SOUNDPOST

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LETTER of the MONTH

TALES OF AN ADULT BEGINNER

When I started to learn the cello five years ago at the start of my PhD project at Eckart Altenmüller’s Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians Medicine in Hanover, Germany, I was roughly the same age as cellist Billy Tobenkin, author of the article on adult beginners (‘Never too late to learn’, June 2022). One and a half years later I joined the Hanover Orchestra Association for Mahler’s First Symphony, and at the end of 2021 I started lessons with Christoph Croisé in Switzerland and went to masterclasses.

I was touched by Tobenkin’s article, and I especially empathise with his opinion on adults’ expectations and the ups and downs of being an adult beginner. I also agree that there are definitely ‘more “serious” adult learners than we tend to think there are’. But I only partly agree that it is the adults that limit themselves ‘with a fear-based, perfectionist mindset’.

I believe that the feeling that we ‘missed the boat, since the ideal learning trajectory starts in childhood’ is rather something music education, society and the music industry instils in us from a very early age. And it is something that you are constantly reminded of on your journey, with many people assuming you have no ambition, no time, or that you don’t need any since you already have a job. Even worse, and I can only speak about my personal experience, there are countless examples where – when being honest about my short cello journey – potential teachers did not even answer my email request for lessons or watch application videos for masterclasses or amateur orchestra auditions. I also recall lessons where teachers (who did not have an influence on selecting the students) behaved without respect towards me. They would be texting on the phone while I was playing, or even leave the room.

Billy Tobenkin began learning the cello at the age of 25

ALEXA MILLER GALLO

Although many teachers, schools and ensembles might reject you, those who don’t are likely the people that are best for you and your musical development anyway. It is crucial for adult beginners to find those unprejudiced people who believe in you and take your ambitions seriously. I don’t believe it is just the ‘adults selling themselves short’, nor that it would be physiologically impossible to start that late, but that society assumes it. This is evident by the still-existing ‘child prodigy’ mythologising, and by age limits for music programmes, courses, competitions or scholarships, which ultimately lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Societal discrimination may be even stronger for female adult beginners. In my second role as a female engineer in a male-dominated industry, I experience that unconscious bias daily. This does not only affect your work but your job interviews as well, just like auditions for orchestras or music programmes. In admission processes, it is widely known that there is a bias for judging women based on their achievements and skills, and men based on their potential (which is especially problematic for adult beginners). Also, interviewers make assumptions on what women of a certain age want or can achieve (‘she will get pregnant anyway and will need to care for the children’). In 2019 only 16.8 per cent of principal positions in the 40 major orchestras in UK, North America and Europe were held by women. And except for two woodwind instruments, fewer women achieve orchestra positions than would be predicted by the numbers of girls receiving tuition.

There needs to be a shift in the music community towards promoting and acknowledging those unbiased schools, programmes and teachers!

TERESA WENHART

Zurich, Switzerland

FULL SPEED AHEAD

I was interested in the letter ‘Star Power’ (Soundpost, March 2022), especially the comments about soloists whom your correspondent describes as ‘speed merchants’ and whose performances (‘hell-bent’) are greeted with wild applause.

Over the course of many years, I have participated in some such performances. However, it may restore a measure of comfort to your letter writer to report that a few years ago I was in the orchestra for a rendering of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (whose last movement can positively goad violinists into breakneck speeds) where a soloist, whose first two movements were very affecting, was slightly more than fast enough in the last movement during the final rehearsal and went into overdrive in the concert.

Although all the notes appeared (and in the right order!), the audience was audibly underwhelmed by the mad dash, the applause being polite and somewhat desultory, and it did not last long enough for the soloist to come on for a second bow.

CLIVE HOBDAY

Harrow Weald, Middlesex, UK

BELL PHOTO ROBERTTORRES/CELEBRITY SERIES OF BOSTON. MA PHOTO JASON BELL

A WHALE OF A TALE

Joshua Bell’s ‘boomerang incident’ (Sentimental Work, June 2022) reminded me of my own brush with disaster in the early 2000s. I was in Vancouver to perform at a music festival, and decided to spend the afternoon on a whalewatching expedition on a small boat. After an hour of scrutinising seabirds through binoculars, we were astonished to see a 60-foot humpback breaching off our port side, followed by a splashdown with its tail creating a mini-tsunami that catapulted us all to starboard. After disentangling our bodies from each other, I discovered a nasty cut on my right jaw that required a number of stitches post-haste. Luckily, I still managed to make it through Haydn’s Symphony no.96 that evening but, just like poor Joshua, if the injury had been on the other side, who knows what it might have done to my then-fledgling career.

NAOMI ROGERS

Ann Arbor, MI, US

ONLINE COMMENT

Readers shared their own experiences with and as adult beginners bit.ly/3N2yKNx

BERNARD PONTILLON I learnt violin making and took cello lessons when I retired. There is no age limit to learning music!

IVAN T. REBUSTINI I often hear that if you haven’t started as a child, you will never succeed in music. This is a myth.

TOP 3 ONLINE POSTS

www.thestrad.com

1 Violinist, 25, killed in train accident bit.ly/3MXjm5j

2 Cellist Yo-Yo Ma (below) to receive $1m Birgit Nilsson Prize bit.ly/3lTMm1W