Oxford Chamber Music Course: Clara (12)

I am so grateful to Hidersine and the Joan Dickson Chamber Music Fund for the opportunity to play on the Oxford Chamber Course. It has really helped my cello playing and chamber music skills. ‘L’estro Armonico Concerto X’ particularly helped me to play in a larger group of people. With a lot of the chamber music pieces it has helped watching other people. In ‘La Battaille’ by Susato it was important to make sure that we were playing at the exact same time. We had to come in at the same time, and for much of the piece we had to play the same rhythm. Often, when practising this piece, we would find it difficult to all be playing together, which did not sound very good and was quite obvious. This piece taught me to use techniques I was not doing previously, like double-stops or bow retakes. ‘Tiger Rag’ by The Original Dixieland Jazz Band arranged by T. Kenny really improved my pizzicato because a large section of the piece uses this style, and I had to keep the bass-line going. The course was really good and improved a lot of my cello skills and challenged me.

Clara (age 12)

Summer School report: Helen Lewis

ESTA Bursary Report 2021

With thanks to sponsor Hidersine and the Nannie Jamieson Nutshell Fund for supporting my bursary to attend the ESTA Summer School.

The summer school was particularly special to attend this year, having not having been able to attend in-person training opportunities or do orchestral playing during the pandemic. Sharing ideas and teaching experiences with other string teachers, in person was particularly good, having the social contact that I think so many of us have missed. Ensemble playing as part of the sessions and informal playing opportunities with other delegates, was the first time since the start of the pandemic that I had played in any sort of group. This is something I have missed being able to do so much. It’s at the heart of why I play the violin, so it was great to just enjoy making music with others. This was something I had taken for granted as just my way of life pre COVID.

The course gave me time and opportunity to reflect on how I teach and review my curriculum, as well as providing some new ideas to add to my teaching toolkit. I particularly enjoyed Helen Dromey’s sessions on her PHD research and her ideas for promoting the pupil voice in lessons. Helen demonstrated how she had used certain pieces to promote creative learning and enabling students to make choices. The practical group work in the sessions allowed time to explore this further. I have started using some of her strategies in my teaching and can see how using some of her ideas will be really effective. Her sessions have helped me look at some alternative ways into teaching a piece of music and to think about which parts of a piece could enable me to do this effectively.

The daily upper strings sessions with Bojan Cvetreznik were fun and I enjoyed learning folk pieces at a very fast tempo. It certainly kept me on my toes! I learnt a lot from his sessions in how he approaches teaching repertoire from memory to a group of players. It was about playing the chunks you knew and stopping and listening to parts you didn’t and being confident in doing that. This was a very different experience from playing from reading the music and I gained a lot from this way of learning regarding how I learn. Bojan had us experimenting with contact point on each string for the type of playing you are doing before playing the piece, this was a good warm up activity and a good way to check in with your sound. This again will be helpful to encourage my students to do more of. I really enjoyed playing several of the pieces, such as Traktor Kolo and Lapp Lenas Vals. I can see myself using these for ensemble work or as concert repertoire with students, played from memory.

The morning Alexander Techniques were a lovely way to start the day. It set me up feeling relaxed and ready to learn. Henry gave us lots of very practical warm up movement activities that we could use with our students. Many were very similar to moves that I use my in practice of Tai Chi and Qi-Gong, so felt very natural and relatable and will be easy to add into the current warm ups I use for both string and piano students. The sessions also allowed for us to work on our own posture and I have been using his ‘active rest’ audio track since the summer school. I think over time, particularly when life gets stressful and busy during the school term, it will be a gift of non-doing.

Simon Cartledge’s upper strings sessions gave lots of ideas for teaching beginners. As I had attended his online ESTA workshops last year, a lot of the content was repeated, nevertheless it was good to revisit his concepts, many of which I have used in my teaching in the last year.

In my over twenty years of teaching I have really learnt that one size of teaching doesn’t fit all, so having a wide selection of resources and ideas of how to teach the same thing is really important. Also, keeping my ideas fresh and feeling rejuvenated as a teacher is important to me, and this is so aided by attending the ESTA summer school. It may just be hearing the same thing again and revisiting why or why I am not using that approach or idea, or having a completely new way of trying out teaching a certain technique.

Thank you to all the team at ESTA that enabled this year’s summer school to take place, I appreciate it was difficult to run with COVID­­ and a smaller cohort of delegates, but I found it incredibly beneficial to attend.

Helen Lewis, September 2021

Oxford Chamber Course: Cara (11)

Oxford Chamber Course: July 2021

The course started with getting to know each other. I wasn't sure what to expect but was excited to be there. I was on the introductory course and I found out that each day we would have a workshop and play in a whole group ensemble and two chamber quartets where we would be rehearsing for a concert on the last day.

In the group ensemble we played part of ‘Concerto VIII’ by Corelli which was really nice but you had to count carefully as it was such a slow piece. The other piece we played was ‘The Liberty Bell' by John Philip Sousa which was pretty tricky with lots of different finger positions and quite fast, but it was really jolly, cheerful and upbeat.

I was surprised when I realised that an orchestra has so many different parts. I learned that there could be first, second and even third violins, cello soloists and a ripieno, and you can have even more instruments than that. I also generally enjoyed just playing with other people. I had played with others before, but not so many and probably not so well.

It was fun working in chamber groups because the pieces were really lively, it was easier to work on your own individual sections and in one of the pieces I got to pluck a funky, syncopated bit of blues-like tune. I was amazed, too, when one of our chamber group teachers said that she knew the person who had written one of the pieces we played. We played ‘Salut d'Amour’ by Elgar and Tchaikovsky's ‘Neapolitan Song’ in the Jennings Quartet and in the Larkhill Quartet we played ‘Kookaburra’ by Marion Sinclair (the person who the teacher knew) and ‘Aire’ from ‘Abdelazer’ by Henry Purcell. My favourite two were ‘Kookaburra’ and ‘Neapolitan Song’ because they were funky and I had lots to play in them.

The workshops were about Alexander Technique, looking after our instruments, conducting, and Boomwhackers. The workshop on Alexander Technique was interesting. I never knew that when you bend your head over your neck it carries the equivalent of 35kg!

It was important to learn how to keep our instruments in good condition and interesting to see the different parts of instruments closer up. I did not know that you could have so many different types of tuning pegs, including ones called ‘pegheads' and could replace almost all of the parts of your instrument.

 It was fun trying out conducting. We conducted four musicians and they would do everything you asked straight away. We learned how to make them stop and start, play louder and quieter, faster and slower and also conduct in duple, triple and quadruple time. It was exciting trying it out on a real quartet too.

I enjoyed the Boomwhackers workshop because I have never done anything like it and I liked the piece we played. It was ‘My Favourite Things' by Richard Rodgers which is in ‘The Sound of Music', one of my favourite films.

Overall, the Oxford Chamber Course was really interesting and exciting. It was exciting to perform in the concert at the end and I learned so much. Thank you to Hidersine and the Joan Dickson Chamber Music Fund for giving me a bursary.

Clara (11)  -  cello

Senior Arpeggione: Rosalind (18)

The Senior Arpeggione Viola Course has been the highlight of my musical year. I was very upset that last year’s course couldn’t go ahead due to the pandemic, and so was thrilled to find out that this year’s course would be held in August. It provided the invaluable opportunity to play live music with like-minded viola players, which I especially appreciated after so many months of Zoom rehearsals.

Along with many of my viola-playing friends, I enjoyed masterclasses, recitals, playing in a viola orchestra and lots of amazing chamber music coaching. This was given by course director Jacky Woods, Stephen Tees, Michael Posner, Henrietta Hill and Jonathan Barritt, as well as Martin Outram who came for a day as a visiting tutor. The lovely setting of Milden Hall in Suffolk, combined with beautiful weather, also meant that we were able to have many rehearsals outside!

The vast majority of the course was spent rehearsing our chamber music pieces, with each person playing one classical piece, as well as one arrangement of a more recent piece. I loved playing the fourth viola part in York Bowen’s Fantasia for Four Violas, which is such an important part of the viola repertoire. To have coaching on this iconic piece from some of the country’s finest viola players was a real privilege. I also played the second viola part in an arrangement of the Popper Polonaise de Concert, originally for cello octet. Playing this piece from memory was a fun and rewarding challenge! We also played lots of arrangements for viola orchestra, including the Ländler from Mahler’s 1st Symphony, Fly Me to the Moon and Shostakovich’s Cheryomushki Gallop, which is always a course favourite!

I have now attended the Arpeggione Viola Course for ten years. It has drastically improved my ability and confidence as a chamber musician, and this year’s course in particular has reminded me of the importance and joys of live chamber music, especially after so many months of solitary playing. I am so grateful to Hidersine and the Joan Dickson Chamber Music Fund for allowing me to attend.
Thank you so much,
Rosalind (18)  -  viola

Senior Arpeggione: Jeanette (18)

This year, I played my arrangement of ‘Blues Fantasy’ by Eduard Pütz for 6 cellos (arranged for 7 violas) and an arrangement of Popper’s ‘Polonaise de Concert’, both of which were really fun to work on! They’re both very different styles of piece, the Pütz being a jazz piece with lush melodies and contrasting almost atonal passages, as opposed to the Popper which is a very flashy show piece. I loved working on both of these as it really got me to stretch my boundaries of viola playing. The Popper chamber group also decided to play the piece from memory in the concert, which was super fun as we could all communicate a lot more to each other, rather than being absorbed in our music. The ‘Blues Fantasy’ was a little more difficult though, as there were often passages where everyone was in unison, so if even one person was out of time it would be really obvious. But working together with the course tutors, and Martin Outram as a visiting tutor, really helped us to mesh our sound together to sound like one complete group. I played Viola 1 in the Popper & Viola 7 in the Pütz, and I think that going from tons of melodies to the bassline was quite eye-opening, because even though the audience mainly listens out for the big tunes played by the 1st player, the bassline and accompaniment part is equally as important in keeping the group together.

I really enjoyed this course as this was my last one, and I’m so grateful to Hidersine and the Joan Dickson Chamber Music Fund for the bursary!

Thank you again for the opportunity!

Sincerely,

Jeanette (18)  -  viola