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She attended Tintern Girls Grammar School and later took a Bachelor of Music Honours Degree in both performance and teaching at Melbourne University, where she won the Ormond Exhibition, and was placed first in the final examinations.
Her final year thesis explored the subject of North Indian classical music a country she has since toured three times. Studies in London with the Swiss pianist, Albert Ferber, led to a successful concert debut at the Wigmore Hall in This launched an international career across five continents, in the course of which Thwaites has made a point of including Australian compositions in her programs.
The English composer, William Reed with whom Thwaites studied orchestration , inspired her interest in the music of Percy Grainger. She has recorded some tracks of his music, and was awarded the International Percy Grainger Society's Medallion in She created the highly successful Performing Australian Music Competition in which 71 entrants played programmes representing 46 Australian composers.
A second competition in attracted 94 entrants from 18 countries. Other partnerships include recitals with singers, Stephen Varcoe and James Gilchrist and with the distinguished cellist Rohan de Saram. Her pioneering LP 'Australian Piano Music' Discourses, was broadcast worldwide as something of a novelty at the time. Thwaites found a special affinity with the music of Melbourne-born pianist and composer Percy Grainger.
Her interest in promoting Australian composition led to her founding and chairing the international Performing Australian Music Competition which took place in London in and , attracting young musicians from 20 countries who chose and performed music of 80 Australian composers. The competition still awaits a long-term sponsor.
Her newly-formed piano trio with Dima Tkachenko, violin and Marie Macleod, cello, was most warmly received at its Wigmore Hall debut and appears in the St John's, Smith Square lunchtime series on January Her well-known duo with Australian John Lavender recently premiered a new version of Mussorgsky's, Pictures at an Exhibition together with premieres of Australian works. I think we all need to remind ourselves frequently of the possible alternative words: If we see and hear a true virtuoso play, we are not aware of fear or wrong notes, or stiffness in the joints, or awkward, ungainly movements.
We are taken up in the joy and delight of sheer playfulness of physicality on the piano.
But when that delightful virtuosity is combined with depth of feeling, a rigorous intellect and real artistry, then we witness the pinnacle of piano playing in all its fullness. It is a recognised fact that children learn more quickly and enthusiastically through play, and I believe this also applies to teaching piano technique, both for children and for adults.
If we watch a child spending time alone at the piano, they delight primarily in any activities that involve movement around the piano. Imagine how it must feel for a very active six year old to be asked not only to sit still for half an hour, but also not to move his arms beyond the middle C five-finger position thumbs on middle C, elbows in, wrists swivelled inwards, shoulders up! This straight-jacketed feeling can be absorbed into their experience of piano playing from the earliest stages, and can become a very entrenched habit.
Various other tutor books recognise the advantage of embracing the whole of the keyboard. The Little Keyboard Monster series, for example, contains some delightfully imaginative pieces using glissandi, leaps etc. The fear of playing wrong notes is very powerful, and can lead to tension throughout the muscular structure. At all levels, I think it is important to balance the need for accuracy with freedom of movement, sometimes to exhort the student: Although I do frequently teach my students Etudes particularly, at advanced level, the Chopin and Debussy Etudes from which so much can be learnt , I often find that much valuable time can be wasted learning several pages of somewhat indifferent music for just one aspect of technique — time which could have been much better spent learning some great repertoire.
I feel there is much benefit to be gained for each teacher to develop his own notebook of very short exercises which cover all the necessary movements require for specific techniques. These should be simple and short enough to be taught by imitation, rather than by note-learning. The resulting enjoyment is liberating. She had worked at it very thoroughly, but the result was somewhat heavy and wooden. These exercises are very difficult to describe, because the main feature of them is of fluid, swirling hand and arm movements which flow, interact and overlap each other if you have ever seen a chef tossing pizza dough between his hand you will know the sort of movements I mean.