Opinion: Making the most out of chamber music coaching

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Teaching chamber music has been one of the greatest pleasures of my professional life. Students who seek my guidance garner my utmost admiration for their pursuit of expertise in one of the highest forms of art ever devised by humankind. I cannot possibly encourage them enough.

That said, teaching chamber music well is very difficult. There is so much to absorb when hearing a student ensemble: their individual technical levels, the chemistry of the group, and their grasp (individually and collectively) of the style of the work and the composer it came from. In the space of an hour – the standard time for coaching at the Juilliard School these days – there’s a lot of work to be done.

While helping someone to sound better quickly is always a plus, I need to make sure that I’m not just putting a Band-Aid on a problem that needs more long-term care. Of the greatest interest to me when teaching is to ensure that a the players have a solid sense of context. Why and how should Mozart sound different from Haydn? What are the greatest recordings of the work at hand, and why? How much articulation do you need in a concert hall? How many different choices of fingerings are there for a given passage? Is this part of the music more to be sung or spoken? How does it relate to the composer’s native language?

Probably the most easily accessible – and often overlooked – context is the composer’s other music. Because I’ve lived a good long life filled with musical experience, I have a decent library of reference music in my head, and it’s a pleasure to share it with students. For example, Beethoven wrote several extraordinary slow movements in the key of E major: in the op.9 no.1 String Trio, the Second ‘Rasumovsky’ Quartet, and the op.1 no.2 Piano Trio. They share an almost out-of-body quality, and it’s inspiring to wonder what this beautiful tonality must have meant to Beethoven. And because I’ve played all three works, one helps the other, and I want my students to have the same experience.

We’ve been looking at chamber music teaching more or less from the outside in. So now I should contribute a more detailed list to check off when tackling a serious work. It’s vital that everyone prepares and plays their part at the highest level. That means the best bowings and fingerings, first-class sound production, a solid sense of rhythm, crystal-clear articulation and pristine intonation. Chamber music parts rarely make it into students’ weekly instrumental lessons – they are often too busy with solo and competition pieces, scales and etudes. An experienced coach should ensure that each player brings their part to the level of their solo pieces, as well as faithfully communicating the composer’s instructions.

Next comes listening. There is probably nothing more essential than the ability to hear and react to one’s colleagues: if the music is too loud or soft, out of tune or not together, it can only be corrected if the whole group hears it. Sometimes it’s necessary to ask an ensemble to repeat one moment many times until they hear it’s perfect.

It’s important to be both demanding and encouraging at the same time. Enabling a group to sound better – even for a single musical moment – will give them hope and confidence. I try to make sure that happens as often as possible during a coaching. And all the while, I keep my own passion level high: if a teacher is not excited and inspiring, the students might as well be reading written instructions.

Teaching chamber music takes everything I have ever learnt and every drop of energy I can summon. At the end of what I believe was a decent coaching, I’m both exhausted and energised. Hopefully my students will be enlightened, enabled and eager to continue the work on their own.

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