Adjudicating
One of the activities I find most pleasurable is adjudicating music festivals. I wrote about it, in this first-person article, published in The Globe and Mail.
in search of ilona eibenschütz
Once in a long while, I have an experience that brings the distant musical past almost close enough to touch. That happened a few years ago when a friend of mine said to me “Have I ever told you about my grandmother?” I soon learned that his grandmother was a late 19th-century piano virtuoso, a protégée of Clara Schumann and friend of Johannes Brahms. My friend has memories of his grandmother from when he was a boy, along with radio interviews and a few — a very few — recorded performances. So only three degrees of separation — from me…to my friend…to his grandmother…to Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann. Almost close enough to touch.
Read MoreMozart: the ultimate challenge
Having just posted a video on learning and teaching the B-flat Major Sonata, K570, I found myself thinking more about Mozart’s music: its challenges, and its rewards.
It took a long time before I became ‘comfortable’ learning and performing Mozart. Even as a fairly adept young professional, I steered away from programming Mozart in recitals; I knew I wasn’t doing the music justice — especially the slow movements. I’m more confident now
Read Moreah, chopin!
Everyone should have a party piece or two. One of mine is the Chopin Berceuse. My piano teacher played some of this for me when I was a young teenager, and I remember clearly the first time I heard those magical grace-notes, which ornament the melody near the beginning of the piece.
I finally learned it, many years later, and incorporated it into my CD piano among friends. The iridescent flourishes of the melody are made even more beautiful because of the contrasting simplicity of the left hand accompaniment, which remains almost unchanged throughout the lullaby. While practising this (and other works by Chopin) I use the same techniques which I demonstrate in my video about learning to play Chopin.
When I perform the Berceuse I usually pair it with the Barcarolle, and its dreams of Venetian gondolas and gondoliers. Now I can hardly imagine one, without the other. Here are both of them. I hope you enjoy.
Both recorded at the Banff Centre’s Rolston Recital Hall.
the unbearable lightness of french piano music
While preparing a video on teaching the piano music of Debussy, Satie and Ravel, I can’t resist posting this live performance of mine. From a concert in Victoria, BC called “Notes from Paris” here is the Fugue from Ravel’s suite “Le tombeau de Couperin.” A piece of music called ‘tombeau’ (tomb) is a ‘memorial.’ The poignancy you hear is even more compelling when you know that each movement of the suite was dedicated to a close friend of Ravel’s who was killed in WW I. The French still call it La grande guerre. During that war, Ravel was a truck driver, stationed at Verdun.
Listen to this ethereal music, and remember lives of young soldiers lost, and lives of survivors forever changed.
sight-reading matters
If you’ve watched my sight-reading video https://vimeo.com/528132450 you may be interested in a list of the suggestions there, including some things that I only referred to in passing. These are things I’ve found useful — both to my students, and to myself.
MOVE YOUR EYES TO LOOK AHEAD
Get past the challenging spots, and especially be determined not to let your eyes get stuck at the end of a line, or other visual division point.
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE SCORE
Looking up and down between the music and your hands, really slows down your sight-reading. We actually have a ‘lower peripheral vision‘ which means that we can see where our hands are (sort of) without taking our eyes off the music.
LEAVE THINGS OUT
Learn to see what’s important and what’s not. It does take practise to not play something that you see in front of you.
MAKE IT UP
Particularly if you’re sight-reading a popular song, which you know. Use your ears as well as your eyes, and make it sound ‘right.’ Don’t get stuck with what’s on the page.
FIND A REASON TO SIGHT-READ OFTEN
Give yourself a chance to get better; it will happen more quickly than you might imagine.
MAKE SIGHT-READING OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOURSELF
Here are suggestions I didn’t get to in the video:
• you’re a parent with a kid learning the violin or the clarinet? Sight-read their accompaniment, or learn to play it.
• you sing in a choir? Sight read the music, or the accompaniment.
• you’ve got a kid brother or kid sister also playing the piano? Say YES when your piano teacher asks if you’d like to play a duet together
• you’re in your high school band? Ask your crush if they’ll play some music with you. Get your music teacher to find music for the two of you, or search online.
• you’re in college, studying music? Never say no to chamber music or accompanying, even if you think you don’t have time.
• you’re in college, not studying music, just playing piano for fun? Go to the music department, and read the notice board until you find someone who’s looking to make music with someone at your level.
• you’re an adult learning to play the piano, or improving the skills you have? Ask your teacher if there are any other students (kids or adults) at your level, who want to play piano duets.
KEEP GOING!
Once you’ve started to play, be determined to maintain the rhythmic beat. You can always go back and check on the hard spots later.
FIND SOMEONE TO PLAY WITH
It could be a singer, a piano duet partner, another instrumentalist … sight-reading is much more fun together with someone else.
If you’re isolating because of COVID, and you can’t find a duet partner, why not record one part of a duet, then sight read the other part, as you play along. Try recording without a click track!
What are your favourite sight-reading techniques, which I’ve missed mentioning? Leave a comment and let us know.
in praise of sir donald
Donald Francis Tovey, that is. Know him? He was a musicologist and composer, active in the UK during the first third of the twentieth century. But that potted description doesn’t do justice to his writings about music: always perceptive, insightful, erudite — and witty. Here’s a DFT classic, on Beethoven:
We do not expect a return to the home tonic to be associated with a theme we have never heard before, any more than we expect on returning from our holiday to find our house completely redecorated and refurnished and inhabited by total strangers.
Beethoven, Oxford University Press 1945.
I first made my acquaintance when, early in my teens, I bought a copy of the Associated Board edition of the Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues: the Well-Tempered Clavier. Each Prelude and Fugue is preceded by a short essay, describing the musical and technical challenges, form and interpretation, and including such bon mots as this:
The old reading that adds a low B-flat octave in an additional bar is perhaps the most Philistine single printed chord in the whole history of music.
The tempo is lively enough for the last four bars to give considerable trouble, however they are fingered.
both from Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues, J. S. Bach, Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, in print since 1924.
And I haven’t even mentioned his Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, or the best essay ever conceived on the piano concertos of Mozart. Sir Donald was writing 100 years ago, with knowledge and humility: a potent combination.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Sir_Donald_Francis_Tovey.jpg
A fine new Beethoven biography
Jan Caeyers is a Belgian conductor, who has written a fabulous biography of Ludwig van B, first published in Dutch in 2009, and recently translated into English. It’s a pleasure to read a book like this, sympathetically written by such a literate musician.
He tells Beethoven’s story well — puncturing a few myths along the way, but portraying with eloquence and empathy Beethoven’s personality, foibles, and struggles. The book is not overbalanced with musical analysis, but does cover the pivotal works (Eroica, Fidelio, Missa solemnis, among many others) in a way that can be appreciated equally by professionals and amateurs. Several times, I found myself going to YouTube to fill the gaps in my aural memory.
Caeyers is also good at discussing Beethoven’s personal relationships. Not only the love affairs (including the mysterious ‘immortal beloved‘) but his tempestuous friendships, and of course, the long and ultimately tragic episode involving his nephew, Karl.
It’s a big book (almost 700 pages including indexes) but I came away with a rekindled understanding of the man, his time, and — above all — his music.
this brave new world of music festival adjudicating
I love adjudicating. I love the travel; the chance to evaluate the results of keen and dedicated work by students and teachers; the opportunity to say encouraging things (along with perhaps a few corny jokes); watch proud parents; get to know the kids who play more than once; find the best coffee in town; check out the local bookstore; agonize over award choices; breathe the spring air (it’s almost always spring); explore a town that’s new to me, or one I’ve been to many times before.
I just finished adjudicating, from home, a very fine music festival in south-eastern BC. It was a rather different experience, as you can see. But minus the coffee shops and the evening walks (often snatched from a crazy schedule) a couple of things remained the same.
The kids were great. I couldn’t see them as well as I would have in person — I couldn’t watch them walk to the piano, or notice who welcomed them back to their seats afterwards. I couldn’t enjoy the buzz of the audience, or the kibitzing with my secretary. But the dedication that went into their performances was clear; and, behind the scenes, the determination of their teachers, the encouragement of their parents and friends. They still dressed up to perform. Many of them still bowed after they played.
When I recorded my video adjudications, I couldn’t adjust what I said based on the expression on their faces. I couldn’t ask them questions. But I could pretend they were there in front of me. Though I probably won’t find out what they thought of it all, perhaps “being in the Festival” was one kind-of-normal thing in a difficult year.
Adjudicating another competition a few months ago, I had the opportunity of brief Zoom meetings with each performer afterwards. Then too, I was moved by their dedication, and the directness of their response when I asked “how are you doing?” Sometimes it was clear that “not good” was the answer.
It’s our young people who may have suffered most from this calamity, a year old and still not done. May those of us who can, find ways to help them get their lives back.
all i really need to know i learned at the music festival*
When I was a young piano student, spring was always Music Festival time. “Everything memorized by Christmas” was the rule; then the subsequent three months were a crescendo of practising, extra lessons, and anxiety. Students, teachers, parents were all involved, to the extent that ‘life after the Festival’ sometimes seemed to be a mirage.
One of the greatest humiliations you could suffer was to be ‘pulled’ from your Festival class by your teacher, for lack of preparation — or, as in the case of a fellow student of mine, because you went skiing the weekend before the Festival, instead of staying home to practise. Even the threat of being ‘pulled’ was enough to inspire renewed commitment in those last stages of polishing your pieces. Competition was intense. My piano teacher took tranquilizers before heading off to listen to the Festival classes. On the way to the Festival, one parent — trying to relieve the tension, of course — wondered whether they could arrange to break another kid’s fingers. Everyone laughed.
But it was also the era of the great adjudicators: true piano pedagogues such as Phyllis Schuldt, Sandra Munn, Boris Roubakine, and especially Robin Wood. It would be standing room only when Dr. Wood got up to adjudicate.
Fortunately, music festivals in recent years have begun to downplay the stress-making aspects. We refer to players as ‘performers,’ rather than ‘contestants.’ The adjudicator doesn’t ring a bell when it’s time for you to start playing. Marks are not usually announced any more, and class placings have become gold and silver instead of first and second. We want to honour excellence while still recognizing everyone’s personal achievements — and that’s a good thing.
Last fall, I was delighted to be asked to adjudicate — remotely, of course — the British Columbia Registered Music Teachers’ annual competition. Aside from the utter enjoyment of hearing such fine playing, the result of much dedicated teaching and learning, it gave me an opportunity to think again of my philosophy of piano-playing, and of competitions. Here’s some of what I wrote:
“I want to congratulate, first, all of the performers. You were each worthy to be chosen by your local BCRMTA chapter, and all of you gave performances that impressed me with your technical skill and preparation, and moved me with your musical interpretations. I was impressed, too, by the quality of the videos you submitted. Knowing how to use technology to capture your performances has always been important, but now more than ever. I also congratulate your teachers, for the hours of expert guidance and never-ending encouragement they give to you; as well as your families, your friends — all those who help you find the time to practise, and who support you when you need it most.
“I was glad to see, reading your biographies, that many of you have a wide range of activities beyond playing the piano. We pianists can be a solitary lot, if we’re not careful, and you are all doing well in making sure that, although piano is an important part of your lives, it’s not the only important thing. Several of you are finding creative ways to share your music with others, and to explore interests beyond music, too. Bravo for your imagination, your energy and your enthusiasm.
“The results of a competition are always just a snapshot of one moment in your musical careers. In any contest, if you don’t win the award you were trying for, know that there are always more opportunities, should you choose to take them. And of course, in the long run, it is the joy that music brings to ourselves and others which is most important, not whether we have won first place.
“Thanks again for including me in your music-making. Most of all, I hope that I am able to hear you in person sometime.”
Dr. Jamie Syer – Bergen, Alberta
https://bcrmta.bc.ca/piano-competition-2020/
*with apologies to Robert Fulghum