By Sarah Bissonette, Parry Sound North Star
PARRY SOUND – With a rapt, albeit small audience, pianist Stephen Nguyen, 17, took direction during a master class last week with Alexander Tselyakov.
Pianist Stephen Nguyen, 17, gets pointers from Alexander Tselyakov during a master class at St. James United Church last week as part of the Festival of the Sound. (Sarah Bissonette/North Star)
While performing a piece from memory, he’d stop as Tselyakov suggested slight changes such as pedaling and omitting a crescendo and replay the bars with the suggested changes.
It was part of the master class held Friday morning at St. James United Church, a class open to the public.
Along with Nguyen, Coco Ma, 13, also sat at the piano for a lesson with Tselyakov.
The classes were for the festival’s young pianists and were part of their immersion in the world of classical music.
“The idea here is to have a type of apprenticeship where the students – unlike other places where they just come and attend classes, which can be very valuable master classes – they really, get to participate: they are performing … they get the master class situations, they’ve attended all the concerts – a fun thing that was added, mainly because we needed them. They’ve been turning pages (for performers) so they get to be on stage – that’s good experience,” said piano teacher and performer Glen Montgomery, who supervised the master classes.
Nguyen is headed to Montreal this fall to study music at McGill University. He’s originally from Calgary, where he’s Montgomery’s student. This is his second year taking part in the festival.
He said it was cool seeing all the talented performers all gathered in one place during the two-week festival.
Read the full article by Sarah Bissonette from Parry Sound North Star.
