Pianist Martino Tirimo offers Chichester masterclass and concert

Martino will teach and perform in concert alongside three talented Chichester conservatoire piano students. The masterclass, open to the public, will be from 2-5pm in Pieces Of Eight, Bishop Otter Campus, University of Chichester Conservatoire; the concert will be at 7.30pm (doors 7pm) in the Elizabeth Swann room, Bishop Otter Campus.

Tirimo is a prolific chamber musician and performs as soloist with international orchestras, armed with an enormous repertoire embracing 80 concertos. He has made numerous recordings for EMI, Warner, BMG and Nimbus record labels.

The evening concert programme will feature Tirimo, the music students and repertoire by Chopin including the Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise Op.22. Tickets £15/free for students and faculty on www.ticketsource.co.uk/chichester-music-society.

Martino is delighted to be back in the city: “I have been to the Music Society several times and it is a wonderful club. I think it's the management that makes it. I think Chris Hough (who runs it) is a marvellous man. He was in the recording world before and you can communicate very easily with him. It's a really good idea to do this and to be working with young talents. These young people are our future. It is so important to do things like this.”

All three of the students will feature in the evening concert and one of them will perform a Schubert duo with Martino. The second half of the concert will be Martino in concert.

“A masterclass can be a very difficult proposition for a student, I think,” he says. “He or she might not know someone and then suddenly he or she has to adapt to the ideas of that person which they might be able to do or might not be able to do. It's a very short period. It's not as if you are working with somebody with enough time to go into depth very easily. Those are the disadvantages but I always try very hard to make the student feel at ease and bring out the best of them. I know it's not easy but I have been doing masterclasses for many, many years and I want to make sure that they have a good time.

“You can't really have a clear idea of what you're going to do because you don't know their playing or their standard or what their needs might be but I think what you want to do is make them aware of what the composer wants and to understand maybe a bit better the language of the composer. When a composer writes forte or piano or legato or non legato, those are instructions and behind those instructions really is the essence of the music. I also encourage students to listen to other pieces by the composer, preferably non-pianistic works in order to get a better idea of the composer. You need that context. I like to have an open mind because mine is only one viewpoint but I think there has to be a logic behind what you do. If somebody is playing Bach and they are using a lot of pedal then that is usually out of the style for baroque music. One has to be very, very careful about the use of the pedal. Usually you have to have very short pedals just to connect one or two notes. Basically the best peddling in Bach is when you don't realise that the performer is pedalling at all. Those are the kinds of considerations, just an example.”