String Quartets with Tedesca String Quartet
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About String Quartets with Tedesca String Quartet
An opportunity to work intensively on string quartets in preformed groups. You will receive coaching from each of the four members of the experienced and ever-popular Tedesca String Quartet: Nic Fallowfield, Clare Bhabra, Richard Muncey, Jenny Curtis.
What is the course about?
The Tedesca String Quartet returns to lead our well-established summer course for pre-formed string quartets and other small string chamber ensembles - trios, quintets and sextets also acceptable.
What will you learn?
It will be entirely up to individual groups as to how much music they get through during the course. Tastes and inclinations vary and while one group could well be content to concentrate on a couple of movements from a particular piece, another might want to get through two whole quartets during their stay. The wonderful Benslow library is at your disposal during the course should you find you want to sight-read a completely different work for a change, perhaps as an evening's relaxation after a busy day of coaching and rehearsing!
How will the course be taught?
You will receive coaching from each of the four members of the experienced Tedesca Quartet. In the session after coffee on the Saturday morning the Tedesca Quartet will hold a ‘workshop’ in which they will discuss, demonstrate and then perform a string quartet, possibly two. Previous years have witnessed performances of quartets by Janacek, Prokofiev and Martinu.
During the coached sessions advice will be given on both individual techniques and on how best to play together and blend well in your quartet. Suggestions to rehearse together will come up. Of paramount importance will be how best to achieve an appropriate musical spirit for the piece under discussion.
Who is the course for?
Ability: Confident, Skillful.
Will music be provided and do you need to prepare or bring anything?
No, participants are requested to bring their own music. Helpful resources: IMSLP has a wide range of parts and scores. Benslow Music members may be able to borrow the music from our library.
Aside from that, just bring yourself and your instrument!
This has been the best coaching my quartet has received to date. Each of the Tedesca have impressive coaching skills - knowing how far to push us as a group; communicating in a clear and easy to understand way e.g. demonstrating by playing a passage in a certain way; using words/phrases as analogies to help us add colour and give the right character to a passage of music; using positive feedback to help encourage us to improve our playing. Overall their feedback has been really motivating for my quartet and helped take us up to the next level. Bravo!
The attention to musical technique and interpretation detail by each of the tutors combined with a relaxed personal approach made each coaching session most enjoyable as well as valuable.