Home Piano Lessons in the Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Finsbury Park vicinity
Hello there, I'm Alvin.
I am a piano teacher offering lessons at your home. You can also have remote lessons via Zoom, Skype or Google Meet.
I travel to Crouch End, Hornsey, Muswell Hill, Islington, Finsbury Park, Highgate and Wood Green. The range of postcodes I cover includes N4, N5, N6, N8, N10, N17, N19 and N22.
You'll learn to play adaptations of well-known music, across genres such as classical, pop, rock, anime, metal and jazz. The music you'll play in lessons is familiar, current, and at a suitable level of difficulty.
You'll also learn how to improvise your own version of existing songs.
If you like, you can prepare for
Why Learn the Piano With Me?
You'll learn positively, with music tailored to your abilities.
We'll work from music that you can play and move on to more difficult repertoire as your skills and concentration improve. The focus is positive, on what you can do and what you can aim for.
You'll develop your current piano skills so you can continually play harder, impressive-sounding music. I'll also show you how you can improvise your own versions of your favourite songs.
You'll get to play music you like.
Piano playing requires co-ordination of six or seven independent tasks, and it is always reassuring and satisfying to know you are playing the correct notes.
Playing songs you are familiar with also helps with improve the reading of musical notation, because you'll have already have an idea of what the music should sound like, and hence know what the written notes, rhythmic symbols and expression marks are trying to convey.
In my own time, I write out and arrange your favourite songs at a suitable level of difficulty for you to play, at no extra charge to you.
Do you know any other piano teacher who does that on a regular basis?
I charge reasonable rates and am flexible.
My rates vary depending on your location, but they are comparable to rates charged by local music services for children's piano lessons in schools. The current rate charged by Haringey Music Service is £40.32 per hour for the academic year 2025-26.
In some cases - such as when siblings have lessons, and if I'm already in your area - I charge the school lesson rate, or less !
I teach in areas such as Crouch End, Hornsey, Finsbury Park, Muswell Hill and Wood Green, and my travel costs are shared among students. Please contact me to ask - my rates are frequently lower than most teachers who do home visits.
I have no cancellation fees.
I am particularly understanding if you need to cancel at short notice (e.g. due to child illness). Or maybe you've suddenly remembered about another appointment - as long as I've not appeared at your doorstep, that's fine!
Other music schools or tutors may require you to give 24 hours' notice for cancelling a lesson. I don't - no one plans an illness in advance! - and I understand that life sometimes just gets a little bit complicated for our liking!
Need a recap?
Music you like
A positive learning process
Very reasonable rates
No cancellation fees, no contract, no notice period!
Today's blog snippet - see more in the Posts section!
One of the torch bearers at the funeral of Ludwig van Beethoven was young Franz Schubert. At 30, his presence at Beethoven's funeral was his own way of paying respects to a revered member of his profession. But who could have conceived that in under two years, Schubert would be joining his contemporary?
Schubert's composing career was short in a lifetime of only thirty one years. He never really had the opportunity to make himself well-known outside of Vienna, unlikely Beethoven, whose fame encompassed much of Europe. Another difference between the two was that while Beethoven's larger works were arguably his more well-known ones, such as the Symphony no 5 in C minor, or the Pastoral Symphony (7th) or the Choral Symphony (9th), it was Schubert's smaller, intimate works that drew fame to him.
By the time war in Europe had ended in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna, the social landscape of European society had changed. While independent-minded citizens had emerged, the ruling classes still tried to keep the populace under control. While parties, balls and pomp were the fashionable activity for the rich, those less well-off met in private homes or local coffee houses. It was the latter which formed the background to Schubert's social scene. These gatherings, interspersed with other activities such as charades, poetry readings and performances, became known as Schubertiaden or Schubert evenings.
Perhaps as a result of unrequited love, Schubert began composing songs ("Lieder" as they were known; Lied is German for "song") based on poetry by Goethe; among his early songs were 'Gretchen am Spinnrade' (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel), with inspiration drawn from Goethe's Faust. In the year 1815, he set over 150 of Goethe's poems, producing songs such as the famous Erlkonig (Elf King). Unfortunately, when a friend sent of a volume of 28 songs (chosen from over 150) to Goethe, asking if he would allow them to be dedicated to him, Goethe returned the volume without comment; as any poet objecting to the musification of his work might. The snub did not affect Schubert, who went on to add another 100 songs to the voume, producing an incredible 250 Lieder before he even turned twenty.
The Lieder is song at its simplest. It is just for voice, accompanied by solo piano. If Schubert were alive today it might have been termed "Classical music unplugged", or "acoustic". But while the voice may take seemingly take centrestage in the Lied, the piano is not the mere lackey in the duo. The piano has to set the scene subtly, and musically illustrate what is being sung by the voice. In Lieder, the piano does not merely play chords in a broken-chord pattern. It may use the motifs in the vocal line for dramatic effect. And if the words sung by the singer reflect a change in mood, this may be indicated by a change in key in the piano part. The role of the piano in Lieder was so important that it triggered treatises on the role of words and music; whether melodies were more important than words, or whether music should be subservient to the text. And it was arguably through lieder that the piano enhanced its role as an accompanying instrument best.
Schubert also composed song cycles - songs based on a set of poems that tell a story. Among his more well-known ones are Die schone Mullerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill), a romantic tale of rejected love, and Winterreise (Winter Journey), about - as any true Romantic would write about - despair and impending death. In these the piano serves not just as the background to the voice, but as its musical companion, setting the scene and threading related themes throughout the whole song cycle to link the songs thematically. The piano becomes an equal partner in the whole process. In the former, the brook that runs by the mill is represented in the piano; in the latter, it paints the musical picture of wintry desolation experienced by the protagonist.
The Romantic composers who wrote lieder - Brahms, Schubert, Schumann and Wolf, among others - found it a suitable structure to convey emotional depths of Romanticism. Their writing for the piano in the songs reflected that the piano was equal partner to the voice and it would not be restricted to merely providing rhythmic and harmonic patterns.