We Piano Teachers and Our Demons (eBook)

This book focuses on piano teachers and the many pains they encounter in their careers. These pains play an essential role in blocking the musical inspiration of their students. The author identifies with the sensitivities of the teachers, aiming at the inspiration permeated and safer playing of their students.

The book penetrates the protective mechanisms of the teachers that, on the one hand, maintain their professional functioning, while on the other hand, block refreshing ideas. It combines exploration of secure and culturally informed inspired playing, coping with exaggerated anxiety and understanding the interaction of piano actions with pianist's physiology.

Zecharia Plavin was born in 1956, Lithuanian Vilnius, then under the Soviet regime. He studied in the famous Ciurlionis School of arts under Marietta Azizbekova, herself a student of Samuil Feinberg in Moscow Conservatoire. At age 21, Plavin immigrated to Israel, studied piano under Professor Viktor Derevianko and completed his piano studies under Louis Kentner in London, writing a Ph.D. research on Ernest Bloch for the Hebrew University. Receiving the Shapira award in 1980, he began concertizing playing with Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and later performing in the USA and many European countries. In 1990, he started teaching piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. In 2000, Plavin founded the short-lived Israeli Musicians' Forum to promote musicians' professional rights in the country, simultaneously widening the scope of his academic expertise into areas of culture, philosophy, and protection of human rights. His texts on Ernest Bloch and Ben-Zion Orgad appeared in books issued by Cambridge University Press and Ben Gurion University Press. Since 2007, his compositions started being performed by his colleagues and have been presented in Israel, USA, Lithuania, Hong Kong, and Germany.

Plavin keeps combining concert activities with research and composition, playing both Beethoven, Schumann, and Liszt and works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Ernest Bloch, Hans Kox, Rued Langgaard, and Ben-Zion Orgad. His former piano students Ofra Ytzkhaki and Nizar Elkhatter feature ever more prominently on the concert stages of Israel and Western Europe.

  

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This book focuses on piano teachers and the many pains they encounter in their careers. These pains play an essential role in blocking the musical inspiration of their students. The author identifies with the sensitivities of the teachers, aiming at the inspiration permeated and safer playing of their students.The book penetrates the protective mechanisms of the teachers that, on the one hand, maintain their professional functioning, while on the other hand, block refreshing ideas. It combines exploration of secure and culturally informed inspired playing, coping with exaggerated anxiety and understanding the interaction of piano actions with pianist's physiology.This book helps to open teachers' perceptions of the ways to enable more secure and more inspired performances while remembering the inner feelings of the piano teachers.