Lehel Farkas
He was an amateur guitarist, who took lessons with a teacher from the conservatory, Eitele who was later replaced by Barbara Polasek. He worked in Radio Free Europe along with my parents, and we lived in the same apartment complex. I was his only pupil. I had lessons with him for three years. Ah, the wonderful time I had, the records he lent me, the repertoire we went though, I'd water his plants when his family went on vacation and go through all of his music, how he played...he really taught me to love the guitar. My home away from home. And he took time off work to take me to play for Segovia! And took a photograph to show me how bad my posture was. How very sincere and helpful! Of course, after I got to Barbara Polasek and she told me my technique was all wrong, ( Carcassi method - no rest stroke...) I hardly spoke to him anymore, something I now very deeply regret.
Barbara Polasek
So full of life, so intuitive, such an inspiration to all her students, so fiery, decisive, determined...Treated us all as if we were her own children, would sometimes say "How would I explain this to my own child?" Would get the music out of us by making us use our imagination - "stell' Dir vor..." (imagine) swans swaying in the water in the quiet section of Castelnuovo-Tedescos's Tarantella, dancing towards an empty spot on the dance floor in Villa-Lobos' Valse...Pulling sounds out of the instrument... Her examples all come from a full, well-lived life.
Everything was a performance (will this work in performance?)- would sing to show us how a piece should sound, or how we sounded at the moment - lay a lot of emphasis on tone. Or tear the guitar out of our hands to play a phrase or demonstrate what sound she wanted...really made you understand. Very visual person, her fingerings and remarks spring out at you off the page, and the fingers of the right hand were indicated by vertical lines instead of dots.
Excellent sight-reader, very practical. She had to learn lots of modern pieces for the composition part of the ORTF competition, so she wrote the beats into her score very visibly so that she could make sense of the pieces more quickly. She once had to play a solo within an orchestral piece for a recording. She was the only one who had the presence of mind to actually count herself in. The orchestra and conductor didn't, and would "teeter along" (Das Orchester wackelte hinterher.) Incredibly funny expressions..
If I made a blooper, she would always say "Macht nichts" - doesn't matter, because she knew how hard I was trying. Techniques had to work right away - "klappt auf Anhieb". All over the place playing - "Tohuwabohu"
In order to bring the music out, she used a lot of rubato and vibrato. Learned the rubato from Segovia, but hated his glissandos. Got her love of vibrato from string players and her dad, who was a violinist. Loves watching violinist and cellists to see how they phrase and use their vibrato. Fingerings were very important to her, left and right hands, of course, and had to fit the music like a glove. That's probably why even my performances sound very natural - I owe it to her. Patterns were called "constellations". Pupils would copy her fingerings off of each others' books. ( I once changed some right hand Bach fingerings of hers, and the others kept asking me for my book, and I kept telling them that yeah, but I changed some of the fingerings, you see. She had this broad smile on her face. It literally took me years to figure out that she liked what I had done and wanted them to have it!) And if she changed fingerings, for excellent musical reasons, after a few years, we all got to practice the pieces all over again. She was constantly changing and improving her playing and teaching style. Versatility - openmindedness! And she lives like she played and taught - with lots of enthusiasm. A very quick decision maker. She's retired now. Oh, and a past master at helping pupils change technique. Just the right things to say, just the right pieces.
She told me she was the only one who used to go to Ursula Peter's house for lessons, as a child. When she studied in Prague, her fellow students loved practicing with her because their techniques and pieces came to life. Won the ORTF Guitar Competition in 1964 and Santiago de Compostela a year later. Great friend of Julian Bream's. Gave lute concerts while in the latest stages of pregnancy by attaching Velcro to her lute so it wouldn't slide around. Brought her babies to work with her, we would help carry the baby carriage up and down three flights of stairs - they would play contentedly with their mobiles in the baby carriage in the room. Incredible sense of humor, incredible inventiveness, passion, dedication, gratitude (I got this from so-and-so, would send us to different master classes for a second opinion, which is how I came across Caceres and Davezac, called Bob Spencer a genius, whom she heard at Schloss Elmau along with Bream and the Amadeus Quartet), memory (made us memorize everything, used every mnemonic device under the sun to make us understand and memorize a piece better, including words that had the same rhythm as the melody...), very active listener. Keeps changing her Bach fingerings, even in old age - that's probably one of the things that keeps her young. You relive for hours afterwards any conversation you have with her. I'm energized even just writing about her.
Dr. Malcolm Hill
This was my incredibly knowledgeable and humorous Harmony and Aural Training teacher at the Royal Academy of Music, who put all the music I learned from my other teachers into perspective from a composer's point of view. I have absolutely no idea where I would be without him. He kept me going musically while I had to change technique, in very many extra lessons at his organist job on a Sunday between services. What a big heart. Excellent organ improviser, won many competitions that way. When Julian Bream came to the RAM to adjudicate his Bream Prize and had a talk afterwards to tell us about our performances, a fellow guitarist pupil of his, Jane Palmer, said "Malcolm would have said the same thing;" I totally agreed. Excellent at explaining modern English music and Brouwer. Taught me a lot about Bach, his articulations and adding basses Bach would have added and sometimes did in his own arrangements... but all from an extremely knowledgeable organist/composer/harmony/orchestration/intuition point of view. Helped me with my guitar transcriptions. My "ferry man" in terms of music. (Ben Kingsley)
Robert Spencer
I was extremely lucky to have renaissance lute lessons at Bob's house 1974-78 while I studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Apart from being very grateful that his wife Jill Nott-Bower always greeted me (and his other pupils) with tea and cookies after a two-hour trip (Bob called this feeding and watering), these are the main points I remember from his teaching:
Get your skates on! You'll never have as much time as when you're a student.
Always think about the music when you play, otherwise the audience will start thinking about its shopping list. Called out shopping list every time he caught me...
Magic!
Keep in mind the architecture of a piece.
Play the piece as if you were composing it on the spot. Make it sound spontaneous.Improvised.
Every note must have direction, (something he learned from his teacher, a cellist).
Make long notes longer, and make up the time in a phrase by tucking in the short notes. Make sure the beat stays the same.
A bad rubato is a kick in the face of an audience.
Ritardando only at the end of a piece, not after every phrase, or else the audience will start clapping...Demonstrated this...
Don't over hit the instrument. Dame Janet Baker said to sing forte no more than 10% of the time.
Play as if your instrument had no frets. (legato)
Search for the center of the note.
Be aware of the sound you make.Pay attention to your sound.
Never arpeggiate two notes, only 3 note chords and up.
He always went to the source.
The lute back then was like a grammophone now (1974) - everybody had one.
The lute is the king of instruments, for it speaks (Burwell Lute Tutor). Actually, I thought I remembered Bob saying it was the queen of all instruments, but don't remember where that quote came from, probably because Elizabeth was queen.)
Programs should look as neat and clear as a restaurant menu.
Always keep audience in mind. Not too many heavy pieces in one go (heavy fare).
Bring your lute to a concert hall hours hours beforehand so it could soak in the atmosphere and tune 30 minutes before the concert to avoid tuning problems.
Make sure anything that makes noise: fans, heating, etc. is turned off for the concert.
Always have the singer to the left of you and slightly forward so you can watch the music, your left hand and the singer all at once.
If you are onstage waiting to perform (while somebody else is performing) keep your eyes on the music and think about it.
He would always be looking out his picture window because he was listening so hard.
He always showed his manuscripts from his vast library, where Dowland wrote in a doddery old hand in the Margaret Board lute book, for instance...
He respected late versions of lute pieces because a composer too has the right to change his mind...
He encouraged finding mistakes scribes made in manuscripts and correcting them in one's performance. He thundered at bad editions. But he always spoke so nobly - even if he disagreed with something. It was inspiring just to hear him speak. Of course, he always looked and acted the part of a true renaissance man.
Bob never remembered whether he had said the same thing a week before. He called it "being in the present" when he taught - a concept that was very important to him.
One of his favorite hobbies: going along the banks of the Thames with his son finding interesting things...His whole house was full of historical things like a four-post renaissance bed. A master of understatement, he once told me that there might be a lute or two lying about the house somewhere.
I also organized some Lute Seminars for him, Toyohiko Satoh and Konrad Junghaenel in Munich, Germany. That was incredible fun!
Oscar Caceres
My yin. Very strict with rhythm, was always beating it wherever he could - table-tops, chairs with his pencil, the guitar... Very big on interpretation. Once he chose some of us to play on a radio program, and introduced each one of our pieces with so-and-so will now interpret such-and-such. "On a rien compris": We understood nothing - if something someone played didn't make musical sense, or "la salade." Or shake his head with pity and say "pas du tout ça"- not at all that. Always sang along in a beautiful folk voice - actually started out as a folk singer.. "Jouéz simplement la ligne melodique", believed strongly in harmonic and melodic analysis. Studied the lute in Uruguay, actually knew a lot about everything under the sun, always talked about musicians who consecrated their lives to their instrument, went to rehearsals of all the famous conductors who visited Montevideo, Uruguay, for at least three years...I went to his masterclasses in Annecy, France for about 10 years, and was always riveted. Told stories about the pieces and their composers, which we would then incorporate into our playing. One needed to know the character of a piece. Believed one needed to have the repertoire for a concert under one's fingers and by heart three months before the performance. Had great technical exercises. Used the expression "travail de technique" when polishing a piece of music. Loved adding slurs: "il faut mettre des liés". Definitely believed in playing by heart: "Vous connaissez cette piece par coeur?" But said to always practice with the music in front of you, even if you already knew the piece by heart. Music with lots of fingerings and markings meant a piece was "bien travaillé." To play with feeling , he said "Jouéz plus intentionnel." (His French still rings in my ears, and mine is very rudimentary...) Called it "arpeggitis" when guitarists arpeggiated too much, and "Chaconnitis" when everybody wanted to play the Bach Chaconne. Always lay the guitar across his lap face down and used it as a table to write fingerings, and if he put the guitar down against a chair or anything else, he always made sure at least two pegs were against the chair, so the guitar was well anchored...Had a real way with kids too, but I sadly didn't get to experience that except by a few tips he gave me. And what different forms of vibrato - slow, fast, even one for syncopations! He said to learn vibrato by playing the melodies to simple pieces or folk songs. And I learned about finger substitutions from him, something he learned from his wife Irma, a pianist and Villa-Lobos specialist. When I once gave him all my handwritten transcriptions for ensemble guitar, I got a sheaf of all his published ones back in the mail...Of my playing he once said "Elle a une aire poétique et musicien." Coming from the Poet of the Guitar, that's the kind of comment that keeps you going for years...His other comment was that I was always seeking, but would one day find! Very evocative and unique style of playing. Because of a nail fungus he once had, he played off the right side of a, the middle of m and the left side of I. Great way to use the weight of the wrist.
Betho Davezac
My yang. He relaxed me - often a simple hand or face gesture would suffice to get the music out. I took many summer classes of his outside of Munich, Germany. His dad taught him to play at age six, and to relax the fingers in his left hand, would get him to play one finger and wiggle the rest for him.
Once we did a concert as part of a masterclass in Kiefersfelden, and he warmed us up with so many good exercises, stories, and jokes that it was hard to leave the warm-up room to go play your piece.
Toyohiko Satoh
He taught me baroque lute in masterclasses in Munich, Germany and in Italy, and I had private lessons at his house in the Netherlands. He didn't mind me playing with nails, in fact said he did so himself. The thing I remember the most was him explaining baroque to me: apparently, it also means bizarre and he told me the architecture of the time was such that if something was built with two towers, they weren't exactly the same height. Gave me copies of his renaissance lute tutor I love to use. He loved my timing. Said I should play in front of small audiences to that they could fully appreciate my artistry - so I'm thinking of YouTube, that would be the ultimate. Considering how much I learned and continue to learn from watching Segovia's Song of the Guitar...
Pat O'Brien
It really hit me hard this summer (2014) when I heard Pat died. He was so the go-to man for all guitarists and lutenists the world over for everything regarding guitar and lute technique, performance, Early Music, etc. and tons of other things I know nothing about. I only had about 4 Lute society seminars with him and a week of private lessons.
All the most famous guitarists and lutenists, gambists, harpists, etc. came to his studio when they developed problems with their hands. Adducting the LH fingers was very important to him, so one wouldn't ruin one's hand by overusing one side of the fingers, not pressing harder than one had to (I don't want to see whites)...and collapsing the tip of RH fingers. I think he believed in chiropractors. He had hilarious expressions like duckbill (patilla) for collapsing the first finger in a small barre chord. Tuning was "close enough for early music". Keeping LH fingers above the fingerboard was called keeping the fingers "where the notes live". Hated Aaron Shearer. His classes were so informative and lively. Many wonderful stories.
Beloved teacher all right. His family wants us to be joyful. Yeah right! I'm afraid my lute playing might improve before that happens...
Things to do in the meantime to cheer up:
Change lute strings and frets. Refret your guitar.
Contribute to a good cause.
Keep adducting.
And collapsing your right hand fingers.
File your left hand nails as well as your right.
Gitti Pirner
Great pianist, who cheerfully suffered through my practicing way too little for my second study lessons for three years. When she gave concerts, she changed her repertoire frequently, and got terribly bored when she saw the same posters with the same pieces for the same performers everywhere she gave a concert. Always said to play with the music. Her dog would always sit with her when she practiced, but walk out in a very stately manner (which she, of course, demonstrated) when she played modern pieces. Extremely humorous. I enjoyed my lessons tremendously, and learned such a lot. Put a smile on my face. Wonderful pieces.
Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt, Ewa Janina (Lovell) Chciuk-Celt
My parents. What can you say about parents who listened to classical music every minute they were home (my Dad always whistled along), except when they were listening to the news, who both played piano very well, my Mom studied conducting in Poland, but had to leave the country and any hopes of a musical career, made sure each of the four children got expert tuition on an instrument (piano,cello, guitar,violin) from Conservatory teachers or their best pupils, and made sure we practiced an hour every day? My Dad passed in 2001, but both parents were extremely responsible and loving of their country (Poland), my Dad was a Polish war hero, one of only two people to get a Virtuti Militari, which is the highest military award given in Europe, and was vice president of the Polish Desk at Radio Free Europe - Acting Director during the Solidarity movement - everybody said he was a changed man when he took up the reins, wrote many best-sellers about his WWII experiences right after the war and when he retired. Both spoke many languages and I owe my memory to their excellent memory! Both straight A students in Polish gimnazjum and lyceum, no easy task - Polish schools were considered to be among the toughest, as we found out when they would sniff at our good grades from our American school... Both scoutmasters. What a sense of responsibility and selflessness! Definitely motivating lives! Polish schools in Munich, Germany and Poland named after him.