Just like a famous philosopher said,' You will be benifical from a good teacher once in your life, vice versa.'
Oops! After reading onemanband’s posts, I jumped to conclusions too soon and have made a huge wrong assumption here. I forgot to CHECK THE DATE OF onemanband's POSTs! In case some of the readers who have made the same assumption like I did, please think twice and investigate it. That is how rumor starts by misunderstanding or assumptions.
Since I have already written my post, I may as well leave it here.
After reading onemanband’s posts I feel I have to say something immediately.
Wow! I am so sorry for you and for the teacher.
I am so glad I had so many great piano teachers except this one which made my life so miserable in that year. Here are some incidences.
In one of the lessons he wanted me to interpret differently (put in more schmaltz) in a Beethoven’s Sonata. I was using Urtext score*, so I asked why. I was very sorry I asked. He told me annoyingly “just do what I said” then we went on to another piece.
So I played another one. At the introduction of the piece (the slow part) my finger slid so I played a wrong note. He asked me to stop and started to insult my musical background like how terrible my piano professor was in my undergraduate years. He kind of implied that she and the university where I studied before did not teach me anything. He went on and on for about a good half hour on this famous wrong note. Finally he wanted to demonstrate how the introduction should sound so he played one line of the slow introduction. He made THREE wrong notes in that little slow introduction. I have perfect pitch and know the piece well. It is very easy for me to tell.
Since this incident my nightmare began, in many of the lessons he often used his sarcastic tone on my playing, e.g. I played with instinct and I had no brain or I only got digital fingers nothing else. He even told one of his students (unfortunately it turned in to a rumor) that I am very talented but I don’t practice. My goodness, I practiced at least five hours a day (quality practice with focused concentration and very honest self-criticism) every day religiously (early in the morning and late at night in order to practice on a good piano at school). I had this habit since I was doing my B.Mus degree. I asked myself what did I do to deserve this treatment???
He picked all my recital pieces and turned down every single one of the pieces I wanted to learn. Therefore I assumed he must know the pieces very well. At one of my dress rehearsals, I jumped one entry to another in a Toccata which was about two or three pages long. Afterward this teacher preached to me that I should not have rushed so much!!!!
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In my first year of undergraduate, I must say my playing was very basic. I could play all the notes in difficult pieces like Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz or Prokofiev sonata no. 3 and interpreted the pieces the way I wanted them to be just for the sound sake with no sound quality and totally unorthodox. I am embarrassed to say I didn’t even know what TONE meant at that time. Luckily my ex professor did not give up on me. She started to spoon feeding me painstakingly the phrasing, the pedaling, the interpretations. After a couple years of her treatments, I finally could be independent and have some decent interpretation of my own but tended to over-romanticize with a lot of banging and harsh tone. My ex professor tried to describe me what good tone is like (which is part of the interpretation as far as I considered), but I just could not get what she meant. Not to mention to play well in the pieces that contains some kind of Scherzo mood in it or just Mozart’s easy pieces like rondo. Unfortunately my ex professor could not demonstrate what she meant neither. She finally gave up on that topic. Thankfully at least she showed me the possibility. At that time, I often got some feedback from music festivals that my playing was not in style. I mean if the playing is not in style it is just like a person speaking a foreign language, sounding phony, mis using words in his/her writing which can cause a serious misunderstanding or making lots grammatical mistakes. Of course, I wanted my playing to sound like a professional or at least to sound natural like it is my mother tongue, so I started to read a lot of books about performance and practice, spent fortune on buying CDs and went to many great concerts but still vaguely understood what playing in STYLE meant because music is so abstract you just can not use words to describe it.
Luckily I had a chance to study with Ronald Turini!!
To me RONALD TURINI IS A GREAT TEACHER[/color]He really opened up my ears, my view of interpreting music and answered my questions about TONE and STYLE. To teach tone it is like to teach a blind person what sea or sky looks like, doesn’t matter how well you describe it, he probably can just vaguely know it, but if he has even just one minute to see what sky or sea is like, he will understand how it looks like right away more or less. To teach a deaf person how to speak or pronounce a word, why don’t you give it a try to see how much you can achieve?
I learned a great deal about tone merely through Mr. Turini’s demonstration. His demonstrations just say it all. Listening to his playing has always inspired me to search for the beauty and the color of the tone.
Regarding musical style, let me give you an example, if you ever try to play a Beethoven, Schumann or Brahms’ scherzo-like piece, if you are really keen about playing in style or at least creating a mood you’ll probably realize it is tough to grasp and bring that sarcastic/humorous feeling to the playing (to me it is). It doesn’t matter how many recordings and how many times I listened and tried to understand it. I just don’t get it. But through Mr. Turini’s many times of direct criticism “your sound is too heavy”, “still not quite right” which finally made me understand how to interpret these kinds of pieces and realized “Tone is definitely a part of interpretation.” Through his many demonstrations on how the timing should be (which is impossible to notate in the score and explain verbally), I finally grasped the timing of that millisecond silence or breath which makes a huge difference in creating a mood. To me to have a firm grasp on how to interpret some types of music (especially the ones that require subtle color) I really have to hear it live in a big room sized space in order to feel that ambiance. (Perhaps due to the limitation of the technology and equipment and the acoustics of the recording studio, the sound we hear from recordings is very slightly altered. Also the acoustics of the concert hall and the size of the audience can modify the sound tremendously.)
He also made me finally understand how to interpret Chopin properly (Beauty is supreme over virtuosity most of the time). I mean before I studied with him, my Chopin always sounded like Liszt.
Although he is such an exquisite, heartfelt and supremely natural and original great pianist, he has got an easy-going, down-to-earth and unpretentious personality. He never laughed or looked down at me when I made stupid mistakes or played badly.
He would have the patience to analyze the nature of the problem and try to fix it. When I had no idea about how to interpret a piece, he would work hard with me to give me basic ideas but never wanted me to copy his interpretation. I am sure many of his students have already witnessed his incredible sight reading at the lessons. He is like a walking dictionary whenever you asked him about a piece; he would be able to demonstrate it beautifully to you right away.
Mr. Turini is the most patient and nicest (but direct) teacher I have ever had. Probably some students who have ego problems have been hurt by his directness. You can not expect him to tell you that your playing is good if it is bad and it is immoral to do that. If you have pieces ready to play, he can go on and on until you run out of pieces or until somebody knocks at the door. If you did not practice or practice absent-mindedly for the lesson and kept playing wrong notes or wrong rhythm after he has told you and drilled you so many times, tell me what he can do for you. He can not practice for you or do the jury for you.
I am so grateful that Mr. Turini and my ex teacher spent their time patiently and painstakingly in details to refine my playing. It demands a lot of concentration from them to pick up all these details and a lot of patience to polish them. I mean I could play the notes. If they were lazy, they could have just told me that my playing was not bad and asked me to play it again from beginning to the end to see if I could make it better or asked me to play the next piece. One hour or 50 min. a lesson is very short, after a couple of runs of long pieces, there's not much time left.
Some of my teachers were really mean but in a constructive way and I truly thank them (except one). I mean we pay for their professional opinions not for boosting up our egos. If we played badly or wrongly interpret a piece it is their job to tell us.
Topic: What the F***! I hate my teacher!!!!