PIANO WEEKEND          Ability ,

Finding Your Own Performance  

26-28 October 2001  

Mark Tanner

Here-and-now issues of technique, of deciphering the score, of coping with the instrument itself, rarely permit one's true conception of a musical work to come to the fore. One of the ironies of piano playing is that we spend so much time practising passages that turn out to be musically less significant than the 'simple' melody awaiting discovery elsewhere.  

The aim of this course is to examine such issues in order to glimpse at the latent performance. Clearly, the greater the degree to which the notes are learned the more time we can spend investigating the music they denote. I hope to assemble a balanced programme from the repertoire suggested prior to the course, but in any case, you must decide what you want to achieve. You may wish to bring a couple of short movements, or a single substantial work; your aim may be to take a diploma, perform in public or simply satisfy yourself.

Mark Tanner's teachers were Philip Martin and Richard MacMahon. He holds a Master's Degree from the University of Wales and a PhD from Birmingham Conservatoire. His doctoral thesis investigates the performance traditions of Liszt's piano music using hundreds of recordings. Mark was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.