August 2011

Teacher Talk

A series of teaching-articles in the Strad Magazine

Is it import­ant to play etudes and present­a­tion pieces per­fectly?
Car­ola Barnes, Alberta, Canada
Boris Kuschnir: Etudes should be learnt and per­formed as per­fectly as pos­sible. Most of the time, their main pur­pose is simply to focus on a clear tech­nical task and not so much on the musical aspects. On the other hand,
while also try­ing to reach a very high tech­nical level, I like to focus on their
musical aspects, prais­ing indi­vidual char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the student’s play­ing and pay­ing less atten­tion to small tech­nical mistakes.

What do you recom­mend stu­dents do to avoid mak­ing
tense facial expres­sions when play­ing?
Janet Smith, Gloucester, Uk
Boris Kuschnir: There are many ways the teacher can help the stu­dent, depend­ing on the amount of facial move­ment. One good way I have found is to con­vince the stu­dent that all the expres­sion they seek can be made fully with the move­ment of the hands – espe­cially the right hand instead of using the facial muscles in exag­ger­ated mime. And of course, their whole pos­ture must be relaxed while play­ing. Another option is for them to prac­tise play­ing and speak­ing at the same time in order to relax the muscles.