NEWS
YAMAHA CFX HELPS YOUNG PIANISTS SCALE NEW HEIGHTS AT CHETHAM’S
Yamaha Supports EPTA Conference
At this September’s European Piano Teachers’ Association (EPTA) conference Yamaha provided two of its groundbreaking AvantGrand hybrid pianos, much to the delight of delegates, alongside numerous Yamaha portable keyboards and digital pianos, at the request of Nancy Litten, for use in her enthusiastically received keyboard ensemble workshop.
Participants, judges and winners of the 2011 Chetham’s-Yamaha Piano Competition
Yamaha’s exciting new CFX concert grand piano took centre stage at the third annual Chetham’s- Yamaha Competition for Young Pianists, held this summer at the Manchester-based specialist music school. The concept of the scheme is to add significantly to the personal development of young pianists of all ages throughout the entire school. All students had the opportunity to perform in a professional environment and play Yamaha’s flagship new CFX concert grand. The judging panel, comprising concert pianist
Lucy Parham, Yamaha Pianos’ senior regional manager Ghiyas Ali and Yamaha business development manager David Halford, heard over 30 entrants on the day and selected the following winners: Richard Scott (junior category); Adam Boeker (middle school category); Lydia Lallemant (senior school category). The competition is a significant and exciting development in the partnership between the two organisations. The collaboration encompasses the school’s membership of the acclaimed Yamaha piano scholarship programme, currently
Yamaha AvandGrand and Clavinova conservatoire tour
held by Mathis Picard, and a brass scholarship programme with Peter Moore, a former winner of the BBC Young Musician of the year. Chetham’s boasts a wide range of Yamaha upright and grand pianos, including the recent purchase of 18 C3 and nine U1 pianos. It is also one of the founding Yamaha Disklavier locations participating in a groundbreaking international twinning scheme between music schools and conservatoires throughout the world, which allows real-time audio and visual transmission of performances and masterclasses over the internet. The event was organised by Chetham’s head
of keyboard, Murray McLachlan. He presented the winners with their cheques and told us: ‘Both students and teachers at Chetham’s are deeply touched and indebted to Yamaha Music UK for their enormous generosity and vision in sponsoring and enabling the competition to take place. Young pianists need goals to aim for and everyone in the keyboard department at Chetham’s is thrilled that the competition has become an annual fixture in our calendar.’
experience for themselves the results of groundbreaking recent developments at Yamaha, which have resulted in instruments which are a delight to play and teach on. During the September tour, which visited Birmingham Conservatoire, the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, the star of the shows was definitely the Avant Grand.
Piano students at the RNCM, impressed by the Avant Grand
In September Yamaha embarked on an exciting new initiative, to take its hybrid AvantGrand and the latest Clavinova pianos to UK conservatoires, so that students, staff and local teachers could
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First-year students who attended the event at the Royal Northern College of Music – who need a high-quality practice instrument in their digs but find that most uprights have neither the sound nor the response that they need, and can’t fit in (or afford) a good quality acoustic grand piano – were particularly taken with the AvantGrand N3 model. They told us that its adapted grand piano keyboard, tone and responsiveness would allow them to practise every nuance of a performance and would provide the closest thing you can get to an acoustic grand piano without it actually being an acoustic grand.
Nancy Litten leads a massed keyboard ensemble workshop at the 2011 EPTA conference
The conference, at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, was treated to a broad range of well presented sessions and recitals, including a Gala Recital by EPTA UK’s chair, Murray McLachlan, who is also head of keyboard at Chetham’s School of Music. The AvantGrand had made a strong impression on EPTA delegates when the first model was launched two years ago, with some presenters asking to use the AvantGrand for their workshops. At this year’s conference they were also able to try the top-of-the-range N3 model, appreciating the instrument’s grand piano keyboard and action, along with its superb tone and response. Nancy Litten’s keyboard workshop appeared to win over a number of delegates who had perhaps been sceptical of the portable keyboard. Nancy, a former piano scholarship holder and prize-winner at the Royal Academy of Music, is director of National Electronic Keyboard Courses and her workshop provided delegates with an ensemble experience which is extremely rare for pianists. But the participants, who played through some of Nancy’s expertly crafted orchestral-style arrangements and compositions which included the workshop favourite, ‘Connemara’, found it highly enjoyable to work with a range of timbres and perform together in an ensemble, with some inspired to include keyboard work in their own teaching.
Photo: yamaha Education Department
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