P for Page Turner

It should be simple. All you have to do is turn a page of a score while the pianist’s hands are otherwise engaged. But page turning is fraught with difficulties, for both pianist and turner. What if you’re turning pages and a bee flies into your shirt and stings you? What if you’re playing and every time you need the page turned, the heaving embonpoint of your turner obscures your view of the music? Top of the list of Thankless Tasks, the essential but stressful job of page turning is only successful if it passes unnoticed. Find out what makes an accomplished page turner; being one of the world’s foremost pianists is not necessarily a qualification. Featuring Pierre Laurent Aimard, Iain Burnside, Ivan Ilic and Alice Farnham.

You can listen to P for Page Turner online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

P for Page Turner is an episode from Radio 3's Piano A to Z by BBC.

This episode is 7:34 long.

This episode was published on Oct 10, 2012.

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