# Can John Tavener be considered a late starter in piano?



## PresenTense (May 7, 2016)

At the age of 12, Tavener was taken to Glyndebourne to hear Mozart's The Magic Flute, a work he loved for the rest of his life. That same year he heard Stravinsky’s most recent work, Canticum Sacrum, which he later described as "the piece that woke me up and made me want to be a composer".

Tavener became a music scholar at Highgate School (where a fellow pupil was John Rutter). The school choir was often employed by the BBC in works requiring boys' voices, and so Tavener gained choral experience singing in Mahler's Third Symphony and Orff's Carmina Burana. He started to compose at Highgate, and also became a sufficiently proficient pianist to perform the second and third movements of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto and, in 1961 with the National Youth Orchestra, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2. He also became organist and choirmaster in 1961 at St John's Presbyterian Church, Kensington

Tavener entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1962, where his tutors included Sir Lennox Berkeley. During his studies there he decided to give up the piano and devote himself to composition.


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## MoatsArt (Jul 18, 2015)

Was Tavener a late starter on the piano? Well, he started at least thirty years before I did, which was in 1986.


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## PresenTense (May 7, 2016)

MoatsArt said:


> Was Tavener a late starter on the piano? Well, he started at least thirty years before I did, which was in 1986.


How old are you? In my opinion, it's never too late.


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