Sarah Smith - Piano Teacher

Above: Sarah Smith

The last time I met a piano teacher I was seven years old. It was in 1954. She was, I seem to remember, very old, very tweedy and I can’t be certain but I think she smelt of lavender. If Sarah Smith is anything to go by, piano teachers have changed a lot over the intervening 54 years. For one thing they are now a lot younger, they are about as far from tweedy as it’s possible to get, and as for smelling of lavender, I think I'd better stop now before the Editor accuses me of gross political incorrectness.

Sarah lives in Charmouth. Even if she hadn’t given me her address the sound of a piano piece by Schumann coming faintly from an open window would have told me where she lived. As for the playing itself, that was gorgeous, not just note perfect, but lyrical, transparent and effortless. ‘I started playing the piano when I was a toddler,’ Sarah tells me. ‘My parents liked the classics. I remember for a birthday present for my father, I put together a tape of various piano tunes alternating with poems I had written at school. I think I was about nine years old.’

Sarah had piano lessons at school but found them rather uninspiring. ‘So my mother found me a teacher called Gillian Shepherd. I had lessons with her for years. She taught me through the Associated Board exams from Grade 1 to 7. Dear mum used to collect me from school and drive me from Windsor where we lived to Dorney Reach, while I munched honey sandwiches, cake and drunk a flask of tea on the way. Sadly, Gillian Shepherd could not teach me for Grade 8 as she said I needed a more advanced teacher.’

That new teacher was a concert pianist. Here’s Sarah again: ‘I was studying A levels at the time. I remember dreading my lessons. As I walked up to the house I could hear him playing the piano so brilliantly that I was always filled with a sense of inadequacy and gloom and I felt that my week’s practise had been in vain. Not surprisingly I was overcome with nerves on the day of the exam at Eton College and I regret to say that I failed by three marks.’

For Sarah, that failure meant that she didn’t touch the piano for five years. Then a holiday in Corfu changed everything. ‘I met a Greek musician who was the leader of a band at the Glyfada Hotel. We had a holiday romance, kept in contact through the winter and I moved to Corfu the following April at the age of 23.’ Sarah was encouraged by her boyfriend to take up the piano again and she eventually got a job at the Astir Palace Hotel for a summer season where she accompanied a Sicilian guitarist on keyboards six evenings a week. She recalls that they had some 365 songs from around the world.

‘I returned to England when I was 28,’ says Sarah. ‘I taught piano for a while but gave it up when my property management job got really busy. Later I took six months off to study for Grade 8, had a handful of lessons to brush up my skills and passed the exam in June 2006. Five months later I moved to Charmouth and established myself again as a classical piano teacher.’

For Sarah there are no short cuts on the road to playing the piano and to this end she teaches in a way that is both structured and thorough. She does a lot of work on scales, arpeggios and chord formations as early as possible and she also encourages pupils to quickly recognise the major and minor keys of music. She includes reading of music, theory and progressive learning of pieces and she also helps pupils to learn to play short pieces from memory, and even early on she encourages them to use Italian terms so that they become familiar with the music language. And perhaps surprisingly to non players like me she believes that posture is also very important.

She teaches both children and adults. ‘Children are a delight in their own way! Not having children myself, I like to take my time getting to know the child, and once nerves and self-consciousness have been overcome we can have fun during our mainly structured lessons. I encourage children to get to grips with reading music, but I also get them to play ‘by ear’ to tap into their musical ability. As for adults, teaching them is usually rewarding as they are more communicative if they don’t understand something or they haven’t practised enough.’

Listening to Sarah it is obvious that music is important to her not just on a professional level but on a personal level too. ‘It is great to listen to all types of music and it is also wonderful to be able to sit down at the piano and play. I go to the piano for solace and a release of emotion. It can also be a way to express love, happiness and contentment. My dream is to build a crescent-shaped building with a window overlooking the grassy hills of Dorset and the sea beyond, where any children who were interested in music could go to spend time learning to play various instruments and find which ones they are best suited to, without their parents having to pay large amounts of money on lessons, only to find the child didn’t take to the instrument and became disillusioned.’

Before leaving I manage to get Sarah to play for me. She plays a piece by Beethoven. Listening to her it made me wish I could do the same. She looks up from the piano and smiles. ‘It’s not too late to learn,’ she said, as if she had read my thoughts. Well, perhaps when I am retired I will learn to play. I know who I will go to for lessons.