I have been fairly obsessive about practicing flute every since I took up the instrument with a teacher, about six years ago, and, while I keep improving, compared to the kind of progress a young person makes, I am hopeless, despite decades of playing musical instruments.
When I was a high school student, I took clarinet lessons with Irving Neidich, the father of Charles Neidich, one of the top classical clarinetists in the world, and I never practiced with the kind of seriousness I am applying to the flute. Still, I got to be pretty good. I attended the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan for two years, and I played in our high school orchestra.
Mr. Neidich made me play a lot of the classic exercises written by Klose, and I did so more or less dutifully. But I don't play through exercises on the flute. I have memorized a warm-up routine that I learned when I was taking saxophone lessons from Stephen Horenstein: scales, arpeggios, long tones, etc. Every day I spend about twenty minutes with that, and then I go on to the pieces I'm working on with my flute teacher, Michael Lukin, who was born and brought up in Moscow and, here at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, studied with Moshe Aron Epstein, who later had a career in Europe.
Right now I'm working a sonata attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, but probably written by one of his sons. At my lessons, Michael plays the piano accompaniment to the Bach, and we also play duets together. Hearing his tone helps me improve my own.
Right now I'm working on the last movement of a duet by Telemann and the first movement of one by a romantic composer, Kummer.
Instead of playing exercises, when I practice, I play the fast passages of these pieces quite slowly, concentrating as much as possible on maintaining as good a sound as I can. If I can play notes written by one of the Bachs or by Telemann, why should I play notes written by a flute virtuoso who is virtually unknown as a composer? However, I will probably never be able to play these passages as fast as they are supposed to be played.
So why am I playing flute at all? I'll never be good enough at it to please myself. There are two good reasons: first, I enjoy it, and, second, by working at these pieces, I am improving my appreciation of music. Indeed, the more I play, the more I marvel at the brilliance of the composers I am playing, and, the more I listen to great musicians play, the more I admire them.
When I was a high school student, I took clarinet lessons with Irving Neidich, the father of Charles Neidich, one of the top classical clarinetists in the world, and I never practiced with the kind of seriousness I am applying to the flute. Still, I got to be pretty good. I attended the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan for two years, and I played in our high school orchestra.
Mr. Neidich made me play a lot of the classic exercises written by Klose, and I did so more or less dutifully. But I don't play through exercises on the flute. I have memorized a warm-up routine that I learned when I was taking saxophone lessons from Stephen Horenstein: scales, arpeggios, long tones, etc. Every day I spend about twenty minutes with that, and then I go on to the pieces I'm working on with my flute teacher, Michael Lukin, who was born and brought up in Moscow and, here at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, studied with Moshe Aron Epstein, who later had a career in Europe.
Right now I'm working a sonata attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, but probably written by one of his sons. At my lessons, Michael plays the piano accompaniment to the Bach, and we also play duets together. Hearing his tone helps me improve my own.
Right now I'm working on the last movement of a duet by Telemann and the first movement of one by a romantic composer, Kummer.
Instead of playing exercises, when I practice, I play the fast passages of these pieces quite slowly, concentrating as much as possible on maintaining as good a sound as I can. If I can play notes written by one of the Bachs or by Telemann, why should I play notes written by a flute virtuoso who is virtually unknown as a composer? However, I will probably never be able to play these passages as fast as they are supposed to be played.
So why am I playing flute at all? I'll never be good enough at it to please myself. There are two good reasons: first, I enjoy it, and, second, by working at these pieces, I am improving my appreciation of music. Indeed, the more I play, the more I marvel at the brilliance of the composers I am playing, and, the more I listen to great musicians play, the more I admire them.
1 comment:
Regards to Mischa.Last I had heard of him he became a Yiddish scholar.As to your post,the key to progress is promoting physical fexibility,you already have the other ingredients.Flexibility should be pursued with zeal and zest and unswerving committment.
Anything that works...
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