A weekend in the country
Set in the grounds of Leiston Abbey in Suffolk, Pro Corda’s chamber music school has been running for over 50 years. At the start of last year – amid the flurry of uncertainty and upheaval – the organisation rebranded its piano courses for adults, naming them Piano Sanctuary Retreats. The man behind the revamp, pianist and teacher Andrew Quartermain, has been running Pro Corda since 2005. In these troubling times, why change now? ‘When I took over 16 years ago,’ he tells me, ‘I had various adult piano students at the time, and I thought what a great location it would be to get them here for a long weekend. The time felt right.’
Quartermain was just 12 when he attended his first course
