Transcriber: Denise RQ Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
¡Buenas tardes!
How do we teach music performance?
What is our job as music teachers?
There are hundreds of music academies and conservatories
in almost every region and city all around the world.
Most people begin learning to play a musical instrument at a young age,
at the age of 5 or 6. Later on, only a small percentage will decide
to dedicate their life to music and will continue
to a higher musical education in the music conservatory or the university.
That's where we come in. The university music professors.
How do we teach people to perform music?
You might think it's easy, we just have to tell them:
"Please, go! Go practice!"
There's an old joke where a person
stops the violinist Isaac Stern in New York and asks:
"Excuse me sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?"
and Stern answers: "Practice!"
(Laughter) Well... I wish it would be that easy.
The question is of course, How do we practice. What do we do?
Closing oneself in a room for hours of practicing
might impress the parents and perhaps the neighbors,
but doesn't necessarily help us play better.
In most cases actually, it makes us play worse.
Our teaching should start with the basic idea which is very often misunderstood
by young musicians. What does it actually mean to be an instrumentalist?
A musician, instrumentalist, performer of classical music
functions as a bridge between a musical text to a listener.
This is the very basis of being an interpret of classical music.
During the process of learning an instrument,
there is a lot of focus on the physical part, generally known as "technique".
Because we were not born with the instrument in our hands,
certainly, we do need to come up with a series of mechanical exercises
to be able to play any string instrument for example.
With the help of those exercises, we bring the instrument closer to our nature.
Mistake is to think that if one repeats these exercises a few hours a day,
one will be able to play a musical piece.
There's nothing further from the truth.
It is important to understand that the mechanical movements
won't make music, but our imagination of the music will create it.
We imagine the musical phrase and our hands and fingers
react to our imagination.
Let's speak about teaching musical expression.
Being a bridge to the listener, all our thinking and musical decisions
have to be determined by that consideration.
When we want to play with a certain feeling of rhythm,
it has to be done understanding what the listener would hear:
if we want to emphasize color of sound, articulation, dynamic phrasing,
everything has to be conceived with this important idea:
what does the listener hear?
How does the music higher education system work?
As an invited guest in many different music academies around the world,
I can say with certainty there is a very similar education structure everywhere.
From Beijing to New York, from Moscow to Paris.
We accept a certain level of students to the university,
we try to teach them all this wonderful information
and help them to teach themselves to be good musicians and instrumentalists.
And then? Back to the idea of being a bridge to the listener.
They have to play to an audience. How do we do that?
Well, we came up with the class concert.
Once in a while, the students meet in one room,
a few other students come to listen,
perhaps a few parents and one old lady who was looking for the bathroom
and opened the wrong door. (Laughter)
The student stands, scared stiff and stressed,
trying somehow to survive this horrible occasion,
thinking in his head: "Am I better than others, or worse?
What do they think about me? What does my teacher think?"
It's not exactly the ideal moment to make a beautiful phrase in a Brahms sonata.
At this moment, the young musician will most probably and very usually
play the mechanical elements of playing the instrument
and not from the musical expression
and not from the intuitive thinking of music.
Again, this is the furthest thing from making music.
We have to remember that musical text itself has no meaning.
Only when it is in the air and reaching the listener's ear.
Performing is every time you touch the instrument
and play for someone else.
Our brain has to be trained to produce our ideas on our instrument,
if it's one tone or hundreds and thousands of tones in a musical piece.
Whether you play for one person in a room,
or for 2000 people in a famous concert hall.
For our musical brain, it is the same.
Johannes Brahms didn't write his sonata with different versions.
One version for a student, another one for a professional musician,
one to play for a poor person the other one for a rich person,
to play in a big concert hall or a small one.
E flat major is the same for the bus driver as it I for the German president.
Music is above all that. Music is pure in its core.
Ok. So far it was very clear to me. I have some wonderful students
that could already play very beautifully
but need to play for an audience on a regular basis
and not in a class concert. How do we do that?
Well, calling my agent and asking her to arrange 50 concerts a year
for my students will probably be answered with crazy laughter
and maybe to tell me to take it easy on the Rioja wine
I like once a while to drink.
Arranging and booking concerts in our classical music world
is a complicated business, especially for young unknown musicians.
I started to conceive an idea, a concept if you like,
a way to help the students, the ones that could play already play very well,
to be better musicians and instrumentalists.
All of us active musicians have had the experience for giving concerts
in a retirement home, in a community center of some kind,
maybe at Christmas playing in a hospital or even a prison.
I thought to myself, why not do it on a regular basis?
Why not make it part of their education, playing concerts to people
who would normally not sit in their audience.
It sounds quite simple. Maybe even too simple.
On one beautiful Spanish afternoon, I met Professor Carmina Marcuello,
a professor of economics at the University of Zaragoza.
After telling her a little of my early years in a kibbutz in Israel
where chamber music was equally accessible to everyone,
and Carmina telling me about her dealing with social economy,
I decided to tell her about my idea of having regularly
concerts by excellent students in the city.
We decided together, let's do it. Let's see what happens.
Carmina organized the first concert at a school of special education
for children with different disabilities and difficulties.
We got there, not knowing what to expect; but again,
for us musicians, and I am sure many musicians will feel the same,
it is not so important where we go to play and to whom.
It's not important in which country and in which hall we play.
Our respect to our listener is the same everywhere.
The children were waiting in the dining room,
we put up the music stands, telling them
what we were going to play, with no musical explanations
or lecture about the composers and instruments.
They listened carefully and attentively.
My greatest surprise was when we played
Bach "Chaconne from the second violin partita".
14 minutes of one of the most complicated pieces ever written.
We always thought that a person has to know so much about music
to appreciate it! Well...no!
14 minutes of silence. 14 minutes of children listening intensely,
with not less and even more attention than in great concerts halls.
We were all shocked. We came with the idea that it was more for our benefit.
Was it possible that it was also good for them?
The next concert was in a hospital.
The next one was in an old people's residence, and the next
in a day psychiatric center, then in a prison,
then in one social enterprise factory and more and more and more.
All the people were so thankful, so inspired, so happy...
Wait a moment. What is going on? We musicians students and teachers,
have a tremendous need to play for people.
We actually cannot teach music without it.
Could it be that people also have a need to listen
to beautifully played classical music? People that don't have access
to classical music, people that have no idea about classical music?
They are so happy ? So why don't we do it all the time, everywhere?
Ah, one would definitely say: "Well... of course, great!
But, what about money?" The answer is: "No! No money!"
The model of Musethica educational idea is to play the concerts
on a completely voluntary basis, without fees, otherwise,
as a learning tool, it won't work properly.
We removed two things out of the formula of performing concert:
money and name. You don't get financial compensation
and nobody really cares who you are and where you played yesterday.
This kind of different audience is a very honest audience.
If it is not very well played, if it is not rhythm,
if it is not clean and not with beautiful sound, they lose interest.
If there is no phrase and nothing happens dynamically, they lose interest.
Wow! Even better for us. No excuses.
A little boy sitting in a wheel chair and an old man about to die
don't care about our mechanical challenge playing the instrument.
They don't care how complicated it is to play the bow
or how much we have to work and think before even playing one note.
Well, then we have to play from our musical imagination.
We have to play from our musical expression.
It was a tremendous success. We chose a very selective group
of young musician students, from the masters and Bachelor Program
and started to play regularly concerts for different crowds .
All the young musicians that participated in the Musethica program
showed unbelievable progress in their playing.
A progress no teacher can teach, a progress that can be achieved
only by playing weekly concerts, challenging concerts,
to an honest audience. Playing as giving something to people,
giving a gift of music. Sharing music.
Not standing frightened in a class concert or in a competition.
Asking one young musician how she feels about taking part
in the Musethica program, she said:
"Now I understand why I'm studying music".
Educating young musicians to perform
where classical music doesn't normally take place,
takes us to the root of making music, to its basic mission.
People often say: "Well, I don't know anything about classical music".
We have demonstrated that you don't need to know.
If it is well played, you enjoy it and it affects you and that's what matters.
We came up with a model. Educational musical social model.
The Musethica model works very simply.
Musethica concerts are short concerts between 30 to 50 minutes
of the finest repertoire by the finest musicians in chamber music
from solo to octets. It is a local idea, and the concerts are near the school
or in the same city.
The Musethica senior musician chooses very carefully
the best young musicians and prepares the program.
The social team of Musethica is bringing us to share our music
with this wonderful audience. It's that simple.
The Musethica prototype allows us to play 100 concerts in a school year.
100 days of bringing happiness and joy
to many different crowds in our local society.
Happy to say that great musicians are already giving their support
to the Musethica idea to ensure that the musical quality
is maintained at the highest level.
Leading members of the Berliner Philharmonic,
professors from Hans Eisler, Berlin, Jerusalem Hebrew University,
famous string quartets, renowned professors from national academies
in Beijing, London, Seoul and Tokyo .
With Musethica everyone wins!
The young musicians become better musicians and better persons.
And so many people get unique moments of joy.
These are not charity concerts. We need this great audience,
not less than they need us.
I want to end this talk with saying to the big tough man
working in the factory we played in, who told me:
"I will never forget this day, because this music has to be played
for kings and queens and you came here, to my workplace,
and played for me!" Well, my dear friend, under music,
we are all kings and queens.
Now we should educate the younger musicians to think this way.
Thank you!
(Applause)
(Musetica: A.Vivaldi--Concerto for four violins)
(Music)
(This performance of Vivaldi has been played this year in the next places in Zaragosa)
(Applause)