Richard Meyrick, a former professional concert pianist, delivered a masterclass in piano performance for 32 of our able pianists across the school on Monday December 16th. Upon his arrival, he left us all enraptured with a fantastic performance saying that he was “just testing our new piano”.

Richard held a workshop with 5 of our GCSE pianists in front of our audience, hearing them all play a prepared piece and giving quality feedback. He would then play their piece for them emphasising how the composer would wish for the piece to be played. We could all hear the improvements made to the pieces throughout the workshop as our brave performers gained so much from the experience.

Here are just a few of the top tips shared with us:

• You can’t play the song the way you want to, you have to play it the way the composer wants it to be played,
• To play Mozart properly, listen to Mozart!
• You need a little finger made of steel in order to allow the melody to be heard clearly over the accompaniment,
• For the music to come alive and be expressive, you need to move with the music.

We were all thoroughly inspired! David in Year 13 thanked David as he left saying “You’ve really challenged the way I think about practise and performance”.