Back to the Piano at Grade 6 – Satwika’s Trinity Merit

Satwika Sridhar learned piano as a child and set it aside when college took over. Two years ago she decided to pick it back up, and what she was going after was the thing she had liked about it in the first place - what she calls the calm focus of playing. Not relaxation exactly, and nothing to do with performing: the particular kind of attention the instrument asks for and hands back. She is 23 and works full time, and the piano is where that attention goes.

Satwika at the keyboard.

Straight in at Grade 6

What she did next says something about her. She did not go back to the beginning. Her first class at Trill Route was on 29 June 2024, and she set herself straight at Trinity’s Grade 6 - a level in the upper half of the eight-grade ladder that assumes a player who can already handle serious repertoire. Two years later she sat the exam and passed with a Merit.

The three pieces

The pieces she prepared are a fair measure of what Grade 6 asks of a pianist. She played an arrangement of Joe Hisaishi, the composer behind most of the Studio Ghibli scores, whose piano writing tends to be spare and exposed. She played Danny Elfman’s “Victor’s Piano Solo” from Corpse Bride, a short, melancholy piece built on a simple falling figure. And she played a rondo in A by Josef Mysliveček, an eighteenth-century Czech composer, alongside the technical work every Trinity grade requires. A Ghibli score, a Tim Burton film and a Classical-era rondo, prepared and performed in a single exam.

Finding the hours

The challenge was never the music. It was finding the hours. Satwika works full time, and preparing for a Grade 6 around a full week takes a method rather than a burst of effort. Hers was short, consistent practice every day, and it held all the way to the exam. She credits her teacher, Sourav, for the structure around it - lessons and feedback that kept her moving and had her walking into the exam confident.

The result

She describes the result as a relief, and says what she is proudest of is having stayed with it. She has no plans to chase Grade 7, and that is rather the point: she wants to play for pleasure now, which is exactly what brought her back to the instrument. The Merit is simply proof that she can play at that level whenever she sits down at the piano.

Congratulations, Satwika.

Piano and keyboard lessons at Trill Route in Indiranagar, Bangalore run one-on-one and in duos, for complete beginners through to graded-exam students - you can see how they work on our lessons page.