Seattle Violoncello Society Newsletter, October 1994 (c)Seattle Violoncello Society

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

We had our kick-off meeting on August 26. Those present were Roberta Downey, David Sires, Cordelia Wikarski-Miedel, Martha Nester, Ron Welch, and myself. We are sponsoring an evening of cello ensemble sight-reading on October 30. We are also organizing a membership recital to be held at a house. This event would consist of members each performing one movement or piece, providing his or her own pianist. A majority of the board voted to not sponsor any formal professional recitals due to the great expense that could be incurred. There was also a concern about being put in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between various professionals in the area. Sadly, this means that we will not be sponsoring David Tonkonogui's recital. Hopefully, he will have one anyway.

Tim Finholt

In this issue:

Gary Hoffman Master Class

Letters: Responses to "Is There Such Thing as a Wrong Interpretation"

Conversations with Steven Doane

IN BRIEF

Cello News

1. "Arnold StandArt" cello stand

Dutch cellist Arthur Arnold has invented a device that allows you to play the cello standing up. Since the legs are not holding the cello, extra resonance is claimed. It also allows more freedom of movement, particularly in the bow arm. For more information write to:

Wolf Music Products

Breudijk 1 A

3481 LM Harmelen

Holland

Phone: 31-3483-3336

FAX: 31-3483-4064

2. Cello Ensemble Play-in

You are invited to participate in an evening of cello ensemble sight-reading and a potluck dinner on Sunday, October 30 from 5:30-8:00pm. It will be held in the Party Room of the C Building at:

Fairway Estates

8001 Sandpoint Way NE

C Building is the first building you come to when you go up the hill. Park in the designated guest parking area. Special thanks go to Virginia Katims for providing the hall for the Cello Society. RSVP Tim Finholt 634-0355.

3. Tchaikovsky competition results

The highest cello prize awarded was 4th prize this year. Cellists Eileen Moon (USA) and Georgy Gorynov (Russia) were the recipients.

4. Janos Starker uses Eva Heinitz's cello

Janos Starker toured Europe this summer with the Gofriller that Eva Heinitz donated to Indiana University School of Music.

5. Go Lizzy!

Seattle native, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Simkin, is now teaching cello at Ithaca University in New York. She achieved this after serving as Janos Starker's teaching assistant at Indiana University for the past two years.

6. Yo-Yo Ma branches out

Yo-Yo Ma has embarked on a project combining music with other art forms. It revolves around Bach's Six Suites. The final product will be six one-hour television documentaries showing how musicians and other artists can inspire each other's work. He has already performed the Suites in collaboration with Kabuki theatre actors and ice dancers and is now working with Mark Morris on a dance piece using the Third Suite.

7. Lynn Harrell advice to orchestral musicians

Lynn Harrell delivered the commencement address to the Cleveland Institute of Music graduating class last May. He cautioned students not to take orchestral jobs for granted, saying he was bored during his first year with the Cleveland Orchestra until conductor George Szell chided him for being unprepared and never listening to the rest of the group. "It had simply never entered my self-pitying state that this could all be my fault, that if I was bored, it was because I wasn't trying hard enough. Music isn't boring, people are."

8. "Bach Annalia"

On November 12-13, "Bach Annalia" is being presented at the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. The event includes two days of performances, discussions, master classes, insights and inspirations covering the complete cycle of the Bach Cello Suites and a survey of the 20th Century works that they inspired. Guest artists include Lluis Claret, Norman Fischer, Philippe Muller, Janos Starker, and Yehuda Hanani. For more information write to:

Yehuda Hanani

College--Conservatory of Music

University of Cincinnati

PO Box 210003

Cincinnati, OH 45221-0003

or call (513) 556-3442.

9. Tim gets published

Tim Finholt's article, "Meditations on Cello Technique: A Quest for Simplicity" is being published in the October issue of The Strad as "Cello Technique Made Simple."

10. Rajan Krishnaswami performs

On October 16 Rajan Krishnaswami will perform in the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello as part of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra recital series at the Seattle Art Museum auditorium. For tickets call 343-0445.

11. The red dot must be contagious

The membership is unusually slow in renewals so far. If you have a red dot on your newsletter envelope, it's time for you to renew your membership. See the last page of the newsletter for the membership application.

Cello Literature

1. Playing the String Game: Strategies for Teaching Cello and Strings, by Phyllis Young (University of Texas Press, 1978)

If you've struggled with how to explain technical concepts to a student such as how to do vibrato, this book has idea after idea to help you. Playing the String Game, is a unique how-to book designed to help cello teachers teach. The book contains over 165 specific teaching devices or games which have proven successful at various age levels.

For more information, write to:

University of Texas Press

PO Box 7819

Austin, Texas 78713-7819

Gary Hoffman Master Class

On June 18, 1994, Gary Hoffman conducted a cello master class as part of the Seattle International Music Festival. The following performed the pieces indicated:

Briana Knull (student of Craig Weaver), Dvorak Concerto, 1st movement.

Clara Lee (student of David Tonkonogui), Haydn C Major Concerto, 1st movement.

Anne Brewster, Bach Sonata No. 2 for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord.

Peter Landeen, Bach 6th Suite, Sarabande and Gavottes.

Some of the Mr. Hoffman's points were as follows:

1) One of the most difficult parts of playing is to actually listen to one's own playing. One must be disturbed by one's own bad intonation before it can be fixed.

2) Keep an open posture. Don't hunch over the cello or you will cut off the flow of energy and natural power.

3) Don't attack with vertical bows, use a more horizontal movement.

4) The origin of spicatto is a detache motion. In detache, the hand and forearm move together. In spicatto, the hand moves a bit more independently. The spicatto movement is somewhere between a horizontal and vertical movement.

5) In the Dvorak Concerto, there are so many beautiful moments that, if one indulges in every one of them, it's too easy to lose the piece's overall movement or sense of structure.

6) Play the opening chords in the opening of the Dvorak more melodically and with vibrato. "Too often one hears hard-to-understand crunches."

7) In the second theme of the Dvorak, express across the whole line, not each note. Play simply.

8) The Dvorak spicatto sextuplets: Don't worry about them, the mood is more important. The bouncing has nothing to do with the music. Dvorak originally wrote a very simple slurred sixteenth note pattern. But the cellist he wrote it for wanted to show off and suggested the now infamous passage.

9) Don't neglect the little notes. They are just as important as the longer ones.

10) The only difference between the lower positions and thumb position is that the thumb is up.

11) In the Bach Sonata, don't always play the trills the same way. Vary their execution.

12) Mr. Hoffman suggests starting the second movement in the Bach Sonata in first position, thus playing the open A string. The open A string is "one of the most beautiful sounds in existence and yet we avoid it."

13) "Just because the music is baroque, doesn't mean we should shy away from expression."

14) Explore a variety of vibratos and attacks with the bow. Don't always play the same.

15) Practice the Bach 6th Suite on open strings.

Seattle Symphony Cello Audition List

Last year's auditions were held for a cello position in the Seattle Symphony, which was won by Yun-Yin Gu. Audition excerpts were chosen from the following list, a list that changes with every audition:

Bartok Concerto for Orchestra

Beethoven Symphony No. 4

Brahms Symphony No. 2

Mozart "Jupiter" Symphony No. 41

Smetana Overture to "Bartered Bride"

Strauss Don Juan

Wagner Overture to "Tannhauser"

Dvorak Cello Concerto, 1st Movement

Sight Reading.

Technical Tip

Practice without vibrato to maximize the expression with the bow. -- Maud Tortelier

( David Blum, Paul Tortelier: A Self Portrait in Conversation with David Blum, Heinemann Ltd, London, 1984.)

LETTERS

The editor inadvertantly missed some key words and phrases in the anonymous letter in the last issue. As penance, he has chosen to reprint the letter in its entirety with the corrections incorporated.

It's all fine and good to say that undergraduate music students should know what they are getting into if they decide to earn a music degree. But I don't believe that this is fair. Most of them don't know, and neither do the music school professors. An undergraduate performance major going into any music school other than Juilliard or Curtis or a few others has a distinct disadvantage. In the last five years, the competition has become so intense that these students are lost in competition with a world market--plus older diehards who lost their performance jobs due to budget cuts.

I certainly believe that music schools should exist. For one, they are definitely job security for many musicians. It has always been in the best interest of music faculty to NOT discourage music majors. They would jeopardize their own program. So, this is quite a political issue. But music schools jeopardize their own existence by maintaining a separate existence from the college campus, and the world.

I believe that music departments have a responsibility to offer as many options as possible to music majors, as well as to outside majors. Music departments should also be much more accessible in offering courses to the community. There are lots of serious adults who would gladly work hard to earn performance credits at night, but have a day job. Music departments have many good reasons to exist for many segments of the population. However, I don't believe that music schools can continue to look the other way. Even conservatories like Juilliard and Curtis are questioning their cloistered status.

It is not the responsibility of teachers and music schools to counsel music students to bleak job prospects. But it is their responsibility to offer many choices within and outside the department--even to only justify their existence. I think that it should almost be a requirement that an undergraduate music major also minor in something else. Music departments cannot control a bleak job market, and cannot be surrogate parents to students. But they must try to adjust to the realities of the world outside.

Anonymous

When you start asking whether or not there is such a thing as a wrong interpretation, it becomes very subjective. It is very difficult to discuss subjectivity, although I think it is very important--because it's all part of the art.

But maybe it's also important to think about the questions. When you ask about a "right" or "wrong" interpretation in an incredibly subjective field, involving many spontaneous combinations of composer, performer, and audience, then it's really not a productive question.

Why do some people laugh at a joke and others don't? Is it wrong to think it's funny? Who decides if the joke is funny? The joke teller? Should we carry around a set of pocket rules?

You set up the article as your quest for finding the "right" thing. This is your quest for personal ethics and integrity. You refuse to not have standards and convictions. How can this be discussed?

Of course we must have standards--ones which reflect history, music theory, and performance practice. It's important to discuss those standards. It's also important to understand those standards in the context of technical, musical, creative, political arenas, and the spontaneous and creative nature of Art. It is also important to discuss a collective collaboration of composer, performer, audience, concert hall, temperature, time periods, politics, etc. It is also important to understand the incredible subjectivity of Art. It is important to understand standards and the exceptions to the standards, which we define as Art. It is important to discuss who "We" are. Making this into a "right" or "wrong" question is unproductive. The rules and the standards change. So do the exceptions to the rules and the standards. How does that fit into your narrow question?

When you wrote about Hamlet's speech being done in laughter, I thought--how incredibly creative. It brings out the insanity of his character. Instead of pummeling the actor, I would be honored to see a courageous and over the top performance work. There are many, many ways to make it work. Those possibilities and exceptions are what make it Art. How do we get anywhere by asking if it's RIGHT or WRONG?

We who see the art are part of it too. It's up to the audience too. It goes from composer to performer to audience and back again, through an incredibly subjective transaction. This does not mean that there are no "standards." This means that Art is about many, many different and spontaneous considerations.

We do have to have technical and musical standards for musical performance. I believe that if we are already talking about "interpretation," we are discussing a high level of playing where the standards are almost assumed to be internal. (If not, then aren't we discussing bad technique?) We also have to recognize that there are galaxies of exceptions and possibilities within those standards, involving all of us collectively, and that is what we call Art.

Anonymous

Your article was a complete waste of time. I'm quite content to watch you compare a performance with your little checklist while I sit back and just enjoy the music. Yes, you definitely need to lighten up.

John Veska

Suggested Topic for Future Letters

Did you enjoy Lynn Harrell's performance on April 12, 1994 of the Haydn C Major Concerto with the Seattle Symphony?

Conversations with Steven Doane

by Tim Finholt

Mr. Doane is on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music and is a regular performer at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival.

TF: At what point did you decide that you would dedicate your life to music?

SD: When I was in my second year in high school, I told my parents that I wanted to train to be a professional cellist. They asked my cello teacher if he thought I would be able to make it. He said, "I don't know if he'll be another Piatigorsky, but he should be able to make a living." Of course I was disappointed that he didn't say I was going to be another Piatigorsky, but my parents were reassured.

I ended up studying with Richard Kapuscinski at Oberlin. Then I went to Stony Brook for a couple of years to study with Bernard Greenhouse. Then I had a fellowship from the Watson Foundation to go overseas. The terms of my fellowship were that I was to meet cello teachers all over Europe and to find out what they emphasized. I met Tortelier. I worked with Starker for a few weeks in Switzerland, and then I worked with Jane Cowan.

TF: What did your teacher at Oberlin, Richard Kapuscinski, emphasize?

SD: He was a pupil of Salmond and Leonard Rose. He had played in the Boston Symphony for years. He was an absolute genius when talking about musical articulation. He never played an uninflected phrase in his life and he would never accept anything that didn't have musical direction. His technical emphases were very much influenced by Dounis, a doctor and an amateur fiddle player who was fascinated by the role of the fingers as shock absorbers during bow changes.

Kapuscinski also was an incredible human being, while I was a little bit of a cello nerd. I practiced for hours every day, ignoring what was going on in the world around me. He would drag me out of the practice room because there were peace demonstrations going on outside. He felt I needed to get involved with real life outside. Soon I felt that music was too divorced from the real world, and I thought about leaving music. So he encouraged me to take a biology course. But I soon discovered that biology was not a strong area for me and I returned to music.

TF: Then you went to study with Bernard Greenhouse.

SD: He was mostly a great model for me. I would listen to him play and I would try to absorb it by osmosis. He was an excellent teacher, but I was mostly influenced by his sound and by watching him play. At the time he was often on tour with the Beaux Arts Trio so I had to grab him between tours. I couldn't make the sound he made, but I sure tried to figure out how he did it. He emphasized the notion of walking from finger to finger in the left hand.

TF: And then Starker.

SD: He certainly showed me what was wrong. He made it very clear what the issues were in string playing and how I had to solve them. It was very interesting having him for that three week period where we had master classes everyday. He made me play a lot, everyday for 15 or 20 minutes. It was terrifying and I became more and more nervous as the classes wore on. I carried away from that encounter an agenda for my own study, and I knew that the rest of the year had to be spent dealing with it.

Then I met Steven Isserlis. He was 17 years old at the time and was an incredible player even then. I was fascinated by his style because it was so different from anything I had heard before. He invited me to stay with his family and took me to his teacher, Jane Cowan. She ran the International Cello Center in Scotland. I think that it was started by Maurice Eisenberg and that Casals was the honorary president. She had studied with Feuermann and was a friend of Casals. I had the great fortune of experiencing the amazing musical heritage she embodied..

She taught from her home in the Scottish Borders. There were about eight of us studying with her on an intensive basis for two months at a time. We didn't just have cello lessons, though. She had to teach enough subjects so that the younger students would be prepared to take the university entrance exams. Her husband, who is a wonderful organist, taught math, theory, and piano while she taught European history, languages, and cello. It was a totally absorbing environment and a little eccentric. At that time, I was a slightly disillusioned American graduate student looking for a different approach. I certainly found it there.

TF: Who were your cello idols when you were growing up?

SD: I was a huge fan of Casals. I bought as many recordings as I could get. I was also very much influenced by Rostropovich. He was the amazing emerging talent at the time. And of course there was Starker, Rose, and Fournier.

I listened to a lot of records when I was young. I tried to steal fingerings off the records, which you can do if you listen hard enough, except with Feuermann. Feuermann was so technically clean and quick that it was difficult to discern his fingerings. But Casals did us a favor in a way by recording when he was older. He slowed down a bit so you could hear the finger connections and therefore his fingerings.

TF: Early in your career, you entered competitions such as the Tchaikovsky competition in 1974. What did you have to play?

SD: In the first round we had to play Popper Etude #33, a Bach Suite (4,5, or 6), and a contemporary piece by a composer of our country of origin. The second round was more Sonata oriented. We also had to play Tchaikovsky Pezzo Capricioso and a set piece that we could choose from two options; I chose one by Kabalevsky. The final round required two concertos with orchestra. I chose the Dvorak and Rococo Variations. Between the two concertos we were given only two minutes to get a drink of water. The whole thing happened in front of a live audience and was televised from beginning to end. It was a bit terrifying, like suddenly finding oneself in the middle of the Olympics.

I originally went on a dare from my friends. My friends wanted me to have a goal and they encouraged me to do it. So I prepared the first two rounds as well as I could, figuring I would never make it to the finals. When I got to the final round, I had only three days to get my concertos in shape. I really blew it. I should have been playing them all along.

TF: Who was on the jury?

SD: Leonard Rose and Daniel Shafran were the two big names. Leonard Rose was very gracious. Unfortunately, it was the only time I was to have any contact with him.

The Russian cellists knew that we Americans had all been influenced by Rostropovich, who had defected to the West just a few years before. One of them took me to a mural which had a picture of the last competition. There was a picture of the table of jurists and you could just see their heads. There was a little bald head and he told me that this was the biggest picture you could find of Rostropovich in a Russian conservatory. It was his way of saying that he was banished from Russia.

TF: Have you been a juror for competitions?

SD: No. And I don't have an ambition to either.

TF: Why not?

SD: Competitions, if entered in the wrong spirit, can have a terribly destructive affect. If I enter a student in a competition I make a very big point that he or she is only doing this for the experience. Even if you play beautifully, it doesn't mean you will get a prize. The jury can be biased. Or a player might win a competition largely because he doesn't offend anybody.

Sometimes the greatest talents don't come through in the top prizes. I'll never forget Andras Schiff getting fifth prize in that competition. The audience was crazy about him. And in the final concert they wouldn't let him off stage. He had to play five encores, playing one Scarlatti sonata after another, each one more beautiful than the previous. And he only received fifth prize!

TF: Do you have themes in your own teaching?

SD: I want my students to be healthy cellists first and foremost. Then I want them to be thinking musicians. I am more interested in a student that comes with something to say musically but is terribly awkward technically. I far prefer to teach somebody with a musical instinct than somebody who is a glib instrumentalist and has nothing to say. There are too many of those out there anyway. Sometimes it is a bit of a struggle, but I'm intrigued by trying to help people make the physical process easier.

TF: Can musicality be taught?

SD: Musicality can't be taught but it can be developed. You can teach a student to play intelligently, but if somebody doesn't have music in their soul, you can't insert it surgically.

TF: What are some common problems of students?

SD: There is a tendency in modern string playing and in students to not recognize the difference between legato and portato. An awful lot of students don't play legato and don't understand what it sounds like or feels like to really create a legato line. One has to teach facility, but one also has to teach how to make a musical line.

TF: So you use technique to serve the music.

SD: I would hope so. When most students get to school, they're manic about getting technical command of the cello. In a lot of instances, I have to spend the first two years getting technical issues sorted out. But in the third year, I start expanding from that foundation. Then the biggest job is to teach them musical responsibility, that they have to make choices that are actually going to make sense, and that they have to be accountable for these choices. It's very dangerous to say "Here are the fingerings and bowings. Now go practice them and come back next week." You have to cut them loose from that and let them make their own mistakes.

I have a couple of students who I must insist that they not play a note until they figure out exactly where they want the phrase to go. I do this because very often the musical shape determines the technical solution. If you use only a technical formula to solve a problem, the audience can always hear it. Jane Cowan used to talk about the transcendental technique, the technique that isn't noticed because you're just listening to music. I can't know how to teach that perfectly, but I'm certainly trying.

A good technique is one that is infinitely flexible as well. The basics have to be in place and then you have to take them, just like primary colors, and be able to make any effect you like. For instance, if you have really fluid bow technique, you should be able to make any sound the ear demands.

TF: When you're studying a piece should you listen to recordings?

SD: Dangerous. A lot of people listen to one recording and try to imitate it. And when they come into the studio I say, "Now you're distorting a distortion." Because everybody's performance is filtered through their own personality, it could be regarded as a distortion of the text. If you take another person's interpretation as a model, it's bad. You should start from the source again, from the score, and come up with your own reading.

I hate this business of "what record did you listen to." A piece like the Dvorak is so pulled out of shape these days that people don't think about Dvorak, but how so and so played it, which is rubbish. How do you come up with your own interpretation if you do that? It's like the game called "telephone" where one person says something and passes it on the next person, who in turn passes it on to the next person, and so on. At the end of the circle, the message is completely distorted. That's what can happen to music if you use only recordings as your model.

TF: What is your own practice routine?

SD: I have certain basic exercises I have to do everyday to stay in shape. Scales, flexibility exercises, a bowing routine, etc. I have a big handout that I give all my students that has different warm-ups. I also try to talk to them about intelligent use of practice time. You've got to have a good warm-up routine to maintain your flexibility and to keep you in touch with your intonation and your sound. Then I follow that with work on passages that I find tricky for technical work. After a break, I work on phrasing problems that I am trying to solve. I also work away from the instrument, using musical imagination by taking the music into the library where it's nice and quiet and looking at the whole score, or going to the piano and studying the piece at the keyboard, or just sitting somewhere and just thinking through the piece. I believe a lot of practicing takes place unconsciously between practice sessions, especially musical assimilation or "internalization."

TF: The music business has become so saturated today that it is becoming more and more difficult to get a job in music. And yet the music schools continue to pump out musicians like a factory. Does this make sense?

SD: The good side of this is that it's going to raise the level of the orchestras in this country. It's going to hopefully raise the level of music teaching and music playing as well. But unless the students are trained to be very flexible and to have a number of different career paths possible to them, and maybe be willing to pursue two or three of them at once, they're going to be very hungry. It's really important for us to stress diversification.

The big job right now is to build an audience because there's a whole generation that has lost the message of classical music. We must get into the schools and involve kids at an early age with music. I think everybody that's involved with an instrument is going to have to be involved in teaching. We must be responsible musical citizens. This doesn't mean you have to spend all your time doing it, but there has to be some teaching or some outreach activity.

TF: Is there such thing as a wrong interpretation?

SD: I would say the only interpretation you could say was wrong is one where there is a blatant disregard of the text. If somebody ignores tempo markings, articulation indications, and dynamic markings, showing a real carelessness for these elements, and if it's obvious that the performer comes first and the composer comes second, then his or her interpretation shouldn't even be dignified by the term "interpretation."

Of course, there can still be many beautiful and valid interpretations that are very different from each other. If there is a sincere attempt on the musician's part to recreate a piece as closely as what he or she feels is the spirit of the text, then that's great, and any differences are honest and sincere. I just hate carelessness. If a student plays for me and is obviously thinking about playing the cello and hasn't thought about the composer, then he or she gets a lecture.

TF: Do you have any general principles when you play the Bach Suites?

SD: Use an edition as close to the manuscript as you can. The Magdalena manuscript has its flaws because of the haste in which is was made, but it's still the best we've got. The violinists are lucky because they have the autograph for their Bach solo works.

It has become a really complicated issue to work on the Bach Suites. Some of the students come in with a very romanticized idea of how to play them. I don't want to take away the feeling that they're bringing to them, but I do want them to hear it with different ears, with sort of 18th century ears. This is hard sometimes, and there's a tremendous amount of resistance to do that. But some of the early music performing that's going on today is so vital and so vibrant that we can't ignore it. It would be silly to not pay attention to it; we can't be ostriches.

I always want Bach to be red-blooded, not just scholarly. Scholarly information, if used with imagination and insight, can contribute to an incredibly exciting performance. There's a wealth of information about articulation; how to handle cadences, and how to make phrasing using articulation for emphasis instead of just trying to do a melodic or "romantic" phrase. I think that because of what's going on in the early music movement, my own ideas are constantly evolving, which is really exciting. We can't take anything for granted anymore.

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

1. "Cellists of the world unite" by Joanne Talbot from The Strad, July 1994.

"The excitement of the Dvorak is the rhythmic variety. We all know the tunes, but you have to draw our ears to the new rhythms under the melody all the time." --Yo-Yo Ma

"Look up! Lift up your body instead of looking down. Singers don't look down when they sing a low note." -- Janos Starker

What makes a top professional? "Technique!" announced Janos Starker. "But what does is mean? It means to free yourselves so that you can express musical intentions. In my teaching I try to make movements conscious so that they can become sub-conscious."

"Being aware of potential problems is 90% of the answer," said Dr. Jochen Blum on medical problems of musicians. These ailments could be caused by technique that may be inappropriate or lifestyles that may induce stress. It's important to remember that "the body is an important part of your instrument."

2. "One-on-One: Practical and Creative Thoughts on Private String Teaching [of Eleonore Schoenfeld, USC

cello professor]" by Connie Barrett from American String Teacher, Summer 1994..

"As teachers, we are responsible for creating the perfect fusion of science, nature, and musical instinct."

"Consummate technique makes a team with the music and should not be noticed in itself."

"In getting ready to perform, a student must practice with the same amount of emotion and intensity that she will need on the stage in order to create inspired performances."

"Students should be able to write down every note they play of pieces they have learned, especially when trying to correct intonation."

Discussing how to prepare a string crossing: "If I make a left hand turn, I must get into the left lane first."

CALENDAR

October 16 Rajan Krishnaswami performs in the Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello at the Seattle Art Museum auditorium. 343- 0445.

January 22 Page Smith and Duane Hulbert perform Bridge Sonata for Cello and Piano. 343-0445.

January 8 David Tonkonogui cello recital at the Seattle Art Museum.

February 24 Yo-Yo Ma and Pamela Frank appear in recital at Meany Theatre. 543-4880.

April 3,4 Daniel Gaisford performs the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony. 443-4747

May 1,2 Janos Starker performs the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Seattle Symphony. 443- 4747.