Comments on: Teaching and Performing

By: Matan Mintz

Matan Mintz — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:07:52 +0000

Hello Mr Gerhardt,
I’ve enjoyed this blog off and on for a few years now, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences. It is evident from your blog posts how busy you are but when you have a few moments would it be possible to tell me your preferred fingering for the tricky passage at the end of the Ligeti sonata (after the fermata, the alternating accented f-f#’s, and then do you repeat the same fingering an octave up?)? I really like how you play it on the youtube video, so I’m just curious if I have the same fingering and simply have to practice it a lot more. Since you express generosity of spirit to young cellists in this blog post it seemed like a good opportunity to bother you 🙂
Thanks,
Matan Mintz

By: cellist at Mcgill

cellist at Mcgill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:47:46 +0000

Dear Mr. Gerhardt,

I am a Mcgill student who attended your masterclass on Sunday evening. It is difficult for me to explain here the reasons behind the exaltation I felt after watching you for these few moments.

You inspired me not only as an amazing cellist (I learned so much just from the few notes you played in your demonstrations), an exceptional artist, a caring teacher but mostly, as a well-rounded human being, a true role model. I have become one of your dedicated fan and I can only hope to play for you at some point and receive more of your precious insights. For now, I will listen to your CDs, enjoy your blog and watch YouTube videos of your interviews, so thank you for keeping these up!

I am simply thankful to have made your discovery and wanted to share my appreciation.

Sincerely,
cellist at Mcgill

By: Alban

Alban — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:37:52 +0000

Dear Donald, thank you very much for your most flattering entry – it will help me to get over the next three hours trying to learn the two Boccherini Concerti for next week…
And I thought I did in measure 2 of Beethoven g: 1 – 3 – 4 – 2, then 1 – 2 – 4 – 2 (I had tried it out, since I didn’t like the legato or rather the lack of it when I did it before) – glad you like it. A propos Beethoven A: my fourth finger (it’s the pinky, but cellists can’t count, and we say: thumb, and then fingers 1-4) is very short and very week. I do use it occasionally, but whenever there is a way I try not to. It is also much less fleshy than the the third, so the sound tends to be a bit richer when I do play particularly a long note with it. Oh, I love the Prokofiev, and with all the character Cecile put into it it was definitely the best version I have ever been part of 🙂
Thanks for coming and bringing your students, best wishes,
Sincerely Yours Alban Gerhardt

By: Donald Pistolesi

Donald Pistolesi — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:28:51 +0000

In 1965, my teacher went on a 12-week Russian tour with the Cleveland Orchestra, leaving me alone with the dâ€Albert concerto. I made a valiant try but just couldnâ€t get it into my fingers. Forty years later, I came across your recording with Edinburgh. It inspired me to make another attempt. Now I feel better. I was happy to read your positive comments as a performer at the â€œLadies Morningâ€ concert series. Attendance is always good, and the audience most respectful and attentive. In December, practically everyone in Montreal has a cough. When you started in on the SECOND repeat in the first movement of Beethoven g, I feared I would not survive to the end without exploding. But it is a phenomenon of mass concentration â€“ the power a large number of people intent on the same thing. I couldnâ€t believe my eyes when I saw your fingering for measure 2 of Beethoven g: 1 - 2 - 4 - 2 - 1 (and again two measures later). Not even the Navarre fingerings are that idiosyncratic. But I tried it at home, and it does work. Also playing the third note of Beethoven A with the third finger. Not because the fourth finger is weak, but because the hand is better balanced to vibrate? I guess I will have to rethink everything yet again. My students were thrilled with your Prokoffiev. I played in a ballet orchestra for twenty-eight years, and it brought back my happiest evenings in the pit - haunting melodious waltzes alternating with gruff and grotesque drive. Sincerely, Donald Pistolesi

By: Alban

Alban — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:31:32 +0000

Hi Brian,

oops, I didn’t hear the many coughers – speaks for the good acoustics of the hall, that you can hear me, but I can’t hear you 🙂 Or maybe my ear plugs are really that excellent that I can hear my piano partner, but not the coughers. It felt very attentive though…
The encore was on of the Slavonic Dances by Dvorak, op.72 book 1 (?) No.10 in e-minor, yes beautiful piece!
Best wishes,
Alban

By: Brian in Montreal

Brian in Montreal — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:12:19 +0000

I am glad you enjoyed the LMMC reception in Montreal! I was one of the quiet and attentive audience you mentioned – and am glad what I found to be the many ‘coughers’ didn’t bother you. But I have a question – what was that beautiful piano duet you played with Ms. Licad as the second encore? I have heard it many times before – but confess I do not know from whence it comes. Thank-you for a memorable concert and please come again to Montreal and the LMMC

By: Alban

Alban — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:47:42 +0000

Thanks for your input, Mr.Delson, I adore Arnold Steinhardt and will get his book as soon as possible, as his son Alexej, the creator of my website, has told me already about it with great praise.
Same thanks to you, Mr.Barber, for writing and now recommending this book about Carlos Kleiber to us – too many people say they love him without trying to truly understand where he came from and what he was doing. Why do I think so? Because he was such an incredibly subtile musician, no grand gestures (musically speaking) and exaggerations, just music making to the core, and nobody is even trying to follow his lead – the fashion goes into the most obvious and the least subtile, and I find this very frustrating. Just yesterday I read a review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about this new Carmen interpretation, and the young lady, who is singing Carmen, couldn’t have done a more clichÃ©e job than that (I watched excerpts on youtube): loud and rather vulgar, piano passages didn’t exist. Pity…

By: Jeff Delson

Jeff Delson — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:28:21 +0000

There is a great story in Arnold Steinhardt’s book Violin Dreams where he goes to a renowned violinist to learn the secret of Bach’s famous d minor partita and the violinist then proceeds to dance the partita for him. I wish I had the book in front of me so I could get the details right but it expressed the same frustration Mr. Steinhardt had with being able to adequately “explain” how to play the music.
I admire the honesty of your blog, Mr. Gerhardt. Bravo to you and Ms. Licad on an absolutely sublime performance in Montreal. I feel very lucky to have been there to hear it.

By: Dr Charles Barber

Dr Charles Barber — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:24:50 +0000

Thanks for this mention of CK. I knew and studied with him from 1989 to the end, and the (two) rehearsal films of him that exist barely do the remotest justice. His command of language, pulse, metaphor, concept and phrase and baton — this was all the stuff of genius.

I’ve written a bio of him, coming out at Rowman & Littlefield in summer 2010. It draws on the 200 letters, postcards, faxes, cartoons, musical examples he sent over the years. I think you’ll be amazed. I came to realize that he heard differently, and that much of what he could do will remain forever inexplicable.

Thx again for yours.

Charles Barber
City Opera Vancouver
http://www.cityoperavancouver.com

PS: You might enjoy this BBC Radio 3 piece we recently did about Carlos: http://www.mediafire.com/?wn4lnykyqkk