Chetham's Piano Summer School

In August 2023, I went to my first ever Chetham’s International Piano Summer School. I am tragically musically illiterate but had a 10-year-old son obsessed with Mozart and Beethoven and not completely shabby at playing the piano, so we decided we’d give the summer school a go. I admit I was slightly under sufferance here. Being tragically musically illiterate meant my main role in my son’s piano education was to sit on the sofa while he played and occasionally look up and say, ‘That’s brilliant, darling,’ grateful his interests didn’t require me to stand on the edge of a football pitch cutting up oranges on a Sunday morning.   We arrived to an atmosphere of excited anticipation. The reception was filled with people – adults, children and faculty – checking in for their five-day stint at this world-renowned music school, all of them brought here by one thing: a lifelong love of the piano. It was impossible not to be at least slightly infected by this and later, as Sam and I walked ...