{"id":13488,"date":"2014-07-11T14:34:31","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T21:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/?p=13488"},"modified":"2014-07-11T14:35:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-11T21:35:00","slug":"things-my-coaches-taught-me-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/11\/things-my-coaches-taught-me-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"things my coaches taught me – part one"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Leon_Fleisher\"
Leon Fleisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the years, I’ve had a good many really fine – and some extraordinary – musical coaches, teachers, and mentors. As I was practicing today, one of their bits of sage advice popped into my brain, and I’ve interrupted my D major\/minor scale and arpeggios practice to share it with you. This one comes courtesy of the great pianist and teacher and coach Leon Fleisher<\/a>. I studied at the\u00a0Peabody Conservatory, where he’s taught for over 50 years (he began teaching at the Peabody in 1959), for two years, but didn’t get the opportunity\u00a0to play for him until I was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center<\/a> in the Berkshires of western Massachesetts. We were working on Brahms’ great g minor Piano Quartet, when he suddenly stopped us and demanded<\/p>\n

“Are you making that choice out of convenience, or out of conviction?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the ensuing pregnant pause didn’t give birth to an answer, he said “that’s what I thought!”. It’s a question that I ask myself all the time. As an orchestral musician, where one is learning new repertoire virtually every week – often multiple programs – the answer is often one of convenience. It’s a shame, because when one makes musical decisions based upon personal conviction, the resulting musical product is ever so much more compelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve had a good many really fine – and some extraordinary – musical coaches, teachers, and mentors. As I was practicing today, one of their bits of sage advice popped into my brain, and I’ve interrupted my D major\/minor scale and arpeggios practice to share it with you. This one comes courtesy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[136,247,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chamber-music","category-education","category-the-orchestra-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-3vy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3184,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/30\/brahms-youthful-concerto\/","url_meta":{"origin":13488,"position":0},"title":"brahms’ youthful concerto","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This weekend, the Oregon Symphony is performing the early (op. 15) First Piano Concerto of Johannes Brahms with the great pianist Jon Kimura Parker.\u00a0 It's long been one of my favorite pieces, a stormy, hyper-emotional, post-adolescent expression of the 25 year old Brahms.\u00a0 I only own one recording of this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"brahms","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/brahms-400x355.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":260,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/03\/opening-day-2007\/","url_meta":{"origin":13488,"position":1},"title":"opening day 2007","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"opening day - abbott and costello style!, originally uploaded by nobleviola. A photo courtesy of Astros fanatic (and fabulous cellist) Dorien De Leon (here pictured with her two brothers). It seemed to be the perfect way to celebrate the opening day of major league baseball! Go Mariners!!!","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":500,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/21\/lachrymae\/","url_meta":{"origin":13488,"position":2},"title":"lachrymae","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There are instances where a topic sweeps across the blogosphere, sometimes it's referred to as a \"meme\". I hadn't heard of this before, so I checked dictionary.com and found that a meme is described thusly: a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6718,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/07\/28\/enter-the-snark\/","url_meta":{"origin":13488,"position":3},"title":"enter the snark","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I hate snarkyness. But sometimes, it is just too fun not to wade into the cesspool and get your hip waders fully immersed. Observe, gentle reader, the following video: http:\/\/youtu.be\/skogMzBne6Q It's a video from the 1998 Jerusalem Music Center's quartet masterclass with violinist Isaac Stern and friends. The quartet that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "appreciation"","block_context":{"text":"appreciation","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/appreciations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/skogMzBne6Q\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":489,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/14\/fall-colors\/","url_meta":{"origin":13488,"position":4},"title":"fall colors","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"autumn leaves in beaverton, oregon, originally uploaded by nobleviola. \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In "photography"","block_context":{"text":"photography","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/photography\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":315,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/05\/08\/self-criticism\/","url_meta":{"origin":13488,"position":5},"title":"self criticism","author":"Charles Noble","date":"May 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"self criticism, originally uploaded by nobleviola. A visual representation of the creative process (I'm being pretty nice to myself in this shot).","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}