody and fell flat on his face. It was a much more technically demanding piece but he overstretched himself and so I won my third title at school almost by default. That's why I still didn't rate myself as a pianist.
Developing Late
Lessons sort of petered out in the L6 and I never played again for another 6.5 years until I auditioned for the Cologne Conservatoire Wuppertal Campus as a countertenor and had to take a second study piano course as standard with my vocal studies course. That wasn't until I was 24 that I had two years of lessons at the conservatoire and stated to take my playing if anything even more seriously than my singing.
Jan Ehnes
My piano tutor at HfMT was Jan Ehnes. The Ehnes family is a famous one musically because James Ehnes the violinist who I believe is Jan's brother.
I was useless at first but Jan really kept battering away with me he just wouldn't let me leave the room without playing without a mistake even if I had to play it 400 times over and I gradually started to love it because I started to grasp it.
He had a military background and knew how to get it out of a male student like me and install an ambition for his subject. When it came to the exam, I chose my own centrepiece I wanted to play from Bach's Little Prelude in G BWV 902a and he said something I found the most inspiring words of wisdom of any music teacher:
"Hugh, you are the worst pianist in the world, but if you really practice you can play that! Just play it anyway."
We'd been working with the Hungarian Piano School Book II and Bach's Little Preludes and Fugues. Whatever you think about that comment it's genius to me because it made me realistic. He didn't know if I could play it most likely but he didn't want to stop me trying. As Sir Alfred Brendel once said piano is just about 'concentration' and nothing else. That comment helps you get what other people are saying about you and all the other prejudice you have against your own playing out of your head and just focus on getting the ball in the net. It's so German and Finnish pedagogy that really worked for me and is something I greatly admire. Not we all know you're going to fail but you might pass if you really work hard. Nothing else matters, but the final result. I think it's perfect for someone who has been starkly criticised as a musician all his life.
Having inherited Jan's clean lined Finnish playing technique I went into the exam playing the following programme and passed with 3.5 (C-):
Piano Exam 2004 Cologne Conservatoire Wuppertal Campus |
Pieces from the Hungarian Piano Method Book II 1967:
Ferenc Farkas Early Hungarian Dance 1 |
From the Anna Magdalena Bach Piano Book
Minuet Anh.114 by Christian Petzold previously att. to Johann Sebastian Bach |
Accompaniment of Eva Trummer Soprano
Der Mond ist Aufgegangen (The Moon is Risen) by Johann Abraham Peter Schultz |
From the Johann Sebastian Bach's Little Preludes and Fugues
Prelude in C |
Interpretation of part of the programme can be found here:
Letter of confirmation of marks for my Second Study Piano Exam Winter Semester 2004, Wuppertal Conservatoire:
Post College
Having proudly passed my exam I gave it a rest for a couple of years. I changed courses from Wuppertal Conservatoire to Cologne University partly because my interest in singing had taken a blow because of my friendship with the love of my life and partly because of my interest in composition as a subject rather than performance. With hindsight it might not have been my best decision, but it seemed right at the time. My next girlfriend on was a linguist so I spent most of my time at Cologne University teaching English as a Foreign Language with her and having probably the best two years of my life as a Colognish Student Mason (not freemasons but another order).
When I returned home to the UK I didn't have a lot of money and I lost my EFL career despite achieving a Masters Degree at Essex University in the Language and Linguistics Dept (in English for Specific Purposes (occupational and academic English) which was then in the top 100 world depts and now lies about 10 in the world league. In 2009 the love of my life also broke off all contact with me and I got depressed and I turned to piano to relax whilst doing my dissertation and to give my life some focus. I remembered my friend at GSMD London who's reached the piano final of BBC Young Musician of the Year on TV and how hard he'd practised for that to get as good as he could be and I just thought I'd do the same for a while.
I practised the following pieces for a house concert for my family:
Muzio Cementi Sonatina in C Op. 36
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart K.545 Sonata Facile III. Rondo
Cornelius Gurlitt Waltz K.179 Nr.21
The Cuckoo a Rondeau By Daquin
and
First Loss by Robert Schumann
The Composition Era
After an attempt to play a Beethoven sonata failed at first I noticed I'd internalised playing the structure so well I could compose Piano Sonatas and started to compose them of my own. Here are a couple of Movements from my Piano Sonata 12:
II. Marriage Dance
III. Playing with Fire
During Lockdown
In lockdown my piano playing kept me sane I recorded 1 little Grade 1 and 2 piece per day from the Hungarian Piano School Book II. I ended up recording all 71 of them in the first three chapters.
Chapter 1 : 31 Numbers by Hungarian Contributors:
Chapter 2: 28 Baroque and Classical Dances:
Chapter 3: 11 Character Pieces:
More Recently
I played them and then started to go in for online music competitions and and win 5th prizes and Special and Honourable Mention accolades including this one for a complete Haydn Sonata.
Producing A CD
After a while I produced a commercial CD privately of my work. whilst working on that I discovered the people I acquired the CD rendering software from were an old recording studio in Germany called HOFA GmbH who had now converted themselves into a private college of Audio Engineering and Music Production. Thrilled at the opportunity to learn how to record music on a home studio properly I signed up spontaneously the same day for a
BSc Creative Media (Audio Engineering) which is what I'm doing now.
This is the cover art for my CD.