Department of Keyboard Studies

Close-up of Steinway piano

In March 2009 the College became the first All-Steinway Conservatoire within the UK and joins only a handful of outstanding institutions worldwide to become part of the family of All-Steinway Schools. The College took delivery of 62 brand new pianos including 19 Steinway Grand Pianos. The pianos were handpicked in Germany by Head of Keyboard Studies Richard McMahon and International Pianist Ollie Mustonen.

One-to-one tuition, performance classes, masterclasses, workshops and recitals focus on the development of your individual technical and interpretative skills, building your confidence as a performer. We enable you to achieve the highest standards of performance whilst ensuring you develop the diversity of skills needed to maintain a rewarding career in the contemporary world of professional music.

The combined experience of our team of tutors and consultants, encompassing a wide variety of keyboard traditions, ensures that we offer you a highly-individualised training programme.

We aim to remove the traditional sense of isolation experienced by piano students and to replace this with a comprehensive experience, involving you in performances on a weekly basis and in a variety of situations both as soloist and collaborator.

This emphasis on the experience of performance, as soloist and in song and instrumental duos, in chamber groups, historical performance and contemporary music groups, as orchestral pianist and concerto soloist, helps develop your individual range of skills and also a strong sense of common purpose within the department. Performance classes, keyboard harmony, improvisation and teaching skills further complement the intensity of your one-to-one tuition and ensure that you develop professional skills and a comprehensive musicality.

This is a small department where it is impossible to hide or be overlooked with a very strong corporate sense. Our ethos is to encourage, share and enjoy each other’s progress.

All our programmes allow you to follow pathways in solo playing or accompaniment and if you are studying on the Masters programme, you will also have the additional option to specialise in repetiteur studies.