Historical Piano Summer Academy

The notion of a “prize-winning sonata” may seem bizarre to us now, but in the first decade of the Paris Conservatoire, the confusion would have been unavoidable: which dazzles us more—the polished playing or the difficult composition? During our first Historical Piano Summer Academy (3 - 12 July, 2018), we have rehearsed a repertoire of piano pieces that won a premier prix for students and their teachers between 1797 and 1819. With our 1803 Erard as its centerpiece, this ten-day workshop has explored what it meant to be a young and ambitious piano student at a new and revolutionary French institution that made professional performance its core business.