London: An 11-year-old boy trained by his concert pianist mother has become the youngest person in the world to receive a degree in music.
Curtis Elton started learning piano at the age of three and could read music by the time he was four.
He was the youngest person in the world to pass a piano exam equivalent to the first year of university when he was nine. And two years on he has completed the course and been awarded an LTCL diploma from Trinity College, London. The qualification is equivalent to the final year of an undergraduate degree.
Curtis practised for more than two hours a day to perfect a challenging 37-minute programme — mostly from memory — for the examiners. He played Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E flat, Mozart’s Sonata in F, two Etudes by Chopin and April by John Ireland. The chief examiner said Curtis performed the Mozart with “much virtuosity” and said his fingers moved “nimbly and easily” in one of the Chopin pieces.
Curtis, who has appeared on Channel 4’s Child Genius programme, also had to write a 1,000-word programme about the pieces and histories of the composers. His mother, Hayley, 41, said she trained Curtis for the exam like a marathon runner by feeding him plates of pasta to give him energy.
Curtis, from Barnet, London, who is homeschooled and practises on his own white grand piano, said: “I was a bit nervous at the beginning of the exam but when I started playing I wasn’t nervous anymore.”
Curtis says he wants to be as successful as pianists Liberace, Lang Lang and Elton John — but also admires Manchester United heroes Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie.
He said: “Hopefully one day I will play in America. I would like to play all over the world. I would like to play at the Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Opera House.
“Last year I played in concert in front of 2,000 people Valencia, Spain. I had my own police because there was a huge queue of people and I was signing autographs for an hour.”
