Klarinet Archive - Posting 000111.txt from 2001/01

From: "Wolman, Kenneth" <KWolman@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Great players as teachers (was: RE: [kl] Frank Miller)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:07:39 -0500

The subject of Frank Miller as an indifferent teacher brings up an issue that I have discussed with singers with whom I've worked over the last 5+ years, but that also might be applicable to instrumentalists, namely that some great performers tend to be indifferent teachers who can't transfer what they've learned on their feet over to a student. The discussions I've had in the specific context of singing suggest some reasons:

--Inarticulacy: the performer can't explain what he or she actually did at a technical level and so can't teach it.
--"Attitude": "You're in a master class, you're supposed to know how to do that." ("Then why are you teaching the master class, Name Omitted for Fear of Lawyers, for the money?")
--"Attitude, Part Deux": "Do It The Way I Did It." If the student could perform like Unnamed Musician in his prime he/she wouldn't need Unnamed Singer.

I read recently about Jon Vickers' master classes in New York. Vickers is one of my personal "tenor gods," but objectively speaking, during his active career he was known to be a difficult and demanding colleague who at times could be a pain in the butt with obnoxious opinions on politics and his own deep evangelical religious faith, neither of which he had any problem voicing. Yet age and physical infirmity seem to have mellowed him; during his master classes he never touched a singer's technique, but focused instead on _thought process_, on the spiritual essence behind interpretation and performing. Now, is this sort of essence-thinking transferable to instrumental performance? I would think so. One of my treasured memories is of sitting in a stage seat in Carnegie Hall, six feet from Artur Rubinstein, while he played through a Chopin program. I could see his hands and his face. He was _inside_ Chopin's music. I've never heard anyone play like that. Could he have le!
d a student through a set of "spiritual exercises" (to borrow the Jesuit term) to help that person find his or her own path to entering Chopin's music? I don't know, but I sense that such a process is what separates a pedestrian teacher from an inspiring one.

In the experience of the players on this list, what was your experience with teachers at an advanced level? I mean the "great names" in this business, whether or not you wish to name them. Code is acceptable:-).

Enough from me.

Ken

Kenneth Wolman
Merrill Lynch/DCSS
570 Washington Street, NYC
212-647-2496

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