IT WAS an evening with a difference when John Crockford, a music teacher in East London, gave us the story of the piano keyboard and its ‘family’ from the clavichord up to the electronic keyboard.

His lifelong passion for music and the piano was clear throughout the evening.

Thanks to the modern technology of computers, CDs, DVDs and keyboards we heard and saw music through the ages – much of it played live.

The piano had developed in line with the new technology of the time – wood, metals and electronics – and John showed how the great composers responded to the new challenges, speculating what Bach and Beethoven might have done with a synthesiser and a computer!

We watched a Bach fugue being played on a baroque organ, and the awesome sound of Messiaen’s Transports de Joie on the Albert Hall organ.

We saw and heard how Steve Reich created his minimalist ‘signature’ pieces such as Piano Phase, and how electronic sampling works.

For his finale John got some of the audience to help him ‘sample’ the sound of a 6ft drainpipe being whacked, transformed this into a harmonic scale and then played ‘Raindrops’ for us.