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Teaching Genius Dorothy Delay and the Making of a Musician (Softcover) / Barbara Lourie Sand | |
Publisher: Amadeus Press | |
Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours | |
Sales Rank: 113593 | |
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However, like all successful people, DeLay has her share of detractors. Sand dispatches them in a single chapter, mostly devoted to refuting criticism, some of which is undoubtedly inspired by envy. It is said that her students win major prizes and make successful careers because she attracts the best talents from all over the world, and because she has attained an unprecedented position of power and influence in the music profession's slippery back corridors. She takes only highly accomplished, motivated students who are preparing for solo careers and practice all day. Even the youngest children arrive playing virtuoso concertos, which indicates heavy family pressure and means that she can hand out the carrots while the parents wield the stick. Nevertheless, the chapter on prodigies makes the tortuous process of training and "handling" them sound utterly benign and healthy.
Sand discusses DeLay's well-known habit of keeping students waiting for hours and leaving much of the teaching to her assistants (whom she gets on the Juilliard faculty), explaining that she accepts too many students and spends too much time promoting them. But she mentions legitimate pedagogical issues only by implication. Unlike teachers who also perform, DeLay never plays for her students (beyond some technical demonstration) to avoid exposing them to a single influence; instead, she advises them to listen to different interpretations on many recordings. But doesn't this also produce imitation, and perhaps confusion as well? Entirely performance-oriented, DeLay focuses on what is effective onstage and encourages a large-scaled, extroverted playing style. She speaks emphatically about teaching her students to think for themselves, but never mentions fostering their emotional response to the music or helping them in the slow, inward process of discovering their own feelings. Yet isn't this the key to becoming a communicative artist?
Sand is an empathetic, adept interviewer, winning her subjects' confidence and eliciting frank, informative responses (though some could have used editing). Galamian, perhaps to contrast his teaching style with DeLay's, generally comes off rather badly; DeLay herself speaks about their rupture candidly but without rancor. The book contains much absorbing information, punctuated with many detailed descriptions of people's looks and attire. There are sweeping statements about players and teachers. Why, for example, are such great artist-teachers as Flesch, Busch, Enescu, Rostal, and Bron not mentioned among the 20th-century "teaching geniuses"? Sand's style is a pleasure to read, engaging, lively, humorous, and to the point, despite some moments of confusion and contradiction. Her perceptive insights and warm feeling for her subject bring us closer to understanding what makes Dorothy DeLay such a fascinating, controversial personality. --Edith Eisler
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