Assistants/Tutors who teach ur Ideas

[green]

I hear of big name teachers in Europe who have maybe 3 assistants who coach their students.

Anyone venture how u would distinguish between 'coaching' and 'teaching'? Has anyone worked in this way with 'tutors' before? Either having tutors to help u learn piano or tutors who are your piano assistants for teaching?

[bernhard]

Teachers who are also performers think first of their performing careers.

Constant travelling means that regular lessons are not a possibility. This means that either you will have one off master classes, or you will have to put up with the assistant while the master is on tour.

Most performers teach a different level altogether. they are into interpretation and musicality. Technique and pracice methodology are taken for granted at this stage.

Most teachers of this level have no patience/interest in technical/practice problems, and either their students have already sorted them all out, or they will not be accepted as students at all. On the other hand sometimes a compromise is attempted: the assistant deals (as best as he can) with the student's technical and practice problems, so that the master can devote himself to interpretation and musicality.

Also many outstanding pianists do not know how they do what they do, since it s deeply buried into their uncosncious. So they cannot teach technique at all, even though they can do it to perfection.

A ver yinteresting account of such an assistant/master/pupil relationship is given in the book "Arrau on Music and Performance" by Joseph Horowitz (Dover). Arrau had an assistant teacher, and most of the work was done by his assistant. At one point Garrick Olsson had some lessons with Arrua (and his assistant. Both are interviewed inthe book and tell of their experiences. Arraus teacher (Martin Krause) also had five daughters that acted as his assistants, and so did Clara Schumann (one of her daughters was a much hated - by the students - assistant). so it is a very common system.

Best wishes.
Bernhard.