Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What should I play for Andras Schiff?

I'm afraid that it is much more likely you who will end up back in your place!

Students play for very famous pianists to learn something or to put it on their resume. Your idea of sarcastic one liners shows you don't understand the realities of a master class, especially one with a world class pianist.

My example was the opposite of what you said unless you think top conservatory pianists are mediocre or you have a very jaded definiton of mediocre.

Nobody has to put up with gratuitous nastiness from anybody, least of all from so-called world class pianists. People will video masterclasses (furtively or otherwise) and put them on Youtube which will be humiliating - indefinitely - for the hapless student being subjected to this sort of thing. And what will happen if that student becomes a concert pianist himself and realises this sort of stuff is going to haunt him for the rest of his career?

In the meantime, what happens to the reputation of already established, word-class pianists who can't control their nastiness when giving public master classes. Surely, they begin to attach a negative reputation to themselves which, in instances already expressed here, can have an equally negative effect on some of their public.

Regards,

Yes, but this has little or nothing to do with what I said which was an explanation of why students take master classes with teachers even when they know the teacher has a reputation for nastiness.

Schiff is not a "so-called" world class pianist. He is a world class pianist. The only person coming off looking bad are the teachers, and I'd guess the teachers that act this way couldn't care less. Students are aware if their master class is being video taped and aware that it could appear on YouTube.

You seem to be unaware of master class dynamics and how the real world works here.

As to whether Schiff is a world class pianist, that's a matter of opinion. I personally don't think he's in the top rank - here in London, he wouldn't be playing in the Royal Festival Hall along with the likes of Uchida, Pollini, Zimerman, Perahia, Hewitt et al.

I've read many young pianists' résumés which often boast of whose masterclasses they've been on (as if being on a masterclass with a big name pianist means they're good....) along with which competitions they've won. Which is precisely the reason why they need to choose carefully, if they want that fact to help them along their career path - because prospective agents and concert promoters will want to find out what impression they made in those masterclasses. Were they just tails being wagged (or bitten ) by their owners?

Which is why you should understand one of the two reasons I gave why young pianists want to or at least are willing to to play for people like Schiff. In order to play for people of this caliber it shows a certain amount of skill. That's why it's on their resume... precisely because it is indicative of something positive.

[quote=pianoloverus I'd love to see one of those teachers get yelled back to in public although this will never happen for obvious reasons. out. [/quote]

I actually saw a student yell back at David Dubal during one of his nastier moments in an open class at the Manhattan School of Music. He was screaming at her at the top of his lungs while she was playing, and she slammed down the lid to the keys, got up, and shrieked at him "I can't even HEAR myself with your ranting".

He was quite shocked

The nerve to question the great David Dubal. Pity, he could have screamed at Argerich for her Liszt sonata, then sit down and play it properly for her. (I must check out Dubal's recording of the Liszt. Anyone have it?)

Bless that gal who fought back at David Dubal in public! I would love to have been there to applaud her. She should get a medal. What's her name and where is she now?

But in the bigger picture, it's master classes by their very nature that allow such bad teaching situations. More broadly, I'd say it's the nature of classical music instruction by its very nature that allows such bad teaching situations, though most of this abuse goes on in secret, behind closed doors.

It would be very interesting to interview both Dubal and this young pianist in retrospect about this sorry affair: I am sure there are wounds unhealed.

In answer to an earlier comment, Schiff has indeed carved out a noted career as a Bach pianist. But his published remarks about playing 18th century music with any allegiance to its history sounded both uneducated and arrogant to me. I believe I have read interviews in Clavier Magazine and the New York Times some years back, but he gets so much press, it might have been elsewhere that I read his comments.

My reaction each time he spouted off about Bach performance was, "Oh, boy, another 19th-century-style, conservatory-trained pianist who should just shut up and play, before he makes things worse."

A guy like this would probably not make a good teacher, including master classes.

Yelling back at a famous musician who is doing a masterclass could have terrible consequences. If he's very influential and nasty, he could make your life very hard as a musician. Isn't it probably why almost nobody do it ? You don't want Andras Schiff as an enemy.
I think it can goes very far - you can be bothered for MUCH less in any conservatory, for instance, where there's always some politics involved. So, "insulting" the great X could be seen as a kind of suicide. But I think it's the right thing to do - it depends on what are your goals as a music student I guess.

Je ne crois pas, pas du tout! I really don't think so.

If a student doesn't "yell back" when a teacher is simply being nasty, it's because he has no spine. Too bad for him.

Salut les Franche-Comtois!

It's great isn't it, the internet, being able to write things like that and with a click send it out into the world wide web.

But does that make it wrong?

I don't care how famous and/or knowledgeable someone is. If they don't have the decency to be respectful, especially when providing a masterclass in front of people, then they aren't worth the time of any self-respecting student.

It is wrong.

Missed my point.

Gee whiz, how dare you talk to me that way here on the internet! Have the decency to be respectful in front of the whole wide (piano) world!

lol