The Conservatoire offers Bachelors and Masters courses in pianoforte, within the department of Early Music. The Bachelors course consists of three years, while the Masters lasts two years.
The bachelors course focuses on learning to play Viennese instruments from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, alongside the romantic piano of the nineteenth century. The course helps students gain a fine understanding of the difference between techniques for playing different instruments as related to the different eras, places and contexts in which they were played, whether in the role of soloist or chamber musician. This process happens in relation to the courses in applied theory taught within the Early Music department, helping students to gain a comprehensive training in artistic, practical and theoretical skills alongside general and cultural skills.
Alongside the weekly group and individual, instrumental and chamber music classes, each year students also participate in projects organised by the pianoforte class (visiting collections, partnership with the MIM, master-classes) and by the department (colloquia, concerts, seminars, orchestra sessions, conferences organised by the department). The training also includes courses in reading, theory and writing. Instruments are made available to students (facsimile of Walter, 1795 by Maene, facsimile of Fritz, 1814 by Hungerberg, original Pleyel from 1850). Bachelor students gain a comprehensive training in artistic, practical and theoretical skills alongside general and cultural skills, which give them a good overview of the practice of the different eras at hand.
Students can then build on this solid foundation during the Masters programme, allowing them to further develop their specific approach to their instrumental and artistic work, including solo playing, culminating in the realisation of a personal artistic project at the end of their studies. During this second cycle, or masters programme, chamber music grows in importance, and focuses on developing links to the professional world (concerts, recordings...). Students regularly take part in ambitious projects, thanks to the artistic partnerships of the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles.