If music criticism has always been a challenge, teaching has always remained my true vocation. As I noted in a previous article, 'Music and a problem of language'(9/20/2026,) literary criticism will always be valid in a way unknown to music criticism; simply, the one deals with words on words, the other with words on sound.
And yet teaching is also criticism, one of joy and celebration as well as censure. The human, person to person contact makes for a radical difference.
My first experience as a music teacher occurred when I was studying in America with the Russan pianist Alexander Uninsky. One of my colleagues, an exceptionally gifted pianist, fell out of favour with Uninsky, and feeling hurt and isolated he asked if he could play for me. I had never taught a pianist before and felt flattered to be asked. Ad so it came about that Bill(William Blaine) played Chopin's Fourth Ballade and I was immediately struck by an involving mix of both brilliance and limitation. If he could toss aside the savagely virtuosic coda with an enviable facility, he also seemed oddly indifferent to the less obviously demanding pages, almost as if he was looking ahead for those moments that could showcase his dexterity. We talked at length about pedalling, sonority, balance, texture and line. I recalled a comment by a later colleague that the opening of the Fourth Ballade should evoke a sense of wonder, 'as if a blind man had suddenly acquired sight.' From Bill there was little wonder, just a succession of notes. We worked together on many future occasions, and that first experience of teaching has stayed with me down the years. I was truly at the start of a career that would take me worldwide, my truest vocation.
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I am often asked if I have a philosophy as a teacher. And my answer is, I have none. At the same time my students have been made aware of what for me are cardinal beliefs(their scores are covered with arrows, an insistence that music moves forward in time, always with a sense of impetus and momentum.) Even silence(that dramatic pulsing pause before the final onslaught in Chopin's Fourth Ballade, an increase rather than a diminishing of tension.) There are many potent, or you could say pregnant silences and few notes in late Liszt, yet the silence, ironically, has to be made to speak and tell.
Then there is the question of sonority, working on the individual sound of each composer. No two composers should sound alike and, a no less consideration, no two pianists should sound the same. The cultivation of an individual sonority, an individual, immediately recognisable sound is at the heart of every great pianist, a vital key to their musical personality. You could never mistake Horowitz for Rubinstein, de Larrocha for Arrau etc. I have always treasured Stephen Kovacevich's description of Myra Hess as 'a virtuoso in sound.'
Then here is the vexed if all important question of technique, something in the final resort inseparable from musicianship(for Louis Kentner there is no such thing as technique in isolation, 'it is all a matter of rhythm and feeling.'). Nonetheless I am conscious of many hours spent with Hanon, Czerny's 'Art of Dexterity,' Cramer Etudes and Brahms 51 Exercises(the last two at the centre of my early lessons with Ronald Smith). Later, and of necessity, you confront physical problems within the music itself,
Above all it is vital to recognise a student's identity, of how to work within rather than without . For better or worse all musicians are themselves (the attempt to imitate others is doomed from the start) and the forcing of alien ideas is the reverse of education.
What is also the reverse is negative teaching You can be as critical as you like but once you favour or even delight in negation, in dismissal rather than encouragement, you are lost as a teacher.
Having given master-classes in many different countries and institutions my curiosity was naturally aroused by my fellow-teachers Telling a student that an all too audible and visible stress is an unacceptable weakness('I would strongly advise you acquire greater confidence) is hardly helpful. A facetious question after a student had just performed Chopin's Third Sonata, 'could you tell me what that piece was, because I didn't recognise it?' is an example of a show- case, alternative to advice. I recall a class by Fou Ts'ong where students were told they had little or no understanding of Chopin without ever providing a viable alternative. Dmitri Bashkirov's classes were often described as not unlike pubic executions, and a no less celebrated teacher who told a reasonably fluent and professional pianist she had 'nothing' is as unrealistic as it is unforgiveable. Noone has 'nothing,' and students led to believe the greater the severity the greater the teacher are sadly misled. Again, a desire to locate ways to improve a performance rather than diminish it still further does not constitute softness, but is a wish to help and improve.
I recall Sequeira Costa's comment to one of my own students after she had played Albeniz'Rondena' from 'Iberia' with a 'have a nice day' nonchalant disregard for its character. ' Spanish music, not so happy,' he advised, and I was grateful for his suggestion rather than a more infuriated estimate. Stephen Kovacevich's response to a fast- fingered pianist that as well as possessing such enviable facility('I wish I had fingers like yours') it would be nice if she was to think a bit about the music carried a sting in the tail. Again, if Alfred Brendel's classes could be desolating for the unfocused and unwary, they were a mine of information for those able to survive his scrutiny.
At a personal level I was asked to play two Rachmaninov Etudes-tableaux to Vladimir Ashkenazy. But he was so intent on a swingeing attack on my two predecessors in the class, that he never heard me. My performance, though not without temperament, was far from perfect technically and his response would have been merciless. I had a lucky escape!
For me teaching Is about the finest details within the larger design. My public class at the Oxford Festival some years ago on Ravel's 'Scarbo' from 'Gaspard de la Nuit' insisted on a satisfactorily evocative opening, a launch which sets the macabre scene for all that follows. Ravel, like all great French composer's, was ultra-precise in his demands, you ignore or skate over them at your peril. And so, to that opening marked 'sourdine,' pianissimo' and with a hair-pin decrescendo. My student's alternative was a banged out, consistent 'forte.'
Ravel's diablery should make the audience's hair stand on end and her blankness would hardly have frightened a mouse. And so, we worked on those three opening notes for a lengthy period before finally achieving something close to the desired result. Again, I recall another performance of 'Scarbo,' heard as a jury member of a competition in France, which prompted me when asked for advice to say Ravel does not mark his score so meticulously just for fun. Most, if not all the notes had been played (no mean feat given such vertiginous writing) but little else was on offer. .
To recap, teaching has been my special joy, but hours of pubic classes given notably at London's Royal Academy of Music started to take their toll. I was never a passive teacher, singing, gesticulating and coaxing in an ever-increasing involvement with the task in hand. I would frequently leave the stage and go to the back of the Duke's Hall to hear whether the student was communicating beyond the front row.. I would also remind myself of Julius Katchen's words that 'the fluent communication of emotion to an audience is the most difficult of all tasks for the public performer.
Finally, I recall so many years of teaching, something hopefully shared by all those who played for me.
Bryce Morrison