2024 offers Advanced pianists three very different 5-day courses to choose from. The first of these went down a storm this year and returns in the spring. Dedicated to those preparing for a diploma performance, Graham Fitch will lead guests through an intensive week providing a concentrated boost of study, practice and experience in performance skills.

Preparing for a diploma is an excellent way to give focus and structure to your piano practice as you work towards a goal. This provides an ideal opportunity for continued professional or personal development. On this course, you can receive tuition and coaching on your individual programme. There will also be opportunities to practise performing your programme (or selections from it) to others in a safe and supportive environment, either in the class or more informally in a small group. In addition to masterclasses, there are workshops on how to prepare for performance, strategies to cope with performance anxiety, viva voce and quick study coaching (for those doing the ABRSM syllabus), as well as clinics where we aim to solve practice and technical issues. Whether you are just embarking on the path, or about to sit your diploma, this course is for you.

Our 5-day courses are a well established highlight of the Finchcocks calendar. To ensure guests are assigned to the right course for them, priority is given to those who have attended at least one weekend Finchcocks course previously.

Like our weekend courses, formal tuition takes place in workshops, performance classes and one-to-one lessons.

This course’s focuses will be:

• Preparing for a Performance: Strategies for Structuring Your Practice
• Overcoming Performance Anxiety
• Clinic: Solving Technical and Musical Problems in Your Pieces
• Memorisation and Deep Learning Techniques
• Practising a Performance: Building Stamina and Resilience into your Programme.

As usual, everyone will have access to their own grand piano for the week including our new Steinway, and have plenty of time to practise in our vaulted piano cellar.

We’ll also have a bit of fun! We’ll enjoy a recitial from either a visiting concert pianist, Graham himself or your course host, explore the private gardens at Finchcocks, be able to go for beautiful Kentish countryside walks to Scotney Castle or even enjoy a session or two in the family’s new heated swimming pool, weather permitting.

And of course, it goes without saying that you can expect the usual!

Guests will:

• Have the chance to play in and observe multiple performance masterclasses.
• Will receive one-to-one lessons with Graham.
• Enjoy access to play on our 9 grand pianos anytime between 7am and 8pm. (There are enough pianos to go round that everyone can play a piano at any given time.)
• Have the chance to take part in a recital on the Bosendorfer in the main hall of the family home.
• Join and socialise with a group 8 fellow piano enthusiasts during lunch and dinner.
• Dine in style with lunches and three course dinners prepared by our fabulous chef.
• Experience the Finchcocks bubble, hailed as a “paradise for pianists” by BBC Music Magazine and stay in a grade 1 listed country manor.

Plus-ones are very welcome on our courses, with a room surcharge dependant on whether they are a playing or non-playing guest. Please ask for further details.

This is a unique, luxury UK-based piano gem and an experience that you won’t forget anytime soon. Many guests continue friendships made on these courses, encouraging each other on in the piano playing on Whatsapp, organising private piano meet ups further down the line… and bumping into each other again on future courses!

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