Viele Grüße
Thomas

Yes, I have made that experience too that cellists love to talk rather about music than about technique. And no, it’s not that cellists are better musicians, but cello playing is much easier, so we have more chances to care about the music – for example in Chambermusic. The piano and violin parts are so much more demanding, and often our cello lines are sight-readable… So we are the guys having more room to worry about music 🙂

It’s funny that you say that the violin is harder to play than the cello, I can’t even play a one octave scale on the cello. But you do make sense about the different methods used in teaching the cello from the violin. I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to the cello, but I’ve had cellists as chamber music coaches, and I actually found them more helpful than violinist or pianists. I guess since they couldn’t really help me with technique they gave me more musical perspective than I might otherwise have gotten.

I think perhaps you could have told those students that they were not ready for the pieces that they were playing.

A couple of years ago I started studying with a violinist in the Boston Symphony. I came to the first lesson armed with the intermediately advanced pieces that I had been working on with my previous teacher. After I played and he told me that I needed to play with more ease and refine the system of “springs” in my bow hold, he, much to my dismay, assigned pieces by Fiorillo, Handel sonatas, one octave scales, and Vivaldi a minor concerto. I went home feeling really depressed, but that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because through slow but steady work on those “easy” pieces and open strings I was able to learn how to produce a much more beautiful sound and my intonation improved drastically. Now I’m playing the Khachaturian and Tchaikovsky violin concertos, and I shudder to think of how bad I would sound had he not made me go back to the basics, and I think students that you encounter would probably, after the initial shock, feel the same way.

thanks a lot for this response, and I must say, that you are probably in the lucky situation of being on a different level than these young students of mine in this masterclass. Maybe I was even exaggerating in my comments in the blog (have to read it again – it was more an outpour of frustration after a very tiring day…) – fact is that I worked very hard with them. I didn’t praise them much but tried desperately to fix at least one or two of the major problems they were facing. Fact is that their level of playing a was such that they couldn’t really improve much because they were battling with the far too difficult pieces. And I was wondering if I should have told them the truth about these pieces are being far too difficult and they should come back with some more appropriate pieces like the Klengel- or Golterman-Concerti.

I think violin is taught much more methodical because it’s so much harder to play – with cello you get away with murder – even some great cellists do have technical inefficiencies with which a violinist could never master a Brahms concerto for example. What I mean is that you have to be much more economical to succeed as a fiddle-player than as cellist, and that’s why the cello is not being taught that well in general (well, that’s my very modest and isolated opinion…:)) Do I make any sense? Maybe I should sleep more, or just learn to sort my ideas a bit… too lazy 🙂

I am 16 years, and play the violin. I understand that most people my age perhaps might not want to hear the harsh truth about their playing, but I find that it does actually inspire hard work. I can’t count all the times that my mom has come knocking on my door and commented on poor intonation, sloppy bow strokes, lack of musical feeling, or even minute details that the average audience member could not discern. Initially it does seem harsh, and I get angry and defensive, but then I feel that I can use that anger to improve and work harder. It is the same with my teacher, she never lets anything slide, and of course during the lesson it can be frustrating to be stopped five times per minute and to play a passage 15 times in a row, but then in the end I realize that this is what differentiates great players from mediocre ones. Maybe next time you could perhaps be more blunt with your students. My friends and I find it more hurtful when we play in a workshop or masterclass and the teacher tells us we sound fantastic when we know played horribly, and then says next and we walk away not having a learned anything. I think serious students come to lessons to hear criticism and be enlightened and must be willing to brave the difficulties, because after all when a students fails an English test, or flunks a class, that is also form of criticism, except we don’t take it as hurtful, but as indication that we need to work harder to achieve better results in the future, and ultimately to achieve our dreams and define our existence.