Today I had my second lesson with Wolfgang. It was incredible. We'll just say there were lightbulbs going off everywhere in my head.
I always try to start with Mozart if I can because I'm very comfortable with it and it shows a lot about every different teacher's unique style. So, in my first lesson with Wolfgang, I played the first movement from Mozart's 4th horn concerto. Three days prior to my lesson I had a coaching with an accompanist (we get one every week!) on this specific movement and she told me that I needed to do more with the phrasing and the character changes and it was very helpful and inspiring. When I brought this version to Wolfgang, he said, "It's like you're wearing too much perfume." I agreed. He worked with me on longer phrases and not picking out too many notes in a phrase. I personally agreed with him on a lot of things, but there were definitely some musical choices that I still preferred my initial decision, and he was ok with that! He would offer his advice and they tell me that it was ok, I could do it either way, whatever I wanted! yay! Of course I always tried his way and gave reasoning for mine as well. There were definitely some "vienna horn" stylistic things that I caught in his playing, including accented notes instead of a solid, smooth line. I was playing some lines straight with an even crescendo and he told me to stop crescendoing into every note, instead hit them and back off, but crescendo with each note. Very interesting interpretation and I definitely will keep trying to perfect it. I need to be able to do what he asks. He gave me some advice on high playing, making a more "e" vowel with my tongue closer to the roof of my mouth, and it's been helping for sure. My high range is improving. slowly.
He has a really organized way of teaching lessons. He has a bunch of things that he knows he wants to say, and judging only from my lessons, it seems to be pretty specific to each player. He didn't say anything non relevant to my horn playing. He asked if I could define support, which I couldn't. He defines it basically as something that your body does for you (for the most part). When you take a breath and blow out, what do you feel? Not much. Then take a breath and blow out through a pursed embouchure, now what do you feel? You abs tighten automatically. This is support. One can help support their support by taking healthy breaths from basically your stomach, not from the chest. He tends to say the word "tension" a lot, which I know is a no-no, but I'm accepting and interpreting it in a way that will help me and not be damaging to my tension free approach! Thank goodness for Dale Clevenger's advice on lessons in Europe! "Don't ever think about tightening your abdomen, they might talk about it, just don't." There was more, but that's the basic gist of it.
But anyway.. I'm really inspired after every lesson I've had here and I'm really feeling like I'm getting a lot out of this city. Now I need to kick it into gear and really work on this music. I'm putting together my rep for my recital here. It's looking quite promising... :)
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