Cadenza Summer School: Yagmur (16)

Dear Joan Dickson Chamber Music Fund,

First of all, I would like to thank you and tell you about my educational and very experiential week at the Cadenza International Summer Music School.

We started the course opening on Saturday with the meeting day. We had the opportunity to meet the course administrator and our new teachers. Everyone was very excited and very friendly.

On Sunday, we started to work on the music for the concert on the last day of the week. I was in two chamber music groups. We were to play Shostakovich String Quartet no.7 in the first and Haydn op.64 no.4 in G in the second. On the same day, the notes of the pieces that we were to play in the orchestra were also distributed (Dvorak Serenade and Chopin Piano Concerto no.2). We started working on our works within the same day.

I played the Shostakovich String Quartet with my new friends for the first time to Louise Lansdown.

When we finished playing, she gave us technical and musical interpretations. 

The next day, I completed both my personal lesson and my first lesson with my other Chamber Music group. Our teachers, who led us in the Second Chamber Music class (Haydn op.64 no.4), were Leland Chen and Jacky Woods.  Our lessons with them were very enjoyable. They gave us good examples of how and where we should lead our group, and also about articulation.

On the last two days of the course, one of my new friends and I decided to play G.F. Handel’s Passacaglia duo for violin and viola. Jacky Woods helped us with our new piece until the concert day. 

The time which I spent at the Cadenza Summer Music School was unique and educational. I met new people and we shared many musical ideas with each other. All the teachers I worked with were very patient and experienced, and they wanted us to benefit from their experience. 

Thank you for giving me this opportunity and helping to improve my education even in such a short time.

I attached a photo that we took with my new friends at the end of the Cadenza Course 🙂

Kind regards, 
Yagmur (viola), age 16