Today’s post features the fourth and final interview with pianist and piano professor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Jan Loeffler. You can read all the interviews in this series, here. In this instalment, Jan discusses the importance of effectively funding the Arts.

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In light of today’s perpetual arts cut-backs, how can we draw greater attention to the importance of the training of today’s young pianists?

There’s no denying the fact that we live in financially precarious times, so it is perfectly understandable why politicians and parents might feel wary of spending significant sums of money on something which is unfortunately considered expendable: the Arts.

Whilst there are many reasons to practise the Arts in its many guises (a quick Google search will yield plenty results, so I’ll refrain from listing all of them here), I think it is fair to say that whilst money is tight, we have to focus on the easily tangible improvements to our lives music can bring if we want to convince those who hold the purse strings to spend money on it.

The problem is that in current times, everything needs to be glitzy, shiny, instagrammable and prestigious, otherwise investors (and that includes the government) aren’t interested.

But what if I told you that by teaching music, we can significantly improve people’s academic attainment and therefore employability and their standard of life? And what if I told you that by teaching music, we can reduce the burden on the NHS, therefore making it more efficient and thus working better for those who do need to access it?

This is possible!

Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for instance, found that you can increase the academic(!) attainment of students across the curriculum simply by teaching music; you don’t even have to make any changes to the teaching provision of any of the other subjects. Just teaching music is enough.

This is surprising, since it has been the stated aim of every single government in our lifetime to improve educational attainment of the population, and yet at least recent governments have single-handedly dismissed this scientifically proven way of making it happen. Why?

But it doesn’t stop there:  a recent BBC piece picked up on the health benefits, even, and especially, into old age, that are ascribed to practising music regularly. If we can improve our children’s education, and we can live healthier lives simply by teaching and practising music, then why – is – it – not – done?

‘Studies have shown direct links between education and factors such as health and life expectancy rates, with academic achievement playing a potentially significant role in reducing health inequalities by shaping life opportunities’ (The Role of Education in reducing Health Inequalities, Health Action Research Group, July 2021).

A long-term study conducted by Penn State and Duke Universities (published in ‘American Journal of Public Health’, 2015), as analysed by the American psychotherapist, Amy Morin, finds that emotional and social skills are more critical than cognitive skills for a child’s future, which are exactly the kinds of skills that children learn while practising music.

With all that being said, I believe there is every reason to support the inclusion of regular high-quality music and instrumental instruction in every school in the country for it will benefit the whole of society. I cannot be clear enough, but even those people who think of classical music as being elitist, and who would never dream of engaging with it, will benefit from their tax money being spent on others learning an instrument, which will directly impact every single member of society, for instance, when they ring up their GP and they can get an appointment, and when the overall productivity of the nation improves as a result of improved educational attainment, leading to an increase in living standards for all.

There is no widespread network of local music schools in the UK; county music services have suffered cuts to funding, resulting in working conditions being less than ideal. Most state schools don’t routinely offer a full range of instrumental tuition, let alone maintain a whole music department; so, this is where I would start by offering every child the opportunity to learn a musical instrument whilst they attend school.  Just to put this into context: the music school that I went to in my local area currently charges £45 for a 30-minute one-to-one instrumental lesson per child – PER MONTH! When two members of the same family attend, or where a child learns a second instrument, there’s a 20% discount, and a third family member and/or studying a third subject will attract a 40% discount. This is only possible because of state subsidies. And before people point out that Germany and the UK aren’t comparable: yes, they are! The GDP in Germany is ca. £38,800 per capita, whilst the UK’s is £36,500 per capita, so it’s a matter of how tax money is spent, not a question of whether the money is available. It is a matter of priorities.

Last, but by no means least, I cannot understand how politicians keep talking about societal integration, of bringing people from different backgrounds and walks of life together, whilst not considering enough the power of collaborating in an orchestra and in chamber music groups in the pursuit of this goal. It would be the perfect solution for initiating dialogue across the entire societal spectrum, which would address yet another commonly cited aspect of what the population would like to see an increase of in the UK.

Classical music has a PR problem because we have allowed exposure to it to be eroded beyond belief, which has led to a decrease in the number of people engaging with it, even though it is proven to be so beneficial for us all.

The budget big companies spend on marketing and advertising is huge, people are being assaulted by targeted adverts left, right and centre, and therefore people naturally gravitate towards the services these multi-national companies provide. When was the last time, whilst watching a YouTube video, that an advert came up to attend a concert at the Barbican, or to start learning the violin? Voilà…

If we want our society to experience the aforementioned benefits, then we need to demand from the government that it implements what science suggests is a failsafe way of achieving them: to teach music!

I hope I have been successful in highlighting why learning an instrument is not merely a personal folly for the well-to-do but, is actually a powerful tool for an improved state of the nation, a public health, and mental health, improvement tool, an employability and productivity enhancer, and a way to achieve a society which functions better through dialogue.

The piano, since you asked, will just be as popular an instrument as it’s always been, all things considered, for its versatility and the sheer vastness of its repertoire will be very alluring.

How does your experience of studying in Germany and the UK differ both in terms of how arts are perceived and funded, and the learning experience?

The German state believes that education is a great social leveller, providing many societal benefits in terms of improved academic attainment, productivity, creativity, ingenuity and innovation, mental and physical health, as well as preserving our cultural heritage and traditions. It therefore invests in free education at the point of delivery (within reason) so that talent and application, not your wallet, decide upon success.

The fact that education is provided in this way means that it brings society together, for it’s obvious that individuals pursuing their own dream will ultimately benefit the whole of society, so the argument “why should my tax money be ‘wasted’ on someone else’s education” won’t really wash because it’s commonly accepted that as a society we all benefit from each individual doing well.

With that in mind, the Arts have a higher standing and broader acceptance in Germany, I would say, than in the UK, supported by the fact that the German federal government announced in 2020 that it will increase its culture and media budget by more than €120 million for 2021, bringing the culture ministry’s total budget up to €1.94 billion(!), which represented a 6.6% increase. I keep repeating myself, but music in itself is not inherently elitist, but without proper state funding and support in the UK, we have allowed exposure to, and involvement in, it  to become somewhat elitist, which is to no-one’s benefit.

There just has to be an all-encompassing approach to the Arts, it’s impossible to conceive it in any other way: education has to be top-notch, from grass roots level all the way up to the HE sector, but then there have to be job and performance opportunities for graduates and professionals which pay well. Musicians’ income has to be commensurate with the difficulty of the profession and the endless hours of practice and dedication each individual artist will have accrued from a very young age. If there are no prospects of earning a decent living, how can we possibly convince youngsters to consider a life in the Arts? And, equally, if our education isn’t top-notch, how can we possibly expect the Arts to attract audiences who want to hear extraordinary performances? The two go hand in hand, neither can exist without the other.

In terms of the learning experience, I had a wonderful time in both countries. At the time when I studied in Germany, I felt that maybe Germany didn’t look quite as far beyond its borders, with regards to facilitating student exchanges and collaboration between international institutions as the UK does. It’s possible, though, that that was just my perception, routed in any young person’s desire to ‘go out and explore’, to make their own mark, some sort of inner ‘Sturm und Drang’.

Germany is traditionally a very welcoming country for people from all over the world for studying and practising music, but I felt there was maybe more scope for us Germans to go out into the world and experience different systems and therefore different ways of learning and teaching and, as a result, of approaching music.

In Würzburg we didn’t have departmental performance classes on a weekly basis, or regular masterclasses by visiting international artists. The fact that Leon Fleisher, Stephen Hough, Maxim Vengerov, Trevor Pinnock and Sir Colin Davis, to name but a few, (regularly) visited the Royal Academy was completely mind-blowing to me and so musically enriching. Having said that, our teachers in Germany regularly organised internal performance classes or open lessons for the whole class, practice circles in which students would share their practice ideas and exchange solutions for problems, or organise house concerts for those who needed a safe performance scenario before facing the general public, for example before entering a competition. There was a lot happening, just in a less formally organised and assessed way, focussing more on individual learning and personal growth rather than performance per se. I’m eager to point out, though, that there were also plenty of concerts and performances on offer.

At the Royal Academy, the Friday-morning ‘Open Coaching’ sessions with Peter Sheppard Skærved, Neil Heyde, Roderick Chadwick and Daniel-Ben Pienaar remain some of my most cherished student experiences for they fostered a way of approaching music from a different, non-piano-specific angle, which I hadn’t been used to up to that point. Thinking back, though, I seem to recall that my teachers in Germany were always trying to encourage that approach, too, but somehow, I think, I wasn’t quite ready for it back then, but when I arrived at the Academy, I think I had become open-minded enough to really take advantage of these classes.

UK institutions place a lot of importance on the availability of performance opportunities for students. This, coupled with generally busy departmental activity and frequent exams, means that it is a very fast-paced environment, whereas when I studied in Germany more emphasis was placed on in-depth, slow-paced and thorough learning. I’m sure that an element of my perception is also a reflection of myself as a learner, and I felt that my teachers knew exactly what I needed at the time.  I don’t think either system by itself is entirely perfect, though, since ideally there would be a mixture of the two systems, trying to mitigate the shortcomings of each whilst enhancing their relative potential.

The famous Russian pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus apparently had a three-tiered system which combined these elements: pieces which he would work on with students in extreme detail, often for months, pieces which he would only work on for a short period of time (a few weeks), and pieces which he would hear only once and then move on from.

In summary, I think that both the UK and the German system are excellent systems, and I’ve learnt a lot from moving between them. I just wish that more youngsters in the UK were offered opportunities to engage with classical music and discover that what they thought were old-fashioned concepts and was an ancient, out-dated language is, in fact, as modern and relevant as anything you’ll be exposed to today, for its an expression of the human condition, which is perennial.

How has Junior RBC’s collaboration with Coach House Pianos in London developed and what are your future plans?

Everyone in the industry knows that Coach House Pianos are very committed to, and have a proven and enviable track record of, collaborating with educational institutions to support the next generation of aspiring pianists and, to the best of their ability, help those who might find access to a piano not as forthcoming as one would ideally like it to be.

A few years ago, the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe, of which I am a committee member, held a masterclass at the CHP showroom in Fulham, and I was impressed with the setup and the sheer beauty of the facilities (let along the instruments on display!). What an inspiring setting to make music in, I thought. Fast-forward a couple of years, and there I was juggling ideas of what might inspire our piano students in addition to the opportunities that we provide on Saturdays. I picked up the phone to Gary Branch, who was my initial contact, and he immediately liked the idea of supporting our cause of providing something a little bit special to our students. He put me in touch with David Halford, Education Business Development Manager at CHP, to talk him through the concept, and David couldn’t have been more helpful. We’re so pleased and excited that we were able to launch our piano prize at Junior RBC with the support of CHP.

David Halford has indicated that this year’s event may well be the beginning of a long-term collaboration between us, since the prize has already proven so popular with our students and teachers. The participation is phenomenal, especially considering that this is its first edition and that there are two further departmental prizes on the horizon, plus technical exams, plus end-of-year platform concerts. Students and teachers have been amazingly supportive and keen to participate, and I know that the level of playing will be something that everyone involved will have good reason to be proud of. We are anticipating even more interest next year, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

If you could introduce one programme into a conservatoire training, what would it be and why?

To answer this question, we will first have to identify what issues we would want to address.

Personally, I would love to see more individuality in modern piano playing, the lack of which Robert Levin has been decrying for a long time, for instance, whilst at the same time remaining true to the composers’ wishes.

I’m craving more ‘goose bumps moments’, as I call them. Why are they a good indicator? Quite simply because you cannot fake them! When they occur you know you’ve been hit straight in the heart, and that’s what music is all about for me. I want that visceral reaction; I want music to have a profound impact on the listener. You know it when you hear an extraordinary performance because it made you feel something; you become involved and invested in it rather than being an observer, remaining on the outside; good music-making sucks you in, captivates you, and you cannot escape it.

So, in broad terms, for me, I’d like to help aspiring musicians strive for, and hopefully achieve, that connection of the spiritual and the mundane, to help them achieve Beethoven’s ideal which he states above his Missa Solemnis: ‘Von Herzen – Möge es wieder – zu Herzen gehen!’ (‘From the heart – may it return – to the heart’).

I think by this point it is fairly obvious that that’s a task that cannot be achieved alone by formal education. ‘Herzensbildung’, the possession of a rich and differentiated ability to allow feelings and to be sensitive, is a term dating back to the German classical period (think Goethe, Schiller, Herder) when the understanding was that feelings are ‘formable’ and ‘experienceable’. The 20^th century saw an increase in the separation of cognitive powers and our emotional state, for emotions were deemed ‘irrational’ and therefore less desirable. The 21^st century sees a paradigm shift, backed up by a long-term study conducted by Penn State and Duke Universities (published in ‘American Journal of Public Health’, 2015). An analysis of the study by the American psychotherapist, Amy Morin, finds that emotional and social skills are more critical than cognitive skills for a child’s future.

With all that being said, I’m not sure about a whole programme I would want to introduce, but I’d like to see mandatory choral singing for the entire duration of every degree. It’s the only way, in my opinion, to instil a sense of directness and immediacy in our music-making which circumnavigates any tools and inextricably links our bodies with the music we produce, thereby feeling it physically and (hopefully) emotionally.

My hope would be that in doing so, students would feel a greater connection with music and a greater sense of freedom to express it when performing on their own instruments, in addition to reaping the obvious benefits of learning how to breathe and phrase naturally. The latter two would address what I see as a big issue in the way we experience music:

In our modern world, artists aren’t only compared to their contemporaries in their surroundings, or maybe within a few hundred miles of range, but to everyone else in the world from the beginning of the era of recording up until now. If in former times, when people wanted to hear a work, they needed to attend a live performance that was put on in their immediate vicinity, nowadays, at the click of a mouse, we can access almost any performance that was ever given anywhere in the world, and often for free. If we think about that for a moment, how is any young artist going to compete with that back catalogue of recorded musical history? The internet, where, I would hazard a guess, the majority of music is consumed these days, isn’t the best medium for focussing on detail. If we want to attract audiences, we need to offer them something enticing, which formerly often meant a deeper level of understanding of the pieces performed, a more beautiful sound, more imaginative phrasing… you name it. With this many distractions lurking left, right and centre and with music often consumed on phones or tablets and headphones in often noisy environments, detail is one of the first casualties, which means that artists need to resort to other means in order to capture the listener. What still transmits well in our digital world and habitat is speed and note-perfect playing.

Having physically experienced the joy of making music in a more wholesome and fulfilling way through singing, my hope would be that aspiring musicians would see an alternative to playing faster and louder and would not want to give up on intricacy, delicacy of phrasing, and subtlety of dynamics and agogics.

How do you envisage piano study evolving over the next few decades?

I would anticipate that more tuition will move online, for better or worse. The benefits in terms of convenience and accessibility are well documented and are a noteworthy upside. Over time, I’m sure, the reliability of the internet, as well as transmission speeds and stability of the network will improve, whilst software used to conduct lessons will adapt even more. The prices for decent quality external microphones are already affordable, so I can only see improvements in that regard.

Having said that, musical nuance is notoriously hard to reproduce digitally, which is why some Hi-Fi afficionados and recording studios are prepared to spend tens of thousands of pounds on equipment which brings them closer to what they see as the most life-like and natural reproduction of music. It isn’t difficult to see that this approach is entirely unaffordable in an educational setting, at least with prices as they currently are, so I would predict that it’ll be some time before online lessons will become a serious contender in terms of quality of sound transmission, so for the time being there’ll still be some trade-off between convenience and access vs. quality, which is unfortunate.

What I could quite easily see as an alternative way forward is to use acoustic instruments with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) capability. Both parties would be required to have such an instrument, and if they did we would no longer send sound across the internet by way of analogue to digital conversion and the reverse (which means that a lot of information is susceptible to loss along the way) but we would only send bit-perfect digital signals which would then ‘play’ the instrument on the receiving end, so the recipient would hear live sound in the room, reproduced on an acoustic instrument, which means that the reproduction of sound would be pretty much lossless and far more accurate than something that a microphone and speakers would pick up and reproduce. In simple terms, the player needs a MIDI piano which will be connected to the internet, and the recipient needs a connected MIDI piano, and whatever each of them plays on their own instrument will also play on the instrument of the other. This is particularly helpful when we’re trying to work on tone colour and pedalling, since these two aspects are notoriously hard to discern in the current audio setup with microphones, mobile phones and tablets.

Another broader issue I foresee is that of how we listen to, or, sadly, consume music nowadays. A lot of it is done on the go, in noisy environments like trains, planes and cars, and a lot of music is streamed and listened to via mobile phones and tablets. The technology is amazing and the sound reproduction is really rather good for what it is, but it can’t beat a scenario where we sit in a quiet room at home, listening intently to music. Also, people expect visual entertainment, too, so artists may feel that they also need to satiate the appetite for visual stimuli, which inevitably detracts energy and commitment from the core of their art, since the day only has 24 hours after all.

So, where are we at? Suboptimal transmission of music through the internet, noisy listening environments, distractions galore – what remains? I am sad to say, but I think that aspects like speed/tempo and note accuracy will gain traction as hallmarks of musical proficiency for they will be some of those musical features which can be more readily discerned in those environments. Our world has been moving towards processing short bursts of information ever since Twitter appeared, which meant that nuance, depth, complicated concepts etc. were sacrificed on the altar of instant gratification and quick exchanges of ideas.

What are other hallmarks of musical interpretation? Beauty of tone? Forget it, it’s too noisy around us, we can’t hear it. Nuanced phrasing? Forget it, we can’t hear it because the melodic line keeps cutting in and out because of its variable dynamics and the car horns are too loud. An architectural overview of the whole piece? Forget it, we don’t have time to listen to the entire Bruckner Symphony.

Obviously, I’m exaggerating, but I think there is some truth in it somewhere. In times where people often don’t even have an uninterrupted 10 minutes of free time to really listen to music, how can we possibly expect them to have time to listen to a whole piano concerto, let alone a long symphony, and appreciate the skill and thought that has gone into devising and executing the architecture of an extended musical edifice?

We can see where this is going. Classical music is to a large degree incompatible with modern life: pieces take too long, their dynamics fluctuate too much, slow tempi lose the attention of the listener. If pieces are shorter then they cannot express more complex concepts in full, if their dynamics don’t vary much, they become monochromatic, and if the tempi are only on the faster side of the spectrum, we lose some of the spirituality and introspectiveness which classical music is so great at conveying.

What I’m trying to say is that by adapting classical music to modern life we risk destroying its very essence, rendering it unrecognisable, and it will sooner or later lose the last bit of allure it has managed to retain amongst its die-hard fans without the power to attract new audiences and active musicians.

In my view, if we want to save classical music, we need to shout more softly, race more slowly and save time by taking more of it. We need to accentuate its virtues, we need to help people realise that what might potentially make classical music seem anachronistic and out-dated are those very same tenets that can help people carve out some time for themselves, regain some inner calmness, some time for introspection etc. In my mind, classical music, yoga and the concept of mindfulness are very closely related, except that the latter two are very popular whilst classical music is increasingly having to fight for its justification to exist.

What we can do as musicians is to teach and play with more passion, more commitment and more conviction, enthusing students and audiences with our love for music, helping them to understand that classical music with its myriads of cognitive and emotional facets is theirs to lose. We need another Leonard Bernstein, who so aptly and captivatingly engaged audiences in his Young People’s Concerts; we need a Bernstein who managed to engage listeners in his Harvard Lectures on topics which some may think of as dry, but which he single-handedly managed to turn into existential exploits of life-affirming intensity.

I believe that Bernstein’s greatest talent was that of a communicator, an educator, someone who understood the spirituality and transcendental elements of music and managed to bring them down to Earth to make them relatable.

Education is key, for it needs educators to keep the flame alive, passing it on to anyone who is interested, performer and audience alike. There is no passive consumer of music, for being exposed to it means engaging with it through the mirror neurons in our brains. We know from science that the same areas in our brains are active whether we play the piano or whether we watch someone play it.

This means that, by default, everyone has experienced a visceral reaction to music at some stage, and it is this inevitable reaction, I believe, which could be the starting point for a person’s musical education early in their lives.

Young children are fascinated by acoustic instruments because they can clearly see how their actions elicit an immediate and directly related reaction from their instrument. It also fascinates them that there is no electricity involved, something they’re not used to seeing so much these days. I remember when a friend of mine came to my house when I was a teenager, watched me play the piano and then looked around my instrument to try to find the cable and the plug. It blew his mind when he realised that it was all analogue.

There’s an inherent sense of wonderment in children, and if nurtured early enough, very little social programming has taken place yet, which means that they can approach classical music in as unbiased a way as possible, which is where early years education needs to start – for all children(!) – for all the individual and societal benefits laid out in previous answers. Any later than that and you’ll have to counteract more deeply ingrained social concepts about classical music. Ideally, we want children to marvel at the sounds that come out of an instrument and to be amazed by what happens when they play together with others, combining their sounds. We don’t want them to have second thoughts yet about whether what they’re doing is considered cool, we just want them to take sound at face value. I’m sure that if that could be achieved, each child would find an instrument they can relate to, so instrumental education would take care of itself, and therefore the piano would thrive, too, for its versatility and vastness of repertoire and style are perennially appealing.

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