PTC Live - Building Your Bach
Building Your Bach, Understanding Rubato & The Suzuki Method
Sunday 5th March 2023 (10:30 – 14:00 GMT)
The Piano Teachers’ Course UK is pleased to offer a new series of online workshops for piano players and teachers. Hosted in partnership with Informance Publishing, these workshops offer new ideas, inspiration and practical tips wherever you might be on your pianistic journey!
In our third set of workshops in this series taking place on Sunday 5th March, Beate Toyka and Kris Worsley discuss bringing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier to life, understanding tempo rubato and what makes the Suzuki method different from others.
Schedule
Building Your Bach (11:30am – 12:30 GMT)
Falling in love with the Well-Tempered Clavier
As a complement to her video series “Step into ‘the 48’” on the Online Academy, Beate Toyka shares her journey through this project and the reasons behind it. In this session you will discover how rewarding it can be to explore playful preludes and tackle fiendish fugues. It’s all a matter of ‘step by step’ and here Beate will follow the chart of difficulty that she is basing her recordings on. Starting with the easiest pairs, you will get lots of hints on articulation, technique and colours of touch which will help you to bring these masterpieces to life!
Understanding Tempo Rubato (13:00 – 14:00 GMT)
Tempo rubato is often used only instinctively and intuitively by pianists as a means of putting ‘personal expression’ into a performance. However, this can lead to a very limited understanding of its expressive potential as it becomes a feature which is added to the performance, rather than being an intrinsic part of the music.
In this session, Kris Worsley examines different types of tempo rubato which have been in use from the Baroque period through to the 20th century. Kris will discuss various means by which composers left clues in their music (often missed by modern performers!) for how tempo rubato could be used in performance and how learning to read such clues leads to a more advanced understanding of the musical language and of the works themselves.
Suzuki Piano Teaching and Learning (14:15 – 15:15 GMT)
What makes this ‘method’ different from others?
As well as a ‘traditional’ piano teacher, pianist and PTC tutor, Beate is also a fully trained Suzuki teacher and has run a successful Suzuki studio alongside her various other musical activities for many years. In the last session of the day, Beate will explain the rationale and background of this teaching philosophy, also often called ‘the mother tongue’ method, the technical elements such as tone production, performance and memory, while presenting the backbone of the Suzuki repertoire. She will also outline what is expected from parents and children who enroll on this programme.
Format & ticket options
The sessions will be presented via Zoom and participants will have opportunities to ask questions via chat during various sessions and afterwards by email. The sessions will be filmed in studio and all ticket holders will receive high-definition recordings after the event. Therefore if you can’t join us live, you can still watch the presentations at your convenience afterwards.
Tickets for all three sessions cost £50 (£30 for Online Academy subscribers & PTC alumni) and can be purchased here or individually for £25 (£15 for Online Academy subscribers & PTC alumni) via the following links:
Further information and links to purchase recordings for the previous events (4th December 2022 & 29th January 2023) are available here.