Piano | Yale School of Music

While the Yale School of Music piano program primarily focuses on solo performance, it also places an emphasis on chamber music, accompanying, and teaching. The well-rounded curriculum prepares graduates to make their way in today’s highly competitive music world.

A unique feature of Yale’s piano department is the close collaboration between piano faculty members. Students have regular opportunities to play in master classes and receive supplemental lessons and chamber music coachings from faculty other than their major studio teachers. Additionally, many internationally acclaimed guest artists visit the School as part of the Horowitz Piano Series, giving recitals, lectures, and master classes.

The Yale School of Music is an all-Steinway school, with regularly maintained pianos in all recital halls, studios, and practice rooms.

faculty spotlight

Sylvia and Leonard Marx Professor in the Practice of Piano

Boris Berman

Faculty pianist Boris Berman is a performer well known to audiences in fifty countries on six continents.

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Master classes

YSM piano students regularly have valuable opportunities to perform in piano master classes given by our internationally renowned faculty and by such visiting artists as Emanuel Ax, Idil Biret, Alfred Brendel, Bruno Canino, Christopher Elton, Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Marc-André Hamelin, Angela Hewitt, Anton Kuerti, Ronan O’Hora, Jon Kimura Parker, Roberto Prosseda, Matti Raekallio, Pascal Rogé, Mikhail Rudy, Peter Serkin, Niklas Sivelov, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and Mikhail Voskresensky among many others.

Typically, master classes take place Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. in Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall and are free and open to the YSM community, unless otherwise noted.

All master classes can be viewed at https://music.yale.edu/live during the class unless otherwise noted.

Fall 2025