Reena Esmail's piece Song of the Swan is a new commission by ABRSM, it features on the Grade 3 Syllabus for Flute from 2026. Louise Matthew is a Flute teacher and ABRSM Examiner and in this resource she shares her approach to teaching this piece.

This is a fantastic new commission for Flute, and I'm sure there will be plenty of our pupils that enjoy learning this piece for their Grade 3 exams, for concerts or just for fun!

I've identified six areas of learning that are particularly important in this piece and suggested some activities you could do in your lessons.

Understanding Structure

  1. Listen together to the piece and think about the structure of the music.
  2. Look for recognisable note patterns and repeated phrases.
  3. Mark the music to map it out and gain better understanding of how the piece works.
  4. Encourage students to practise in sections by setting specific practice goals.

Improvisation 

  1. Using the pentatonic scale encourage learners to become familiar and comfortable with the notes.
  2. Build confidence using question and answer phrases with teacher leading at first.
  3. Use ideas from the piece to further increase level of challenge and depth of understanding, eg. different dynamics, speeds, note lengths, characters.
  4. Try using the backing track/piano accompaniment to improvise around.

Developing Singing Legato Tone

Playing this piece requires a beautiful singing legato tone and provides a great opportunity to work on developing sound.

  1. Use the tone exercises as a starting point and encourage students to make up their own legato tone exercises.
  2. Go slowly, giving time to really focus on and listen to the quality of the tone, trying to make the best possible sound on each and every note.

Improving finger facility

  1. There are a few technically tricky corners in the music, which will take time to get to grips with. Firstly, help students to locate these sections and mark them out for extra practising.
  2. Practise these sections slowly at first, using different articulation and rhythm patterns.
  3. Some students might find it helpful to use a metronome to keep playing steady and to gradually increase the tempo.
  4. It may be helpful for students to learn these faster moving patterns from memory.

Ornamentation

  1. Have some fun using the pentatonic scale to practise the quick mordents on each note.
  2. Experiment with mordents on the other pentatonic notes.

Some extension activities

For those students who want extra challenge, further exploration or deeper understanding:

  1. Further Listening - specifically to Ragas, allowing students to gain further insight into this style of music. Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar are a good place to start, with further general information available online. It might also be helpful to listen to some other pieces that evoke swans, birds, animals or nature, thinking about what the composer does to make the music have a particular character.
  2. For those students who enjoy this style of music they might be keen to explore it further by creating a Raga presentation or project.
  3. For students who enjoy composing they might like to take some of their improvisation ideas and use them to create their own piece.

Louise has created a summary document that you can download and keep, which outlines the key points from above as well as further teaching ideas and examples of the exercises.

Listen to the piece on our Spotify Channel

Last modified: Wednesday, 10 September 2025, 11:02 AM
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