On certain occasions, I will share with you the work of either teachers or performers whose methods I have difficulty in accepting. In this Post you’ll have an opportunity to see two teachers:
First is a master class conducted by Ana Chumachenco, who instructs a young violin student on how to perform one of Mozart’s violin concerti. The biographical material seems quite positive:
“Ana Chumachenco is recognized as one of the foremost violin teachers in the world and is a professor at the renowned Musikhochschule in Munich. She started to play the violin at the age of four, initially taught by her father, himself a disciple of the great Leopold Auer. At the age of 18 she was awarded the gold medal at the Carl Flesch competition in London and Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Sigeti and Sándor Vegh were among her mentors at that time…”
My sense is that there’s very little creativity on the part of the instructor. We only see the teacher’s way of playing. At no time did I see an attempt by the teacher to engage the student in an exploration of finding a “better way” by the student herself.
If the student were allowed to discover solutions and improvements in playing the instrument, would that not be a lot more powerful?
Feel free to comment on what you see below:
And now a conducting class with the late Kurt Mazur…
On this DVD, Kurt Masur works with two young conductors on the first two movements of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, the symphony #4. Yes… there are a few times when Mazur demonstrates baton technique. On another occasion, however, he decides to talk about “prayer”, and I am actually lost as to how that topic is supposed to teach the young conductor how to obtain the kind of music that he is seeking from the orchestra. Judge for yourself by listening to the extract below:
