Best Conservatories

[lizz93]

Hi everyone,

Got this question were most ppl have very different opinions about..
But anyway, does somebody know (straight from the facts) which
are the TOP TEN conservatories/music schools from the whole world?

 :DKind Regards, and thanking you in advance,

Lizzy

[pianisten1989]

Julliard is probably in the top. And I would think Geneve and Paris also are very high... Maybe Moscow or St. Petersburg. Though, I don't think there is any objective sight of the best conservatories...

[giannalinda]

Julliard, Music at Menlo, San Francisco COnservatory, and anything else like that

[aslanov]

from what I have heard from my 2 teachers, and my current teacher's mother, who gives master classes around the world, and her colleagues, that most schools and conservatories in north america are rubbish in comparison to european ones. So, on that basis, and from just......think about the world class musicians that you listen to....other than Yo Yo Ma, i cant think of any from juilliard.

lets not forget Hamelin and Gould but..my point is.....there are relatively few.

[drpiano]

What a silly response. Judge a conservatory by the general quality of the students they turn out, not by the number of superstars they produce. Going to school is about learning, and developing professional competence in your field of study. Consider whether a given school can assist in that way; presumably most people going to school have more to learn before they start developing their career, otherwise why go?

Also, there are many 'world class' musicians who don't have transatlantic careers. If you live in Europe, then of course you will hear more professional musicians who have been trained in Europe. If you lived in North America, you would find that most of the professional musicians you hear in concert would have been trained in North America.

If you have any actual evidence as to why European conservatories offer a better education (ie, what features distinguish it from North American music education), then let's hear it.

[aslanov]

well....im not really knowledgeable on this, but i would use this line of reasoning, if i were asked to argue for that point.

First, we agree that classical music.......is well.......european. almost all well known, even less known, classical, romatnic, baroque, are all european. bach to rachmaninoff to ravel to scharwenka.

These great composers, were (in most cases) also great pianists. There are also the great musicians, not just composers, of the time, such as richter, backhaus, gilels, ziloti(who i think has done some composing), arrau, neuhas, etc, etc.

Lets say that these people and more, are the foundations of classical music. They hold all the knowledge of the music itself, instruments, interpretation, etc, etc.

These people also teach the next generation of musicians what they know about music, they teach them all the things that made them the admired musicians they are.

Then how does this knowledge, and everything about this music, transpose over to north america? The most obvious way is by students of the "next generation" i spoke of, learning in europe, and moving to north america.  Now one considers just how many of them actually come to north america, most of them come to perform, then retired in their "teaching" age back to their homeland. some stay and teach, but those few students that they manage to teach (relative to the number of musicians and music schools in north america) are very little indeed.

anyway, my argument would be along those lines. But then again , i dont know much about this education of music business anyway.

[richard black]

No such thing. It absolutely depends on the instrument you're talking about, for a start.

[drpiano]

well....im not really knowledgeable on this, but i would use this line of reasoning, if i were asked to argue for that point.

Okay, fair enough. The argument you make might have been very persuasive at some historical point, but a lot has happened since the beginning of the 20th century. (!) Many great composers and pianists (not to mention other musicians) fled Europe and remained in North America for significant periods of time, for various reasons. Moreover, whole generations of North American born composers, instrumentalists, etc. have made very important contributions to 'classical' music in their own right.
The English language, like classical music, has its origin in Europe. That doesn't mean that all the great works of literature written in English are by writers born (and trained) in England. The same is true of music.

[cherub_rocker1979]

from what I have heard from my 2 teachers, and my current teacher's mother, who gives master classes around the world, and her colleagues, that most schools and conservatories in north america are rubbish in comparison to european ones. So, on that basis, and from just......think about the world class musicians that you listen to....other than Yo Yo Ma, i cant think of any from juilliard.

lets not forget Hamelin and Gould but..my point is.....there are relatively few.

I don't blame you for believing your teachers, but they have given you some very false information!  Schools such as Curtis Institute, Juilliard and Indiana University, are among the greatest music schools in the world.  I can think of many great artists who studied at those schools. Jonathan Biss, Shura Cherkassky, Miles Davis, Richard Goode, Hilary Hahn, Cecile Licad, Ned Rorem, Peter Serkin and Yuja Wang all studied at Curtis.  For Juilliard, we have:  Van Cliburn, Chick Corea, Renee Fleming, Philip Glass, Wynton Marsalis, Hiroko Nakamura, Gil Shaham, Joseph Villa, David Korevaar and Horacio Gutierrez.  And Indiana alumni include people such as: Jamey Aebersold, Joshua Bell, Frederic Chiu and Leonard Slatkin.  I think your teachers need to get their facts straight!

[m]

But anyway, does somebody know (straight from the facts) which
are the TOP TEN conservatories/music schools from the whole world?

Well, straight from the facts, then the top ten is MOSCOW CONSERVATORY.

I don't blame you for believing your teachers, but they have given you some very false information!  Schools such as Curtis Institute, Juilliard and Indiana University, are among the greatest music schools in the world.  I can think of many great artists who studied at those schools. Jonathan Biss, Shura Cherkassky, Miles Davis, Richard Goode, Hilary Hahn, Cecile Licad, Ned Rorem, Peter Serkin and Yuja Wang all studied at Curtis.  For Juilliard, we have:  Van Cliburn, Chick Corea, Renee Fleming, Philip Glass, Wynton Marsalis, Hiroko Nakamura, Gil Shaham, Joseph Villa, David Korevaar and Horacio Gutierrez.  And Indiana alumni include people such as: Jamey Aebersold, Joshua Bell, Frederic Chiu and Leonard Slatkin.  I think your teachers need to get their facts straight!

Just to get some idea, S. Rachmaninov, A. Scriabin, J. Lhevinne, S. Prokofiev, S. Feinberg, Y. Flier, Y. Zak, E. Gilels, S. Richter, L. Oborin, L. Berman, V. Ahkenazi, Bashkirov, I. Pogorelich, A. Gavrilov, M. Pletnev, S. Babayan, B. Berezovski, N. Luganski, B. Davidovitch, R. Lupu... all came from MC.
 
If we go further to violin and cello how about Kogan, Oistrakh, Rostropovitch, Hirshhorn, Bashmet, Gutman...

Those are just from top of my head.

Best, M

[franzliszt2]

Is Moscow really the best now though? All the students from there are usually very solid technically, but they tend to be hardcore bangers and play the same repertoire (Scriabin sonatas, Rach 3, Tchaik 1, Rach op39 etc...(etc doesn't really work, I could probably list the repertoire they play in about 5 minutes) Prok 3, Prok etude, Tchaik seasons, Rach 2nd sonata, Pletnev transcripions, Schuman symphonic etudes, Beethoven appasionata, Prok 7.

I think it speaks volumes that almost no foriegn students go to Moscow to study, and that the Russians are all coming out of Moscow. The technical training really is unrivaled though, but that tends to be if they went to the Central music school from an early age.

They say Moscow is just like anyother place now, you have great students and many many bad ones. The bad ones will of course just be there becasue they pay a lot of money, but it does affect the whole image of the school when you see these people playing.

[giannalinda]

Dartmouth, Julliard,

[birba]

Someone once said, there's no such thing as great teachers.  Only great students.  Maybe a slight exaggeration, but I think the top schools attract the top talent.  Therefore, they turn out the top musicians.  Adele Marcus, the "flavor-of-the-month" at Julliard for many years, had all the best students, because they all wanted to study with her.  Idem, for Rosina Lhevinne, before her.  Not to speak of Stefan Neuhaus - who only had his father's name.  Not his talent as a pedagogue.  Now THERE was a "teacher". (Heinrich Neuhaus).  But then again, he, too,  had the creme de la creme in Moscow.

[twiltot]

liszt academy is good....(I'm not saying best but...)  it makes you study, if you can't pass the scale exam in march, you fail and repeat the year but you have only one chance to fail...

[lohshuhan]

what about any of the UK conservatoires? 

Alexander Subdin (i think thats his name), graduated from the Royal Academy of Music. 

[communist]

Is it true all the students from Viennese conservatories only play:  Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and the Second Viennese School?'

that is what someone told me.

[jgallag]

Someone once said, there's no such thing as great teachers.  Only great students.  Maybe a slight exaggeration, but I think the top schools attract the top talent.  Therefore, they turn out the top musicians.  Adele Marcus, the "flavor-of-the-month" at Julliard for many years, had all the best students, because they all wanted to study with her.  Idem, for Rosina Lhevinne, before her.  Not to speak of Stefan Neuhaus - who only had his father's name.  Not his talent as a pedagogue.  Now THERE was a "teacher". (Heinrich Neuhaus).  But then again, he, too,  had the creme de la creme in Moscow.

Interesting idea, not that I haven't heard it before. Just not applied to this field. My teacher was Adele Marcus's last student, and she certainly has the talent to be a top musician. Also, in contradiction to what was said above, I thought Frederic Chiu was from Juilliard. I went to one of his masterclasses last spring where my teacher introduced him because they'd been classmates.

[birba]

Well, you've just proved what I said.  You're teacher was probably a great student (already gifted) and the Chiu guy, as well.  In other words, it's not the school that necessarily counts, but the gifted crowd it attracts. (e.g Julliard, Curtis, etc.)

[pwla]

In my opinion the best conservatory is Hochschule fur musik und theater Hannover.Look at the piano teachers and their achivements,or at their students and former students and you will see why.