Benjamin Frith: Instrument teaching through the pandemic

During this last frustrating year I’ve had a lot of sympathy for our students, missing out on their face to face lessons, but the online teaching/ learning experience has been far from a negative one because we have had to make the best of it, deepening our listening and concentration. I think they’ve done brilliantly!!

Whatever you do as a performer, somehow feeds back into your teaching. The latter has, arguably, to be just as creative an experience as when you perform.  I have the impression of greater wisdom when looking and listening in on a student - it’s to do with having an overview which can be revelatory; faculties sharpened, the analyst’s mind goes to work. The trick then is to guide the students to think for themselves and discover their own solutions. 

The art of the teacher is surely adapting to each student’s strengths and weaknesses, and it continues to fascinate me.

Ben Frith 

1st prize Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition

I was first involved with the department when Peter Hill, the then new pianist in residence at The University of Sheffield, got in touch, inviting me to play a solo lunchtime recital at the Drama Studio. A concert in Firth Hall in 1986 followed, performing Stravinsky’s four hand arrangement of his ‘Rite of Spring’, and so began our exciting piano duo partnership.

Cut to January 2020 and our premier recording of Beethoven’s complete music for piano four hands - culminating in his intricate Grosse Fuga arrangement - was brought out by Delphian records to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the composer’s birth. It’s wonderful when musical partnerships last and deepen…

Some projects need a long gestation period, and, even before the first lockdown, the Gould Piano Trio, of which I am pianist, had been commissioned to bring to life a newly discovered score of Leokadiya Kashperova’s Piano Trio in A minor, found in a Moscow State Library by Graham Griffiths.

Over the months, Graham and I swapped hundreds of emails, pouring over the faded pencil manuscript, trying to come as near to Kashperova’s final thoughts on her only surviving piano trio. All the composer’s other examples of this genre had been lost due to the upheaval of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and this final one, written in the early 1930s had never been performed.

Our interpretation could only be guided by our musical instincts - there were next to no expression marks, slurs or dots on the score.

Our live premier was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 18th December 2020 . I think we proved that Kashperova should be known, not just as Stravinsky’s piano teacher, and it was thrilling to bring to life from obscurity a totally unknown work.

Performance plays a central role in our music activities at Sheffield, and we provide our students with skills and experience to thrive on the concert platform. We offer 18 hours of tuition for all first year students on our undergraduate programme, increasing at masters level study, and there are a range of masterclasses and ensembles available for collaboration experience.