Virtual or e-coaching, via email, Skype, and FaceTime has grown exponentially in the past five years, mainly in the field of business coaching and advice. In the business world video-conferencing has become part of the landscape. Cyber supervision has also become popular in Asia in the field of surgery, in the absence of enough highly trained specialists on the ground.

Playing the piano, or any musical instrument, is a vocational phenomenon that comes from an inner compulsion that manifests itself at a very early age, and thus ‘teaching’ has always been a somewhat ad hoc affair, the teacher most often slipping into the role of a kind of coach whose job is to supervise and encourage. Tutorials are not the stuff of musical education – guidance is the order of the day.

Alan Kogosowski’s approach is a much more scientific than that of most pianists, taking into account that the student will either be able to play or not through his own musicality and force of will. Also – this simply cannot be avoided – the mind-hand co-ordinations necessary to a skilled performer must have been developed at an early age, by the mid-teens at the latest.

If a student has developed the necessary synapses in the brain to be able to play a Beethoven sonata or Chopin Ballade reasonably well, there is a basis on which to impart and share the experience of decades in the many details which go to enhance the performance of piece of music. Kogosowski always treats the physical details and the musical ones as being inextricably interwined: first one must imagine the exact sound of every note, then one must know how to put it into practice effectively.

Kogosowski’s teacher Michel Block once told him, in response to the question “where is it better to study the piano – in London, Paris or Moscow?” that one could learn in the Sahara desert if one found the right teacher or mentor and received the right information. Today, with the internet, physical location is less important than ever before. Learning success depends on the people involved, not the way the teaching is delivered.

There is even an advantage to cyber communication, in that learning becomes more flexible and convenient. The weekly piano lesson is always in danger of becoming a chore like any other. Often a student needs time to absorb and assimilate ideas and approaches, especially when learning a new piece, before he is ready for the next set of questions and ideas. Also, an outside person can look at a situation in an objective way. Piano students are usually emotionally invested in the piece they are learning, and a fresh eye, and ear, can provide new insights.