The Piano Faculty attracts talented students from all over the world, making it one of the Academy’s most diverse and exciting departments.

Classes & activities

Core Modules

Undergraduate students take weekly academic classes in addition to their principal study. The classes are designed to complement and add to every student’s creative development as performers.

For detailed information about Academic Studies, download the BMus course handbook.

BMus Core Modules, Years 1 and 2

  • Analytical Skills 1

  • Analytical Skills 2

  • Performing In Context 1

  • Performing In Context 2

  • Aural Skills 1

  • Aural Skills 2

  • Score Reading

  • Artist Development

BMus Elective Modules, Year 3 and 4

  • Analysis of Post-Tonal Music

  • Approaching the Great Luthiers

  • Aural Skills, Further

  • Baroque Performance on Historical Instruments

  • Baroque Performance on Historical Instruments, Advanced

  • Compositional Techniques of the Germanic Traditions c.1780-c.1880

  • Conducting, Advanced

  • Conducting, Intermediate

  • Contemporary Music Workshop

  • Crossing Cultural Frontiers

  • Free Composition for Performers

  • Free Composition for Performers, Advanced

  • Fugue

  • Listening to Mozart, Thinking about Mozart, Playing Mozart

  • Maestro: a History of Conducting through Film, Recordings and Marked Scores

  • Messiaen in Context

  • Methods in the Analysis of Tonal Music, Advanced

  • Mozart’s Operas

  • Musical Aesthetics and Criticism

  • Open Academy

  • Open Academy. Advanced

  • Performing Baroque Music (with a focus on Handel)

  • Performing Experimental Music

  • Repertoire Studies

  • Research Project

  • Silent Film Improvisation

  • Song Accompaniment

  • Studio Performance

  • Worldwide Repertoires

Department Classes
And Activities

Apart from weekly one-to-one lessons with your piano professor, all piano soloists have chamber music coaching and one-to-one lessons with Visiting Professors as well as public masterclasses.

Additionally, we offer extra classes and training specifically for pianists:

Early Keyboards - coaching on harpsichord and fortepiano

Coaching on harpsichord and fortepiano

Improvising to Film

Working in Multimedia: collaborating with visual artists and filmmakers

Working with Actors and the Spoken Word

Composition Classes

Writing Piano Transcriptions

Working with Jazz

Careers Advice for Pianists

Lieder Accompaniment

Artistic Excellence

We welcome the finest students from around the world to learn and perform alongside globally renowned artists, ensuring they benefit from a music-making environment of the highest quality.

Discover more here.