5 DAY AUTUMN COURSE WITH FLORIAN MITREA

In this course, Florian Mitrea will teach the pianists to produce their most beautiful sound by marrying technique with expressivity: “I will always match my artistic suggestions with possible technical means to achieve them, not in a prescriptive way, but rather in a manner that will give you options, which you can then explore during your practice and reach a final interpretative decision. We will be looking attentively at what ‘ingredients’ personalize our sound, and make us ‘own’ a piece. We shall be discussing the technique of great past masters, like Gilels, Richter, Lipatti, or Rubinstein, and what made their playing so unique that you could turn the radio on and immediately recognize their performances.”

Florian will instruct the participants on the role of technique, touch, and phrasing on sound production, from both historic and contemporary perspectives, with the goal of achieving highly personalized performance experience for each individual in the course.

“We shall explore together our understanding of the relationship between the music itself, the historic context in which it was composed, and other art forms, a skill which is an integral part of the actual craft of being a pianist, and a musician more broadly. Ultimately, the goal of this course will be to cultivate a sense of responsibility and commitment to music, but also to deliver a feeling of excitement and satisfaction from understanding how we can convey strong emotions and vivid story-lines through sounds.”

Course participants will be instructed individually and in the masterclass format. They will have daily opportunities to participate in technique sessions, perform, and attend the solo recital presented by Florian Mitrea.

The course will include workshops, masterclasses, an evening recital and provide time to explore the grounds and the idyllic scenery of the Finchcocks estate.

In between the group sessions, there will plenty of time to play our nine grand pianos, including our new Steinway in the recital room.

We’re also particularly excited to be able to confirm that we have arranged a trip to the privately held collection of period keyboard instruments that used to be housed at Finchcocks (whilst it operated as the world famous piano museum). The core collection of 15 keyboard instruments includes spinets, clavichords, harpischords, fortepianos and square pianos dating from 1700 to 1866. We’re encouraging our guests to bring repertoire from that period to play on these instruments during our visit – perhaps some Clementi to play on the 1822 Clementi grand piano, or some Beethoven to play on the 1801 Broadwood that was identical to Beethoven’s own piano.

This course is expected to sell out, so please get in touch as soon as possible if you are interested in attending.

For booking enquiries, please contact Jenny on 01580 428080 or fill in the form below.