Piano

Overview

This is an intensive one-year course. Performance students normally study on a two-year Master’s course but, in exceptional circumstances, can take it in one year (intensive).

The MA is designed to allow maximum flexibility for you to concentrate upon the range of activities offered, to develop your own performance initiatives and to form a bridge to a performance career. This one year programme is only taken by a few candidates each year and we advise that students apply for the two-year programme. The length of programme can be discussed at your audition and adjusted later, you are not tied to the programme length you select in your application.

Core Modules

• Performance classes
• Masterclasses
• Individual lessons for Principal Study
• Ensemble and Directed Ensemble coaching
• Lectures
• Seminars
• Academic supervisions

Elective Modules

The modules listed below will vary slightly each year in response to student needs and the evolving musical world.

Analysis and Aesthetics

This elective will explore both technical aspects of music analysis and wider aesthetic and musicological topics, with a particular focus on bringing these areas together. 

Artist Development

Our Artist Development provision is here to prepare you practically, creatively and strategically for a sustainable career in the music profession. We want you to leave here as fully-rounded, creative and adaptable musicians, with the tools and know-how to gain employment in unpredictable times. Practical sessions and intensive electives through the year include working with online content, personal recording techniques, preparing professional documents, auditioning well, how to get funding, and self-employed finances. Artist Development forms a part of the broader range of your work and activities, which we assess over the course of your studies via a portfolio.

Attentive Listening

An elective designed to hone listening skills across a wide variety of styles and genres. For 90 minutes each week an eclectic selection of music is studied, with class discussions focussing upon analytical issues or matters of interpretation, and across history are also studied. 

Composition

The Composition elective is available for postgraduate performance students who have prior experience of instrumental and/or vocal composition at degree level (or equivalent). 

Concert Programmes and Programming

This elective explores a mix of historical and current factors that underpin programming decisions across a range of music-making experiences. 

Concert Workshop

At the heart of this elective has always been the question ‘how do we communicate most effectively in concert scenarios?’ – eclipsing the more fundamental issue of ‘what is a concert?’ 

Creative Collaboration

A three-day intensive course in collaboration with Glyndebourne, led by Artistic Director Stephen Langridge, for singers, instrumentalists and composers. Through a series of workshops, the participants will explore methods of creating music theatre, and develop their abilities and skills as collaborative artists.

Contemporary Music Workshop

These classes bring together composers and performers in a collaborative environment in which musical ideas can be exchanged and developed, and the processes of collaboration explored. The classes include practical workshops where students develop their ideas, and seminars in which case studies in collaborative practice are examined. Each student participates in collaborative projects with at least one other student, developing musical materials that can take any form. Students participate in formal group presentations that include details of the collaborative processes and performances of the completed musical materials. 

Creating your own performance projects

The focus of these workshops will be how to turn an idea into a small-scale creative project, from inception to promotion and performance. 

Creative Programming and Research

This course critically examines different aspects of concert practice, exploring strategies for responding to sources (including recordings) and wider issues around programming, including audiences, venues and concert functions. 

Enhanced Performance Techniques

Open to PG students of all disciplines, this elective enables performers to deliver with greater freedom and confidence, through enhanced preparation techniques. 

Historical Performance

This Elective will give you the opportunity to explore historically informed performance on period instruments. 

The Interpreter’s Workshop

Do you think of yourself as an ‘interpreter’ or a ‘creator’? (Dare we think of ourselves as ‘creators’?) When you practise a work do you consider what other performers have done as much as you try to discover the ‘composer’s intentions’? Close listening to recordings (historical and contemporary) can reveal a surprising range of possibilities for the performer that are not captured – or even suggested – in musical scores. In this class we establish a framework for asking useful questions about these possibilities and gaining technical/expressive resources in the process. 

Open Academy

Open Academy is the Academy’s Learning, Participation and Community initiative, working with around 6,000 people beyond our enrolled students and staff each year. As the importance of participatory and community music programmes in areas including education, health and wellbeing continues to grow both in the UK and internationally, it is crucial that our students have the opportunity to obtain skills and experience in this exciting and expanding area of work. Open Academy offers lectures, seminars and workshops alongside hands-on practical experience in the field.

Performing Experimental Music

This elective provides an introduction to performing music in C20th and 21st experimental music traditions.

Performing French Music

This elective is offered to instrumentalists, singers and conducting students, covering song, solo and chamber repertoire and orchestral works (for everyone’s mutual interest).

The Pianist’s Heritage

These sessions provide a unique opportunity for reflection and debate around key repertoire areas of the pianist, and around the most burning performance-practice questions of our time – crucially how these relate to expectations in the current music professions.

Principles of Chamber Music

The Chamber Music lectures are designed to enhance all aspects of practical chamber music.

Thinking about recording / The self-directed recording artist

Led by two critically acclaimed self-producing recording artists, five sessions exploring the challenges and opportunities for today’s musician.

Transcription and Arrangement

Transcription and Arrangement is an elective open to all postgraduate performance students. This elective explores the art of arranging and transcribing music for a variety of ensembles and contexts. It will be of particular use for students wishing to arrange existing music for their own chamber ensembles, such a string quartets or wind and brass ensembles.

Entry Requirements

Academic Qualifications

You will usually hold a Bachelor of Music (BMus) degree, a university Bachelor's degree containing music as a core component, or an international equivalent qualification.

Written Requirements

Unlike the Master of Music (MMus) track, the Master of Arts (MA) in Performance does not require you to submit an academic project proposal or a written portfolio. Your selection is focused primarily on your musicality and practical performance.

See Entry Requirements for more information.

The Piano Department: What to expect

We aim to develop you into a complete, individual artist equipped with all the essential skills for a great modern career.

Masterclasses & Visiting Professors

• Dedicated Mentorship: Every student is assigned a world-class piano professor, chamber music professor, and academic tutor, alongside weekly informal repertoire classes.
• Dynamic Visiting Faculty: Benefit from termly classes and one-to-one tuition from distinguished visiting professors, including Dame Imogen Cooper, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yevgeny Sudbin, Pascal Rogé, Steven Osborne, Neil Brand (improvising to film), and Adrian Brendel (chamber music).
• Celebrated Masterclasses: Regular guest tuition from world-renowned artists such as Igor Levit, Alfred Brendel, Garrick Ohlsson, Inon Barnatan, and Gabriela Montero.

Developing your career

• Concerto & Conducting Skills: Receive expert coaching in conducting from the keyboard from Timothy Redmond, collaborate with Head of Conducting Sian Edwards and her students, and access concerto exams and performance opportunities.
• Early Keyboards: Access training on harpsichord, fortepiano, and early piano with Carole Cerasi, Steven Devine, and Jane Chapman, utilizing the Academy Museum's Piano Gallery.
• Chamber & Lieder Coaching: Participate in regular coaching sessions with Adrian Brendel, James Baillieu, and other acclaimed chamber musicians.
• Cross-Arts & Contemporary Music: Engage in groundbreaking cross-arts and multimedia collaborations, public speaking classes, composition lessons, transcription training, and the contemporary-focused 'Piano Lab' series.
• Improvisation & Digital Skills: Expand your versatility with jazz classes from Dominic Alldis, film improvisation with Neil Brand, and digital skills training with Sofia Sacco to build websites, manage social media, and edit recordings.
• Professional Career Sessions: Attend termly sessions led by Joanna MacGregor covering essential industry business skills, including finding an agent, securing performance work, creating recordings, diary management, and establishing independent festivals or ensembles.

Concerts, recordings and festivals

• Prestige Venues & Broadcasting: Perform in the year-round Academy Piano Series at Wigmore Hall, alongside opportunities at Steinway Hall, Southbank Centre, King’s Place, St James’s Piccadilly, UK festivals, music clubs, and broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.
• Recording Debuts & Competitions: Receive annual support and marketing guidance to produce a debut recording, alongside active encouragement to enter international piano competitions.
• On-Site Festivals: Showcase your work in the exuberant, student-driven Autumn and Summer Piano Festivals, which featured over 60 student pianists performing to large public audiences this year.

Auditions

We want you to view your audition as a recital rather than a rigid test. Our panel is looking for your unique musical personality, your technical command, and your potential for growth. Try to relax, focus on your storytelling through the instrument, and let us hear who you are as a musician.

The Master of Arts (MA) in Performance selection process for Piano is integrated into our postgraduate audition framework, allowing candidates to demonstrate their artistic maturity and advanced technical foundation through a practical performance programme.

Your Audition Repertoire

For your postgraduate audition, you must prepare an advanced performance programme that highlights your technical mastery, musical breadth, and interpretive capability on the solo piano.

Repertoire Guidelines:

• Duration: Your selected performance programme must be a minimum of 40 minutes long.
• Selection and Structure: You must offer a free-choice programme of solo piano music consisting of a minimum of two works. Concerto repertoire is not acceptable.
• Stylistic Contrast: Your programme should show a wide diversity of character and style, as well as clear evidence of technical accomplishment. It can include individual movements rather than complete works (for instance, a single movement of a sonata). We suggest including music in a classical or Baroque style, a Romantic work, and something 20th-century or contemporary.
• Performance from Memory: Your programme should be played completely from memory. However, complex contemporary pieces may be played from the score.

What to Expect on Audition Day

1. Delivery Options & Practical Assessment

• In-Person (London): You will perform selected sections of your prepared programme live for the specialist faculty panel. The panel will ask you to choose one initial item from your programme to open with, and they will then select the other items or extracts they wish to hear within the audition slot. Postgraduate candidates receive 1 hour of warm-up time at the Academy immediately prior to their assessment.
• Video Auditions: If you are auditioning remotely, you must upload one unedited video containing your complete 40-minute performance programme to the Acceptd portal. Your recording must be captured in a single continuous file under clear audio and visual conditions.

2. Postgraduate Interview

All Master of Arts candidates participate in a structured conversation with a postgraduate programme tutor, which may take place in person on audition day or via a subsequent live online meeting. This interview is an opportunity to discuss your specific study plans, your artistic philosophies, and your professional aims. For video applicants, you may also be asked to attend an online interview with the Head of Piano.

In addition to your practical repertoire, your digital application profile must contain:

• Curriculum Vitae (CV): A current copy of your CV detailing your education, masterclasses, solo performances, and concert history.
• Spoken English Introduction: A short recorded verbal introduction introducing yourself and your professional goals to the faculty panel.

Please note: The Master of Arts is a standard postgraduate pathway focused heavily on advanced performance. There are no academic written requirements for the MA pathway. Your ultimate course placement remains flexible; you are not tied to the course choice in your application, and the programme pathway and length can be discussed and adjusted with the panel during your assessment.

For more information see auditions.