Good evening,
i am very undecided about opening this topic. Basically, I would like to clear up some doubts. I haven't written for a long time and I am happy to return here, given that I have always received very clear, lucid, and professional answers. In short, I met and tested 2 students from a music academy. It is not a conservatory. This Music Academy supports Trinity College London exam sessions. I met these 2 students, children of a lady to whom I give piano lessons, just for her personal satisfaction. So I met the children (young: 13 and 12 years old), who have been studying at this academy for 2 years. She is enthusiastic; the children study with an English teacher who comes to their house; they have taken 2 exams in a course consisting of 10 steps/exams. The mother points out to me that after the tenth exam they will obtain a Diploma that will allow them to teach anywhere in the world in any institution. I... skeptical and uninformed, among other things, about realities of this type, asked myself: "How is this possible?".
Since the children were attending the lesson, I wanted to—without any ulterior motive—invite the children to play the piano as well. "Let me hear something, anything." One played a Scarlatti sonata, and the other a Beethoven sonatina. I turned up my nose. And I thought that it's just not right; I expected more. In the sense that I expected more in terms of hand positioning and score reading. Difficulty and imprecision in performing simple acciaccaturas... performed as if they hadn't truly understood them. Sequences of notes, scales in practice, ... performed stumblingly. Then, an F, a forte on the score... performed forcefully and excessively FORTE, and then immediately the P... and there was a pianissimo here too, also forced and with missed notes... that is, not played at all, because it happens that beginners (who have not yet understood how to dose muscular strength) miss notes, as if for fear of hitting the keys and perhaps "shooting" a forte suddenly, ruining the measure where that P is present. The entire piece was performed not with fluency, but always somewhat struggling.
In short, overall I felt almost a sense of regret, because the first thing I thought was that this teacher is not a good teacher. As if... I don't know... as if they had skipped important steps in teaching. I asked if the children did Solfeggio and the mother was not sure if the children did it. I believe, from what I understood, that the children do not do Solfeggio. I felt bad about it. I thought to myself that the teaching you receive in a Conservatory is not comparable to the teaching you receive from a private institution or a music school, like the many there are in cities. And the lessons I give my students (perhaps some of you will share my view) are traditional and very scholastic, schematic, gradual, and weighed down to the smallest detail, ultimately following what I also did at the Conservatory.
I would really like someone to give me their opinion regarding this episode.
Thank you
