Late starter, strong finisher

RNZ News

16-07-2025

This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.
Pianist Abhinath Berry
Photo:
Supplied
As a child, Abhinath Berry didn't enjoy piano lessons, so he stopped having them.
Usually, that'd be the end of the story - at least the story the piano would play in the young musician's life.
But as Berry reached his mid-teens, he began to avail himself of the piano keyboards at his Dunedin high school. And at home, Berry began to teach himself.
It may not have given the perfect technique (in fact, for a while Berry probably thought he'd left his run too late to take up the piano professionally), but he was good enough to convince Otago University Piano Professor Terence Dennis to award him a place at the University's music school.
Now, having graduated from Otago, Berry is halfway through a Master of Music in Performance at London's Guildhall School of Music.
He's taken a break from London and its exceedingly hot summer to return to New Zealand, where he's enjoying the Dunedin winter while also performing several concerts.
Berry spoke to RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump, where they discussed his introduction to the piano, what he's playing during his working trip around the country, and what he's looking forward to when he returns to Guildhall for the second half of his course.
Berry says that will focus more on teaching musicians the marketing skills they need to carve our a musical niche in a busy professional field.
He's also been working on developing piano exercises that tap into some of the things he learned when he was still teaching himself. Exercises which are shorter than those often prescribed today, and which focus on specific challenges a pianist needs to overcome, rather than running on for too long and running the risk of the musician injuring themselves.
Having already performed a concert in Dunedin, Berry still has three gigs to go before returning to the Northern Hemisphere: in Wellington, Arrowtown and Wanaka.