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How to get the perfect balance between teaching and performing piano
The professional piano teacher: The balance between performance and education
As artists, we began our life like everybody else, with piano tuition, learning from piano teachers. We are only involved in the role of piano students. The hope is to become a concert pianist one day and offer the world our performances, sharing the music that we cherish and love. But life gets in the way, and usually, this path takes us to another direction. This path can direct us to the life of a piano tutor. It usually starts to afford our piano lessons, sometimes for other reasons.The consequence of this is to have less time at the piano: the instrument that we devoted so much time and effort get farther and farther away. The practice becomes less and less, and we find ourselves teaching more than practicing.
Still, something surprising arises from our teaching: the hope to find a new genius, someone we could pass on our knowledge and our experience after so many years of study, but after a while, we discover that this might never come. Although we have outstanding musicians, this “genius” we once envisioned never turns into a reality.
What to do?
As Maestro Rezzuto, founder of Pianist AID, states in his article “We have reached the most critical inflexion point in our musical careers. We can now decide not to take action; we can just let ourselves drift into professional frustration.Or maybe…, we can try and now and redefine the way we organice our musical and professional lives.”This situation will propel us to another state in our careers: The joy of coming back to perform live is also accompanied by a certain level of frustration, we know we don’t have the same level we used to have before.
How to deal with this new phase of our lives?
When we were young musicians, we spent an average of six hours in the piano every day. Now those days are gone. We gained experience; we are more efficient!
Now, we can size our challenges to our possibilities better. Also we will need to define our musical projects very well, so they can be genuinely transcendental for our development. And organising our diaries, chose our projects carefully and methodically, and we will see more and more satisfaction from our performances, and this will reflect in our teaching process.Do not miss this great article, and piece of advice, posted on WKMT Music Blog. […]
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The Scaramuzza technique: a fresher perspective
WKMT Tutor’s experience in learning the Scaramuzza technique
One of the most difficult challenges…
For every musician is to change their technique once they have acquired certain mastery on the instrument. The challenges are many and they appear from many aspects of the playing, but the most demanding at the beginning is the one that has to do with the muscle memory. This can be our best friend or worst enemy, as all the movements get so ingrained in the hands of the performer that requires a high level of commitment to change it, but with patience and dedication, the results are always positive.
The experience presented by Georgios Kommatas…
A new piano teacher at WKMT has two angles: one is to adapt himself to the new system developed at the studio, and the second one, and more relevant, is to become a piano student of the Scaramuzza technique given at the studio.
This approach to the technique has four steps…
The first one entails the complete relaxation of the student “The fingers must carry the weight of the whole arm’ is the instruction, ‘nothing else must be tense’”The second step of the Scaramuzza Technique is a correct Hand Position on the piano. The advantages of a proper Hand Position can be observed straightaway. The fingers can play with precision all the dynamics and articulations demanded.
The third step is related to musical notation: When we read a music score, the notes show us two dimensions:
pitch and duration.
Scaramuzza has added a third dimension in the score: Hand Movements. Finger, Forearm, Hand, Rotation and Wrist Movements are the five options, which correspond to the other two dimensions.
The last step has more to do with the acceptance of having to delay pieces that might have more pianistic level but are not the correct ones to use for approaching this technique from scratch and to trust your piano tutor and his guidance.
How can this help me?…
Have you ever heard about the benefits of learning a piano technique? There is a huge list of benefits for all those students learning the piano using a technique from scratch. Georgios intends to analyse the hardest parts, as well as some of the benefits. Browsing the Scaramuzza’s Movements Blog, you could get to know all the different movements you could use, and how this technique could help you improve your performing skills, as well as relaxing your body in the process. Yes, you have read well, relaxation is […] -
Classical concert at WKMT 2020
Classical concert at WKMT 2020Haydn & Mozart concert in LondonHello pianists, musicians and readers, we come back with breaking news!This concert has been suspended by the organisation. Following the procedures to contain the COVID-19 in Italy, Spain and France, they decided to cooperate in the same way and postpone this concert.We will keep you all updated about the next date for this beautiful concert in London.Looking forward to it!—-We welcome the new year with a new classical concert in March. We are now organising with WKMT Studios all the programmes for the concerts for this year in London. Below you will find the details for what it will be the first concert of 2020.For this special occasion, we will offer the Piano Concerto in F-major, H.XVIII:7 composed by the renowned Joseph Haydn, inventor of the Sonata Form and the Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major, K. 207 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The solo Violin will be in charge of the lead violinist, Paola Delucchi, who will perform along Maestro Juan Rezzuto at the piano.These concerts are part of a long-term project by the hand of the concert pianist and Director of WKMT, Juan Rezzuto, whose ambition is to perform all Haydn Keyboard Concertos. In this opportunity, he will perform together with the WKMT String Ensemble one of the least known ones, as it is one of the “obscure” ones. The main reason is that is the only one that the second movement was not autographed by Haydn (although we do know that he composed it) of the work extant, and the concerto first appeared in London as published by Gardom in 1772. Another curious fact about this Concerto is that it does not include a Viola part, making this setting quite unusual. Both concerts are a tremendous opportunity for all our piano students to have a deeper perspective of how the Scaramuzza technique works in concert pieces and to complement the instruction received by our piano tutors at WKMT studio, who impart this technique upon the guidance of the Director who learned it from one of the pupils of Scaramuzza himself, Bruno Gelber.Without a doubt, this Concert will be a gorgeous one to begin the year in the enchanting company of the two unparalleled composers of the Classical period. Hope you enjoy and we are looking forward to seeing you all on March the 28th 2020 in St. Cuthbert’s Church, Earl’s Court from […]
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Learning quality music lessons with WKMT
Learning quality music lessons with WKMTFoundations and ABRSM: Piano lessons for students preparing examsIf any studio has the capacity and experience to deliver quality piano lessons in London, that is definitely meant to be for WKMT.Our founder, Juan Rezzuto, founded Pianist AID once his music studio was completely created and operational, that way he could use all his strength to raise our platform and help other pianists, musicians and teachers with different opportunities in London. Either performing and/or teaching. Helping us make a portfolio of performances, as well as use professional advice for every single musician that might need help or integrate in London.For that reason, we do recommend this new post to everyone who would love to learn more about the common music exams in London, and learn a proper learning method succesful by WKMT after ten years of experience with plenty of students of all levels and ages, and requirements and skills.Obviously, like in any other subject, the students might react and progress in many different ways. There is not any exact way applied to everyone, and the same results obtained. For that reason, the most prepared and standarised a program is the easier to be applied to everyone gets. So that is the main expectation of this article, create a way for everyone to easily understand the process in the most accurate way possible.Summarising the article, the first step would be setting up the goal. And the main goal is helping them create a habit, a motivation, a discipline on the piano. Make them enjoy the process of learning piano. Starting with a proper piano technique (Scaramuzza’s as recommended by Juan). For this step, they have designed an online platform, a piano beginner’s course, in easy to-complete steps, analysing the main points, performance-oriented.After that, once that part of the programme has been completed, is time to selecta piece. That way we start applying what we learnt over that piece. For that reason, the first step would be the most important, and this is the main point for Juan Rezzuto, to build proper pilars, foundations, in order to provide the students with the rght skills to take and progress with whatever they do later on with the piano.For all this and much more information about it, we leave the Maestro to explain through is recently written article. You can click on the link aforementioned and start learning the […]
