Starker at 100: Alice Schoenfeld and Thomas Loewenheim remember János Starker

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ALICE SCHOENFELD

He used to hold annual masterclasses where he’d invite his masters students and guest artists and he included my sister Eleonore. Every once in a while he’d say, ‘Professor Schoenfeld, what would you say?’ They were nice conversational classes. My sister enjoyed the cooperation and the mutual teaching. I was only there twice but was very impressed with the high level of teaching and understanding I witnessed. He had such a deep musical understanding — how Brahms has to be played differently from Beethoven, for example — and he was wonderful at explaining to his students.

He was very charming and very aristocratic, as was his playing. He knew the right tempos and could play exactly as the composer wrote. Everything he did was charming and efficient, without hurting students. He made them feel worthy of his attention. It’s too bad that great people have to die like everyone else. But they live on in their students, their work, and what they’ve given the world.

THOMAS LOEWENHEIM

The most important message Mr Starker left me with was in the importance of the relationship between technique and music making. Whereas most people relate technique to the ability to play fast and precisely, Mr Starker considered it to be a detailed understanding of every action required to execute each specific motion related to cello playing, and its musical implication.

He compared the technical choices we made to the vocabulary a poet or author would use explicitly to express an idea or emotion. He was the most efficient teacher I have met. In his lessons he would choose his words very carefully, minimising the amount of time it would take him to get his message across. In his unique way, he was also one of the most caring human beings I have ever encountered.

Playing

In The Best of Technique you’ll discover the top playing tips of the world’s leading string players and teachers. It’s packed full of exercises for students, plus examples from the standard repertoire to show you how to integrate the technique into your playing.

Teaching

The Strad’s Masterclass series brings together the finest string players with some of the greatest string works ever written. Always one of our most popular sections, Masterclass has been an invaluable aid to aspiring soloists, chamber musicians and string teachers since the 1990s.

Calendars

American collector David L. Fulton amassed one of the 20th century’s finest collections of stringed instruments. This year’s calendar pays tribute to some of these priceless treasures, including Yehudi Menuhin’s celebrated ‘Lord Wilton’ Guarneri, the Carlo Bergonzi once played by Fritz Kreisler, and four instruments by Antonio Stradivari.