When you memorize and perform a piece of music, you digest it in a way that is just not possible otherwise. You get some sugar out of it, but then you spit the thing out. Making your way through a piece of music, without memorizing or performing it, is a lot like chewing a piece of bubble gum. Of course, I must explain what I mean by 'learning the concerto': I mean memorizing it and performing it in public. I would argue that once a student has learned this piece, she or he tends to emerge with faster fingers, a better ability to do passagework, increased endurance, increased confidence and ability in third position and a stronger bow stroke.

On the other hand, I'm a pretty big fan of going with the composer's original wishes.īut back to my original point, I do believe this concerto usually transforms a student. My students all overcome those Nachez-imposed hardships, and I think they are better for it. 60 – typically difficult for a student – there are different, easier notes! The same is true in the third movement, with the difficult passage at m. First, there are the differing slurs and articulations, but in say, m. Having learn the Nachez version as a child and taught it for many years, I was taken by surprise when I took out my fiddle and read through a new edition by Kurt Sassmannshaus, which is more along lines of the original.

This is the same version that appears in the American Suzuki books, though there is dissention in the ranks over its use. I studied with a traditional, non-Suzuki teacher as a kid, and yes, I played the Vivaldi A minor concerto, the version edited by Tivadar Nachéz. Now make no mistake, the A minor concerto was used for teaching purposes well before Suzuki incorporated it into his method books some 35 years ago. The second movement, the slow movement, comes later, in Book 5. In the Suzuki sequence, most of this piece is presented in the latter part of Book 4: the first movement, then the third movement. But with five students all at the beginning, or in the middle, or just beyond, the Concerto in A minor, I've had quite a lot of time to think about this piece and its effect on students.

Vivaldi a minor concerto