Lessons

I’ve kept up lessons with three of my private students in Arlington while traveling. In Mexico, we were two, then one hour behind (Mexico doesn’t do Daylight Savings) and the biggest challenges had to do with wifi on my end. Now I’m 6 hours ahead, and I’m giving lessons at 10pm my time. I was in bed watching a documentary on Pablo Casals when a message reached me from a student’s mom wondering if I was actually gonna teach her kid. She wrote much more nicely than that, but it was a good 15 minutes past when we were supposed to start, and I’d totally blanked.

Already it’s hard enough to teach remotely when working on new techniques like shifting or vibrato. I had whole classes of total beginners I taught in that first awful COVID year, and there were things about the screen that actually helped, like extreme closeups of my hands and fingers! I’d never stick my hand in a kid’s face in real life. But those challenges plus me being at the end of a long day with homeschooling… let’s just say I’m not killing it. Yet. The students are so sweet and making amazing progress themselves, so I’m not worried about them at all!

Meanwhile, in that Casals doc (Casals was born here in Tarragona!), there’s some incredible footage of him giving lessons. He could be kind of… unkind. Like, just playing over his students to show them what he meant. But there’s also this clear, lofty expectation he has of them that’s so inspiring. I’ve been trying to play Bach every day, in his honor— and cause it’s just a nice habit if you’ve got the time!— and the words of Patricia Zander have been resonating with me. She was my chamber-music coach my first year at NEC. Our violinist went home to Holland for a month, so Ms. Zander offered the 3 others of us in the group coachings on our solo Bach while Marjolein was away. We were so lucky! The most memorable thing she said was: “When you play Bach, you need to give the impression that you’re playing in tempo. But of course you’re not, exactly. It would be so boring if you were.” Casals’s interpretation of Bach is so fluid. It made me think of how your pulse quickens and slows depending on how excited or calm you are. Working so much these past months on Philip Glass, I’m waaaaaayy more free with those pieces, partly because the cellist he wrote the pieces for, Wendy Sutter, plays them so freely, it unlocked that option for me. Plus I think they would be insufferable without pushing and pulling. I take the “Songs and Poems” title literally, and phrase at times as if there were words. But why don’t I feel that comfy playing Bach that way? “Performance practice?” Tradition? I don’t know.

When I hung out with some friends while we were back home in December, one asked me, “So, tell us what you’ve learned from your time abroad!” And I felt so lame! I had nothing to say! I fumbled a bit and then said how glad I was to be from Boston, both because of how awesome the music scene is, so many great friends whom I miss, and because it’s nice to see it has a good reputation abroad! Or in Mexico anyway. But I don’t really stand by that answer, I was just trying to find something to say. I probably won’t have any good answers to that question, or at least not until after I’ve been home from this trip for a long time and have some perspective. But getting this new lens to view Bach, via Ms. Zander via Casals, via getting to see and play in his old stomping grounds, is a nice takeaway.

I can’t seem to photodump on the “Journal” page like I used to, so anyone who’s reading this who doesn’t follow me on Instagram, that’s an easier place for me to share pics. In the meantime, this was the Roman aqueduct we walked across right near Sant Salvador, where Casals built his home before he left Spain.