September 2011

Teacher Talk

A series of teaching-articles in the Strad Magazine

How do you help stu­dents avoid stage fright? Peter Dufoy, Lon­don, UK
Boris Kuschnir: There’s a simple yet effect­ive psy­cho­lo­gical trick that can help a lot, although it sounds counter-intuitive. Dur­ing the les­son, the teacher should try to give so many instruc­tions – such as about dif­fer­ent forms of vibrato, bow divi­sion, bow changes, dynamic ver­sat­il­ity, phras­ing, glis­sando, volume – that the stu­dents has to take care of them the whole time they play. Keep­ing in mind that the music should always come first, the more instruc­tions the stu­dent has to take care of, the less time they have to be nervous when they perform.