Ax and Students

“I once wrote a piece for eight flutes,” recalled Peter Schickele, the composer and musical mad prankster better known as P. D. Q. Bach, “and then realized that it took longer to set up the stands than to play the piece.”

With a schtick that moved between sly wit and goofy humor, an approach familiar to anyone who has heard his radio show and CDs, Schickele made a point to his audience of young performers at the Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop in December: be practical in presenting concerts and always remember that an audience is watching and listening.  

The Professional Training Workshop, hosted by pianist Emanuel Ax, dealt with far more than notes and interpretation of chamber music. It extended into areas like communication with the audience, personal deportment—even stage setup. The overall goal of the workshop was to emphasize that classical musicians today can no longer tower above the audience from on high. They have to engage with listeners as human beings.

As a result, the participants not only had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the music world’s greats but also came away with something else of practical value—advice on public speaking.

“You shouldn’t talk longer than the opening section of the piece.” This advice came from Richard Stoltzman, the master clarinetist who joined Ax and Schickele.

Not all the participants, however, were ready for that aspect of the workshop. Take Yotam Baruch and Efi Hackmey, both Israelis, who were at first intimidated by the idea of speaking at all, however long, before a performance, especially in a language that was not their mother tongue. In fact, at the outset of the workshop, they e-mailed the program managers, begging for a reprieve from speaking at the culminating concert.

They needn’t have worried. By the time of the concert, they were connecting with the audience like pros. Baruch brought in the personal when he spoke about the significance of the duo’s chosen work, Brahms’s Cello Sonata in E Minor, explaining that he had suffered a traumatic shoulder injury that forced him to withdraw from his studies. As it happened, the final piece he had played before his injury was the Brahms’s other Cello Sonata, in C Minor.

“In Hebrew we say it’s like closing a circle,” Baruch explained.

Eloquent in any language.