Back to Basics: The Introduction to the Art of Piano Playing (Part 1 & Part 2)

This special two-part workshop explores the foundations of piano tone production and the many touches that form a pianist’s expressive “toolbox”. Participants will learn how different touches produce different colours and characters of sound, and how these sounds may be applied meaningfully within musical interpretation.

Join Toh Chee Hung — concert pianist, highly respected teacher-mentor, and adjudicator — for a rare pedagogy workshop sharing profound insights into the art of producing a truly musical tone at the piano.

How It Began…

Many years ago, during a summer visit to Budapest, Chee Hung and Dennis traced their pedagogical roots back to the Liszt Academy, where their teacher had once studied under an assistant to Ernő Dohnányi.

The Academy was quiet after the academic term had ended. Yet from the concert hall came the sound of a single beautiful piano tone… then another… and another.

Peering through the doorway, she saw a young boy — perhaps twelve years old — slowly walking alongside the keyboard, dropping the full weight of his arm into one key at a time.

In that simple action lay a profound revelation: the beginning of a truly musical piano sound.

From this understanding of tone production and physical freedom at the instrument, Chee Hung explores how sound can become eloquent, cantabile, heroic, stirring, multi-layered, and deeply expressive — capable of conveying the full emotional spectrum demanded by the piano repertoire.

This is not merely technical training, but a lifelong artistic journey requiring patience, openness, humility, and deep listening.