Olympics for Pianists

Were you amazed to see a vertically suspended grand piano during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics? French pianist Alain Roche performed a new arrangement of Hymn To Apollo, which was composed by Gabriel Fauré based on Ancient Greek texts that were discovered in Athens in the late 19th century, and debuted at the first Olympic Congress in Paris in 1894. He was joined by French tenor Benjamin Bernheim.

Horrified at first, I later read in Classic FM that the piano was apparently unharmed:

“It’s so special to be in the middle of all this energy, all this adrenaline … in a stadium with 70,000 people with a moment of suspense for such a poetic piece as the ‘Hymn to Apollo’,” Roche said (translated from French). “I launched the ‘vertical piano’ project 11 years ago, because I was trying to challenge expectations, to reverse the way things are seen. The piano is my instrument, and I decided that by reversing it, you can see things differently.”

This was not the first time I’d heard Piano and Olympics in the same breath. Teaching piano in Arlington Virginia in the 1990s, Nancy Breth and I were among many teachers who used Piano Olympics to get students excited about the scales and arpeggios they needed for more advanced repertoire. The system was designed by Ukrainian-born, Russian-educated pianist Alexander Peskanov. In 1997 I hosted Peskanov and his wife in our home when he came to judge students who entered a competition sponsored by several teachers who belonged to Northern Virginia Music Teachers Association.

One way for piano teachers to capitalize on the enthusiasm of students fresh from watching the Olympics would be to check out The Russian Technical Regimen for the Piano, published by Hal Leonard/Willis Music. More Piano Olympics books are also available on Peskanov’s website.