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The Herald (Glasgow)
July 4, 2012 Wednesday
1 Edition
Mulling over a lesson in teaching musicians
Kate Molleson on a bid to develop new talent in a low-risk and fun environment
The sun was setting low over Duart Castle, the CalMac fleet
criss-crossed the Sound of Mull and, through a midge-infested
twilight, strains of Bruckner and Mozart filtered up from the grand
banqueting hall below. This was the annual Mendelssohn on Mull
festival, so-called after Felix Mendelssohn s famous trip to the
Hebrides in 1829, and special because it does more than simply
parachute nice concerts into posh places.
There is that too, but the emphasis here is on developing young
professional musicians in an environment that s low-risk and fun. The
festival is part-summer school, part-concert series for a hand-picked
bunch of burgeoning players who have just finished or are nearing the
end of their formal training. They come here to soften the harsh jolt
between music student and freelance musician.
The format is simple. The participants spend a week working
intensively alongside mentors.
During that week they give concerts around Mull and Iona: in village
churches, stately homes, the odd decaying castle and the highlight for
many Iona Abbey. Tickets are free, and are snapped up by locals and
tourists, and the pubs of Tobermory host gaggles of musicians late
into the night.
The atmosphere is warm, constructive and I can testify participatory.
Last year I went along to review concerts but was more or less ordered
to bring along my clarinet and play in one of the concerts. Unorthodox
press coercion? Well, as a tactic for imparting the spirit of the
festival, it worked a treat.
The man who s been in charge of the festival for the past 10 years is
Levon Chilingirian, first violinist of the Chilingirian Quartet and a
committed chamber musician and pedagogue. Born in Cyprus to Armenian
parents, he emigrated with his family to the UK in the early 1960s and
came of age in a London full of music-making.
I started playing in small groups at college, he told me, but mostly I
learned about chamber music from amateurs. There was a circle of
Jewish émigrés in London who gathered once a week. They lived for
this. More than the professionals, these amateurs had an incredible
love and knowledge of the repertoire.
Chilingirian now teaches at the institution where he studied, London s
Royal College of Music. But he s more interested in what can be
learned outside the college gates.
Take young musicians into beautiful and remote places, and they can
focus and experiment. That s why Pablo Casals took groups to Prades in
rural France; it s why Sándor Végh set up Prussia Cove on the cliffs
of Cornwall, and why Marlboro [a summer school in small-town Vermont]
still attracts Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode as directors.
At Mull it s partly environment, partly ethos that does it.
Chilingirian hand-picks his participants: a combination of those who
have been before and new players; some very new to chamber music, some
dead scared when they arrive and then we see them flower. He also
hand-picks his mentors. Whether they re members of his own quartet,
soloists, teachers or orchestral players, they all share a core set of
musical values.
Over a group dinner halfway through last year s festival, Chilingirian
told the assembled musicians: I m glad to hear so many of you playing
in the right way. Remember: don t be tempted by the dark side. By dark
side he meant a certain style of playing. There is a strong sense at
music colleges these days that the ideal is to be a soloist, he later
explained. It encourages the wrong mentality.
The greatest soloists listen to what the orchestra is doing. They
spend their summers playing chamber music. And they teach. That, above
all, is the important thing.
Many of Chilingirian s colleagues spent time at Prussia Cove, and the
set of values he encourages good articulation, good phrasing, good
sound, sympathetic ears; musicians who will be totally part of the
group, not individuals is a typically Véghian mantra.
Chilingirian broadens the heritage: I m not sure I d call myself a
disciple of Sándor Végh in the way that others are, he says, but
certainly we re all trying to uphold the marvellous central-European
school of the Amadeus Quartet and [Austrian musicologist] Hans Keller.
The ideal is that we teach without saying too much.
So he and the other mentors impart their experience by playing
alongside their students. Keller coined the phrase wordless functional
analysis , in which music is analysed through sound alone.
Chilingirian s approach, then, could be called wordless functional
teaching .
Judging by the shrieks of laughter cutting through the dreamy sunset
at Duart Castle, his positive pedagogy has worked on the morale front,
at least. These students are running on a low-sleep,
high-encouragement euphoria. When I sat to rehearse Brahms s Clarinet
Quintet with the Chilingirian Quartet, I got a taste of it too. I hadn
t practised for years. I was dreading the humiliation of playing with
a serious string quartet. But as the violins sang their opening
thirds, as cellist Stephen Orton added his restless counterpoint and
smiled at me for my entry, I forgot my self-pity and got on with
playing. Two days later my performance was as rough as I deserved but
I enjoyed every minute of it.
Mendelssohn on Mull is at venues around Mull and Iona until July 7.
www.mullfest.org.uk
July 4, 2012 Wednesday
1 Edition
Mulling over a lesson in teaching musicians
Kate Molleson on a bid to develop new talent in a low-risk and fun environment
The sun was setting low over Duart Castle, the CalMac fleet
criss-crossed the Sound of Mull and, through a midge-infested
twilight, strains of Bruckner and Mozart filtered up from the grand
banqueting hall below. This was the annual Mendelssohn on Mull
festival, so-called after Felix Mendelssohn s famous trip to the
Hebrides in 1829, and special because it does more than simply
parachute nice concerts into posh places.
There is that too, but the emphasis here is on developing young
professional musicians in an environment that s low-risk and fun. The
festival is part-summer school, part-concert series for a hand-picked
bunch of burgeoning players who have just finished or are nearing the
end of their formal training. They come here to soften the harsh jolt
between music student and freelance musician.
The format is simple. The participants spend a week working
intensively alongside mentors.
During that week they give concerts around Mull and Iona: in village
churches, stately homes, the odd decaying castle and the highlight for
many Iona Abbey. Tickets are free, and are snapped up by locals and
tourists, and the pubs of Tobermory host gaggles of musicians late
into the night.
The atmosphere is warm, constructive and I can testify participatory.
Last year I went along to review concerts but was more or less ordered
to bring along my clarinet and play in one of the concerts. Unorthodox
press coercion? Well, as a tactic for imparting the spirit of the
festival, it worked a treat.
The man who s been in charge of the festival for the past 10 years is
Levon Chilingirian, first violinist of the Chilingirian Quartet and a
committed chamber musician and pedagogue. Born in Cyprus to Armenian
parents, he emigrated with his family to the UK in the early 1960s and
came of age in a London full of music-making.
I started playing in small groups at college, he told me, but mostly I
learned about chamber music from amateurs. There was a circle of
Jewish émigrés in London who gathered once a week. They lived for
this. More than the professionals, these amateurs had an incredible
love and knowledge of the repertoire.
Chilingirian now teaches at the institution where he studied, London s
Royal College of Music. But he s more interested in what can be
learned outside the college gates.
Take young musicians into beautiful and remote places, and they can
focus and experiment. That s why Pablo Casals took groups to Prades in
rural France; it s why Sándor Végh set up Prussia Cove on the cliffs
of Cornwall, and why Marlboro [a summer school in small-town Vermont]
still attracts Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode as directors.
At Mull it s partly environment, partly ethos that does it.
Chilingirian hand-picks his participants: a combination of those who
have been before and new players; some very new to chamber music, some
dead scared when they arrive and then we see them flower. He also
hand-picks his mentors. Whether they re members of his own quartet,
soloists, teachers or orchestral players, they all share a core set of
musical values.
Over a group dinner halfway through last year s festival, Chilingirian
told the assembled musicians: I m glad to hear so many of you playing
in the right way. Remember: don t be tempted by the dark side. By dark
side he meant a certain style of playing. There is a strong sense at
music colleges these days that the ideal is to be a soloist, he later
explained. It encourages the wrong mentality.
The greatest soloists listen to what the orchestra is doing. They
spend their summers playing chamber music. And they teach. That, above
all, is the important thing.
Many of Chilingirian s colleagues spent time at Prussia Cove, and the
set of values he encourages good articulation, good phrasing, good
sound, sympathetic ears; musicians who will be totally part of the
group, not individuals is a typically Véghian mantra.
Chilingirian broadens the heritage: I m not sure I d call myself a
disciple of Sándor Végh in the way that others are, he says, but
certainly we re all trying to uphold the marvellous central-European
school of the Amadeus Quartet and [Austrian musicologist] Hans Keller.
The ideal is that we teach without saying too much.
So he and the other mentors impart their experience by playing
alongside their students. Keller coined the phrase wordless functional
analysis , in which music is analysed through sound alone.
Chilingirian s approach, then, could be called wordless functional
teaching .
Judging by the shrieks of laughter cutting through the dreamy sunset
at Duart Castle, his positive pedagogy has worked on the morale front,
at least. These students are running on a low-sleep,
high-encouragement euphoria. When I sat to rehearse Brahms s Clarinet
Quintet with the Chilingirian Quartet, I got a taste of it too. I hadn
t practised for years. I was dreading the humiliation of playing with
a serious string quartet. But as the violins sang their opening
thirds, as cellist Stephen Orton added his restless counterpoint and
smiled at me for my entry, I forgot my self-pity and got on with
playing. Two days later my performance was as rough as I deserved but
I enjoyed every minute of it.
Mendelssohn on Mull is at venues around Mull and Iona until July 7.
www.mullfest.org.uk