Itzhak Perlman featured on the cover of Crescendo Magazine
Itzhak Perlman discusses virtual teaching in his Crescendo Magazine cover feature (Photo credit: Masterclass.com)
Although virtual teaching ensures safety, it does not replace in-person lessons
By Verena Fischer-Zernin
Crescendo Magazine
November 18, 2020
Itzhak Perlman is clearly desperate. For a moment it seems like the video interview has to take place without words. With his lively facial expression and eloquent gestures, the violinist would surely have enough to say. But then the technology takes pity. Perlman laughs in relief.
Itzhak Perlman: I only realize what I don't know about these machines! I have the latest equipment, but I just don't know how to use it. And then you always depend on the grace of WiFi. You can have the most fantastic microphones and amplifiers - if the WiFi doesn't want it, nothing works.
CRESCENDO: Do you also make music online? How are you coping with the transmission delay?
I have an app that lets you play chamber music - with minimal delay. We recently played Mozart quartets. Each of us was in a different place. It wasn't bad at all. The only problem was ...
... let me guess: the WLAN.
It is unbelievable. They send people to the moon, but they cannot provide reliable WiFi.
How did you feel when all concerts were suddenly canceled in the spring?
At first it felt like a vacation. But to go to a concert hall and play for an audience, that's what I need like the air I breathe.
Streaming concerts are no substitute for you?
It's very interesting to see what technology can do. We played Edward Elgar's The Snow for choir, piano and two violins. We put that together from different places. I played both violin parts and wore shirts of different colors. So there was Perlman I and Perlman II. All voices were recorded individually, including the choir. The singers had click tracks for the tempo. The result was very successful.
Have you performed live again in the meantime?
No. You have to maintain social distancing. You can't sell out the halls. A disaster for the organizers. If you have 2,500 seats, you can let in maybe 500 spectators. Yesterday a friend of mine played a concert. He said it looked like it was advertised very poorly. It felt like nobody was there!
Music needs closeness.
I need the contact! With the audience, with the students.
Do you also teach by video?
Lessons at the Juilliard School have so far only taken place online. Recently there was a problem with the synchronization. The student started talking, but I only saw the lip movements. And then I heard him talk three seconds later. It is a challenge.
Not to mention playing.
Just think about the choice of pieces: when students play a sonata, they don't have a pianist unless someone in the family happens to be playing the piano. But if not, how should you interpret music when half of it is missing? It is a little easier if you undertake a solo concert, because the solo part usually contains the essential thoughts.
Teaching consists of many individual aspects. How can you judge the sound?
The transmission quality can be very good. But the problem with dynamics is that everything often sounds the same loud. Then you don't know why. When someone makes very special timbres, I say, I think that's good, but I don't know for sure. Or sometimes someone suddenly plays an accelerando , and when I ask why, we notice that the video is trying to keep up with the sound, and that's why the sound track is sometimes accelerated and sometimes throttled. You have to empathize intensely in order to grasp how the student wants to play. The only thing that you can really rely on is the pitch! Technology does not interfere with questions of intonation.
What about motion sequences?
Of course you can see them. But it also depends on how the students stand in front of the camera. If I say I don't see your right hand, take a step back, and I'll hear you worse again. I'm getting used to virtual teaching, but it's not ideal.
You are one of those exceptional talents to which the instrument has, as it were, grown from childhood. How could you teach when you never had to think about a lot for yourself?
That's an important question. When someone is playing and it doesn't work that well, I sometimes find myself thinking, it's easy! Then I have to say to myself: that it is easy for me doesn't mean that it is easy for others too. So I have to find out what the difficulty is. Certain fingerings are easy for me because I have big hands. But for someone else they mean that they have to stretch their hand. So I have to ask: does this feel comfortable to you? Because if it's not comfortable, the intonation is at risk.
You once mentioned the difference between showing and teaching. Can you give me an example?
When gifted students hear something, they just act it out. But when it comes to phrasing or timbres and they play without me doing it, then they understand from the inside out and they can do better. Because it's their own. It is of course more difficult for the teacher to put something into words than to show it. Sometimes I involuntarily reach for my violin, but then I tell myself, don't do it. It's like a singing teacher. He has to verbalize everything because he can't show what's going on in the body. A singer has to feel how he is making a sound.
Singing teachers sometimes make the mistake of forcing their students to use images that do not suit the students.
It depends on how you say something. I have a bit of experience with it. Because I had six or seven singing lessons myself.
You once sang the prison guard in Tosca !
My part was 19 seconds long, I counted! I sang with Pavarotti and I decided: this was my farewell debut.
In contrast to your singing career, the longer your violin career will last. Since you took on the world's stages, styles of interpretation have changed dramatically. The original sound movement has revolutionized a lot - but overall there is a tendency towards taut, slim, bright. It's an almost digital aesthetic, with little ritardando , no sobs and no glissandi. Do you like that?
Certain habits that strings have are part of our language today. I recently spoke to someone about great violinists of the 1930s and 1940s: Kreisler, Oistrach, Elman, Heifetz, Milstein. Not one of them sounded like the others. It was very easy to tell them apart. Heifetz was of course recognized immediately. But today we have a problem because the internet exists. You can hear everything and everyone. Many players simply choose the sound they like. This is then not particularly individual.
If you look back: what would you do differently today?
When I hear old recordings of myself, from 30 or 40 years ago, there is always good and bad news. The good news is: it wasn't bad at all back then. And the bad thing is: I wouldn't play it like that today. And that's good again. Still liking an old recording would mean standing still. But it's so important to keep evolving. I think I hear better today. I get more of what is happening.
How much do you practice?
I practice as needed. Sometimes I find it is not necessary.
Do you need physical exercise?
You mean scales and something? No not more. I practice the pieces that I perform. There's enough in there. When you play a virtuoso piece, it's like an etude. You just have to make sure your fingers are fine.
For the full article in German, click here.