The London International Piano Symposium at the Royal College of Music
13th,14th & 15th February 2015
Welcome to The Art and Science of Piano Performance, an interdisciplinary symposium for the enhancement of teaching and performance in the twenty-first century.
For the first time these symposia will provide an opportunity to hear papers, lecture recitals and debates on piano performance by distinguished researchers and practitioners working at the shared boundaries of science and music. We warmly welcome also everyone interested in the performance of piano music: performers, scientists, academics, teachers, young people, and all those who love just to listen.
Background:
All human beings, according to Oliver Sachs in Musicophilia (2007) ‘perceive music, perceive tones, timbre, pitch, intervals, melodic contours, harmony and (perhaps most elementally) of all rhythm’ (xi). The pianist however, not only takes all these elements to construct music in his or her mind using the auditory systems and the multi-layered neural systems in the brain, but also the motoric system to enact their performance. In an ideal performance, all the elements described here function in a unitary way, but all too often there is an emphasis on the mental rather than the physical activity.
Associations:
