Piano

Overview

This one-year Master of Music in Performance course is similar to the Master of Arts but with the addition of a Masters Project. Performance students normally study on a two-year Master’s course but, in exceptional circumstances, can take it in one year (intensive).

Your Project preparation is supported by a team of specialists and provides an opportunity for you to enhance your creative work through specialised academic study and practice-led research. Postgraduate students are a vital part of the Academy’s musical culture, working in a uniquely collaborative performance environment ideally suited to helping talented musicians — from across the globe — to achieve their musical ambitions. Students wishing to prepare applications for doctoral study will normally choose the MMus rather than the MA. 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 programme path and length can be discussed at the entrance interview and adjusted as appropriate, you are not tied to the option you choose when you submit your application in UCAS Conservatoires.

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's degree at lower second-class honours (2:2) or higher, or an international qualification of an equivalent standard. This degree is normally, but not necessarily, in music.

Written Requirements

Unlike the Master of Arts (MA) track, the Master of Music (MMus) in Performance requires you to submit an academic project proposal. This must be uploaded to your Acceptd application profile to demonstrate your readiness for academic research alongside 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 Music (MMus) selection process for Piano is integrated into our postgraduate assessment framework. This allows candidates to demonstrate their artistic maturity, technical precision, interpretive depth, and capacity for postgraduate research through a structured solo performance portfolio and an academic evaluation.

Your Audition Repertoire

For your postgraduate audition, you must prepare a substantial, demanding, and stylistically varied solo recital programme that showcases your high-level technical facility and mature musicality.

Repertoire Guidelines:

• Programme Duration: You must prepare a varied solo programme lasting between 25 and 30 minutes.
• Stylistic Contrast: Your selection must include works by **at least three different composers** representing a wide range of contrasting historical periods, musical styles, and expressions.
• Performance Standard: All items must be performed from memory, except for highly complex contemporary works where scores are permitted by prior arrangement with the panel.

What to Expect on Audition Day

1. Delivery Options & Practical Assessment

• In-Person (London): You will perform your prepared selection live for the specialist keyboard faculty panel. As live audition time is strictly limited, the panel may choose to hear selected sections, movements, or specific extracts from your prepared pieces rather than full works. This is standard procedure to ensure they experience a balanced overview of your technical skills within the allocated slot. Postgraduate candidates receive warm-up time at the Academy immediately prior to their assessment.
• Video Auditions: If you are auditioning remotely, you must upload your performance recordings to the Acceptd portal. Your files must contain unedited, high-quality audio-visual recordings of your pieces. Ensure your camera framing allows the panel a completely clear and unobstructed view of your hands, the keyboard, and your pedalling technique.

2. Sight-Reading Test

All in-person piano auditions include a mandatory **sight-reading test** in the audition room. This is designed to assess your quick-study capabilities, harmonic awareness, texture management, and spontaneous reading agility under time constraints.

Postgraduate Academic & Application Profile

Because the Master of Music (MMus) is a research-led track that includes compulsory written components, critical portfolios, or a dissertation alongside your instrument studies, your application profile must satisfy both practical and academic benchmarks.

Your digital application profile on the Acceptd portal must contain:

• Curriculum Vitae (CV): A current copy of your CV detailing your musical education, masterclasses, solo and chamber performance history, and competitions.
• Spoken English Introduction: A short recorded verbal introduction introducing yourself, your musical background, and your professional goals to the faculty panel.
• Written Material / Research Proposal: MMus candidates must submit examples of written work or a research proposal to demonstrate that they possess the critical writing and analytical skills required to undertake postgraduate academic research.

Please note: Your ultimate course placement remains flexible. Because the practical audition is identical for both pathways, all MMus candidates are automatically considered for the Master of Arts (MA) track. If the panel feels your performance standard is excellent but your academic profile is better suited to a purely practical pathway, you may be offered an MA place instead. The programme pathway and choices can be discussed and adjusted with the panel during your assessment.

For more information see auditions.