What use is skill in aural to a musician? Can being able to identify pitches within a scale help one to play any more musically? What about harmony and keys? Does it make any difference if one can identify a modulation to the dominant at a hundred paces? Or a cadence? And surely rhythm is no more than learning a pattern by heart and then copying it?

This course hopes to help pianists to think more musically, to develop musical awareness and to develop that critical facility, the ‘inner ear’. Ultimately all these things help a player to interpret music with more understanding and imagination. Or to put it another way, to turn automatons into poets.

If you are working towards a specific grade exam and would like support in the aural section of the exam please email info@pianosummerschool.com once you have booked the course so the teacher can be made aware of the level required and prepare in advance.