Approach
How lessons work, and what a student is actually being taught.
Nothing moves forward until it is properly understood.
I teach each student closely and expect a shared commitment in return. Before we move on, I make sure every part of what we are working on is understood, so that practice between lessons rests on comprehension rather than guesswork. That is what produces real improvement from week to week rather than the illusion of it.
Progress depends on self-awareness. Knowing what you do well and what is holding you back is what separates a student who improves from one who simply repeats. Much of my teaching goes into building that instinct, so that eventually a student can diagnose their own playing without me in the room.
The focus stays on the process itself: ambitious goals, held alongside steady and honest progress.
The tradition behind it
The Russian school
My own training is rooted in the Russian romantic repertoire and the way of teaching that grew around it. Its central idea is that a player should grasp the artistic image of a piece as early as possible, its content, meaning and substance, and understand it in the language of music theory. Technique then becomes the means of realising that image rather than an end in itself.
Sound before speed
Tone is trained deliberately from the earliest lessons: how a note is produced, how the arm and wrist stay free, and above all how to listen to the sound you actually made rather than the one you intended.
Security as the basis of freedom
A steady technical foundation of scales, arpeggios and studies, worked slowly and attentively, so that the technical means are never the thing limiting the interpretation.
Breadth of repertoire
Students work across Baroque, Classical, Romantic and twentieth century music rather than only exam pieces. A pianist who has never properly played Bach has a gap that shows up later.
Performance as training
Playing for other people is built in from the beginning, not held back as a reward for the advanced.