Improving with the Guidance of a Good Teacher

 Seven months have gone by since I added anything to this music blog. Not that the world has been waiting with bated breath for my words. During those months, I've been practicing flute regularly with the instruction and encouragement of my teacher, Vladimir Silva, who, until his retirement played with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. During his entire career, he's also been a teacher, and he knows how to do it. He's been helping me work on my sound, mainly, but also on other important aspects of music. The lessons consist of warmup exercises and playing duets together.

For a few months we played the duets that Mozart wrote based on the Magic Flute and after that we worked on the six Telemann sonatas for two flutes. Recently we've been playing the first of the Mozart duets, K 156, originally written for flute and violin. Playing Mozart is an extraordinary experience. The more I work on the piece, which is a bit beyond my ability, the more I find in it. He is terrifically inventive, with one idea flashing after another. I have the feeling that I'm inside Mozart's mind while I'm playing, marveling at how his mind could have conceived of this wonderful music.

Especially in the first movement of the first duet, there are a lot of very fast passages. Working on them intensely and slowly and trying to get them close to the right tempo is better than playing scale exercises. The challenge is to keep my hands relaxed and to play with a full tone even when I'm struggling with the technical difficulties. The faster I try to play, the stiffer my fingers get, which is just the opposite of what should happen,

This is a matter of paying attention to a lot of things at the same time. Several of the books that I've read about musicianship describe a kind of detached involvement. The performer should be totally present in the music, yet she should also stand back from her playing. I have occasionally felt this happening and hoped to recover the feeling, but it's not something you can try to do,

Before I started taking lessons with Vladimir, I tried working on my own for nearly a year. My plan was to find my own voice. But it didn't work. I wasn't able to guide myself, and I was frustrated and lost motivation. Now, knowing that I have to prepare for a lesson, I invest a lot of effort.

Taking lessons from a man who is not exactly young, but who is still younger than I am, is nothing like taking lessons from a teacher when you're a kid. Vladimir and I have become friends, but that doesn't stop him from interrupting me while I'm playing and pointing out what I'm doing wrong (and sometimes right). I'm finding that the more I improve, the more I enjoy playing, even the warmup exercises. I'm getting close to producing a sound that I like on the flute, and that's reinforcing.

Should I regret that I didn't begin playing flute until I was in my late sixties? Probably not. Two of my friends were excellent flute players when they were young and got bored with flute and went over to piano. Maybe if I'd played flute for as long as I played clarinet and sax, by now I would be bored with flute and taking sax lessons.