The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 031 The Fischoff Effect: Blaise Magnière – Avalon String Quartet

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

Today's guest in this first episode of the Fischoff Effect series is Blaise Magnière, first violin of the Avalon String Quartet.  I could not be more excited to be on site at the University of Notre-Dame as one of the official podcasters covering the 46th Annual Fischoff Competition from May 10 to 12, And, I thought it would be really fun to bring you guys 5 former winners of the competition to talk about their experience preparing for and competing at Fischoff, and about the wonderful adventures and opportunities that have followed their win! So, this week, you will hear all about the Fischoff Effect with my guests - Blaise Magniere from the Avalon String Quartet, Dorival Puccini from Axiom Brass, Matt Landry from the Akropolis Reed Quintet , Christopher Whitley from the Thalea String Quartet, and Lydia Reah from the former Kairos String Quartet!  Whether you are a musician about to compete at the competition, or a music lover looking for a fresh approach to practicing and preparing for a concert, make sure to subscribe and tune in everyday, because those conversations are bursting with inspiration and EXTREMELY useful information!  Each group has a unique and motivating story and my guests are so generous with their insightful tips and advice!  About Fischoff Founded in 1973 in South Bend, Indiana, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition has grown to become the largest chamber music competition in the world, attracting the finest and most talented young musicians from around the globe. and is one of the most prestigious classical music prizes attainable today. Since its founding, more than 6,000 musicians have participated, many of whom have gone on to distinguished careers in music performance and education.  Fischoff is also deeply committed to music education and partners with competition alumni to bring free, innovative Arts-in-Education programs directly to children in their own schools and community centers. Since 1995, nearly 50,000 children, youth and adults have received free educational programming of the highest order. Website: http://www.fischoff.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheFischoff Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fischoffchambermusic/   Meet the Avalon String Quartet - Grand Prize 1998 Blaise Magnière & Mary Wang, violin | Tony Devroye, viola | Chen-Hou Lee, cello   https://avalonquartet.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avalonqt/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/avalonstringquartet/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=avalon+string+quartet   Described by the Chicago Tribune as "an ensemble that invites you — ears, mind, and spirit — into its music" The Avalon has performed in major venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd St Y, Merkin Hall, and Bargemusic in New York; the Library of Congress and National Gallery of Art in Washington DC; Wigmore Hall in London; and Herculessaal in Munich. Other performances include appearances at the Bath International Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Caramoor, La Jolla Chamber Music Society, NPR's St. Paul Sunday, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Dame Myra Hess Concerts, Los Angeles Music Guild, and the Ravinia Festival. The quartet is performing an annual concert series at historic Ganz Hall at Roosevelt University. In recent seasons, the Avalon presented the complete quartet cycles of Beethoven, Bartok, and Brahms at Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. The Avalon is quartet-in-residence at the Northern Illinois University School of Music, a position formerly held by the Vermeer Quartet. Additional teaching activities have included the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Institute, Interlochen Advanced Quartet Program, Madeline Island Music Camp, and the Britten-Pears School in England, as well as masterclasses at universities and conservatories throughout the United States. Additionally, they have given numerous performances and presentations to young audiences in under-resourced schools and communities.    

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, Episode 31, the first of five shows discussing the Fischhoff Effect. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi everyone. I hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are. I could not be more excited to be on site at Notre Dame University as one of their official podcasters covering the 46th annual Fischhoff competition from May 10 to 12. And I thought it would be really fun to bring you

guys five former winners of the competition to talk about their experience preparing for and competing at Fischhoff and about the wonderful adventures and opportunities that have followed their win. So this week, you will hear all about the Fischhoff effect with my guests Blaise Magniere from the Avalon String Quartet, Dora Volpuccini from Axiom Brass, Matt Landry from the Acropolis Reed Quintet, Christopher Whitley from the Talia String Quartet, and Lydia Ray from the former Cairo String Quartet. Whether you're a musician about to compete at the competition or a music lover looking for a fresh approach to practicing and preparing for a concert, make sure to subscribe and tune in every day because those conversations are bursting with inspiration and extremely useful

information. Each group has a unique and motivating story and my guests are so generous with their insightful tips and advice. So without further ado, here's today's guest in the first episode of the Fish Off Effects series, Blaise Magniere, first violin of the Avalon String Quartet. Let's go to the show. Blaise Magniere, so great to have you on the show today. Oh, it's great to be here. Blaise, could we start with you telling us who you are,

which group you play with and tell us which year you attended Fischhoff and the prize that you guys won. Sure, I am Blaise Manier, the first violinist of the Avalon String Quartet. We went to the Fischhoff competition in 1998 and won the grand prize that year. Can you tell us a little bit about the group and how you came to existence? Sure, I think it would be easier if I start with a bit of my personal history first on how it led to the creation of the quartet. That's a great idea. I grew up in France,

but then spent my high school years in England in a musical high school, the Yehudi Menuhin School, which only had 45 students. It's a boarding school, and it was tough for me in terms of moving away from home, not to mention the huge cultural gap between France and England.

But there were many great musicians there visiting all the time. And I got to play for Yehudi Menuhin regularly, which was great. He was an incredible personality, a musician. He didn't have a very hands-on approach to teaching, so he would like to bring up esoteric concepts every time in lessons. For instance, he would stand up on his head for a while. But, yeah, so it wasn't that useful in terms of direct help with the violin playing,

But I learned a lot about music and he was a very inspiring, very inspiring personality. But in the school, there was also a great emphasis on chamber music. We were always put in chamber groups, usually string quartets. And so I really got introduced to the repertoire. And I also got to hear some great string quartets in London, such as the Bourdain Quartet or the Takash Quartet. And in my last year at the Yehudi Menuhin School, I met Maurizio Fuchs, who taught at McGill University at the time. He now teaches in Indiana University. So I decided to move to Montreal to study with him, and I learned really a great amount from him.

And it's also where I met my wife, Marie Wong, who also plays violin, and she plays in a quartet with me. So at the time, we made a conscious decision not to play together because we were worried that this could mess up our relationship. But we continued our studies together in Cleveland, where we studied with Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music, another really wonderful teacher. And it's at the end of our studies there that we decided to try to start playing together. We both loved the quartet repertoire.

We loved listening to quartet concerts. and we decided to audition together with some friends from Cleveland for the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival as a preformed group. And we got into the festival. We got to play regularly for the Tokyo String Quartet. We had just a great time there. We learned a lot of great music and we enjoyed working together as a quartet. So we decided to continue as a quartet

And we started the Graduate String Quartet Residency at Northern Illinois University with the Vermeer Quartet. And this is where we learned a lot of specific string quartet skills. And this is also when we started doing competitions. And it's in fact at that time that we won the Fischhoff Competition, the theme of today's podcast. So we started performing more and more. And we continued our studies with the Emerson and the Julliard Quartets. And we won some more competitions. the Concert Artist Guild competition, which gave us management,

as well as the top prize at the ARD competition in Munich. And we started auditioning for some teaching positions as well. We taught at Indiana University South Bend for a few years. And now we are teaching at Northern Illinois University, where we studied previously with Vermeer. And at this point in our career, We split our energy about equally between performing and teaching. And this is quite an active performance schedule.

I'm based in the Chicago area, and you guys are very, very active. Well, yes, it's a little bit hard to juggle. Typically, we have about four different programs a year, but then there are a lot of other pieces that come in. So it's quite a bit of repertoire to juggle. And of course, it takes a lot of rehearsal time to get the pieces up to the standard that we need. So because we've played together so long, I think some things have gotten a little bit easier

in terms of getting things together at a certain level. We can read each other very well. And so we can afford to have a little less rehearsal time than we used to. but we really love performing and it's it's been great to to have this opportunity and i'm just thankful to be doing this frankly it's just such great repertoire and i love what you just said about how you guys are really good at reading each other now because that's what chamber music is all about and i'm going to use that as a segue into my next question and i would love to hear

about how the Avalon Quartet prepared for, you just told us that you guys were doing a lot of competitions, but how do you prepare for a competition like Fischhoff? What was your process? Well, we worked very hard, first of all. Competitions, unfortunately, can feel very different from concerts.

I know actually some people that enjoy doing competitions a lot, but that's not the case for me. and I think that's really a minority. But there are such a great preparation for concerts. So I really believe, and I think most teachers would agree, that the preparation is more important than the competition itself. So preparing for the competition just increased our standards,

got us to a higher level. And Fischhoff had a relatively small amount of repertoire. We just had to prepare two pieces, I believe. but we also did competitions like ARD in Munich which had three full programs so that was a ton of preparation just preparing those three full programs is like having a whole season of concerts ready so when you come out of a competition like that you should be ready to tour so in terms of specifics of how we prepared. We were doing the Quartet Residency with the Vermeer Quartet at the time so we had a lot of time to rehearse and practice. We were lucky to be able to play

for the members of the Vermeer Quartet regularly. We were a fantastic set of outside ears. They taught us a lot of the basics of Quartet playing, worked out intonation questions, balance, the types of attacks that we wanted to use, phrasing in classical repertoire especially. And we learned to shift our attention to all these different aspects of performance. These are the aspects that you have to execute regardless of your interpretation. So it was a bit like a checklist. It sounds kind of cold but it's helpful since it's easy to overlook something because quartet playing is so complex for instance we had to make very conscious decisions as to the type of intonation we would choose harmonic versus melodic we could discuss

one chord for a very long time we would decide carefully balance very specifically between all four voices so not just feeling the melody versus the accompaniment but balancing the three voices of the accompaniments carefully as well against each other. And before going to NIU, we did some quartet coachings at CIM as well with Donald Weilerstein, and those were also very inspiring. His approach was first of all about the character of the music and about sensing each other's musical intentions. So one of his tools was to make us all count a passage together musically

and that turned out to be extremely helpful. We still do it. It helps internalize the pulse on the phrasing together. So these were some of the techniques we used to prepare. We spent a lot of time together and that was sometimes a little bit hard. Quartet competitions are very different from solo competitions in so many ways. First of all, there is that social aspect. So we would rehearse together, eat together, travel together, and it made for unforgettable experiences.

But of course, we also had occasional tension, especially when you have to be so critical of each other in order to improve. So we would try to have fun together outside of the quartet as well. so I feel like I not only learned a lot about music from these competitions but also a lot about people and about myself I don't feel like I'm a naturally extroverted person and social interaction pushed me a bit out of my shell in a way so before that I had done some solo competitions and those were quite lonely I remember going to New Zealand for a competition and taking six flights. It took 40 hours to get there.

It was not a great experience. By then, I was tired. The valet sounded bad and so on. And I was all by myself through the whole process. But we did actually a few other competitions before Fischhoff. I don't know if you know the Coleman and Carmel competitions in California. We won prizes there. Not the top prize, but I have wonderful memories from that trip.

We actually tried to incorporate a little bit of tourism. We were driving from L.A. to San Francisco, and we stopped by the Sequoia National Park on our way. We rented a small log cabin, which was within our budget, and it was heated by a wood stove. It was really cold there at the time. and we spent most of the night just trying to light that fire somehow the flue on the stove just was not working properly the smoke completely filled the room and it was absolutely freezing for

the entire night we barely slept but these were just great memories nevertheless it was not a great way to prepare for the next competition but the time together was also wonderful I just have to add that. Now I think I have a lot more perspective and I can think more clearly about what we did well at the time and what we could have done better. But I know that we just stretched our listening to a much greater level. We learned to hear the whole score more clearly. We learned to play the whole score. And through the constant work, we learned to focus our listening to many different aspects of our playing.

There is just so much going on in a quartet performance at all times. It feels like you need to be in a heightened state of awareness. I think there is more adjustment than in solo playing. The balance can feel different every day. The intonation shifts. Everyone may react differently to a specific environment or two different acoustics, and you have to adjust for that.

Every performance feels very different. I could give you an example of that. We were doing the Isaac Stern seminar at Carnegie Hall around that time. A few student groups were invited, and every day you would play for panels of great musicians. So there was Stern, of course, Isaac Stern, Leon Fleischer, the Emerson Quartet, Pam Frank, was quite intimidating. And I remember playing the scherzo of Beethoven's Harp Quartet.

The performance was going to be in Carnegie Hall, but the whole week we just played it for panels of musicians at Weil Hall. And no one ever mentioned anything about our tempo during the week. They had plenty of comments to make, but none about the tempo. But as soon as we moved to Carnegie Hall for the dress rehearsal, everyone said the scherzo tempo sounded much too fast we had to play much slower in the bigger hall and to create basically the same effect and that's the kind of adjustment that's one has to get used to over time and by performing more we think we we got a sense of this gradually i had a

A strange example of that, recently, too, we played a concert for the radio in a live hall, and we got two recordings, and the recording from the hall sounds rushed, and I kept thinking I need to take more time on all these spots. and then the radio recordings seem to lack drive and seem to feel slow so uh so i don't know what to say in this situation it's uh it's not a perfect science basically lots of it comes with experience exactly yeah and so you do need to pay a lot for that and you're using all of my favorite words like attention and heightened state of awareness this is so great and you know just for people who are curious about how many hours you're talking about when you say you were rehearsing a lot. So for young musicians out there who maybe don't know exactly, how many hours a day would the group get together? Well, we would rehearse practically the whole day, every day. Well, I'm exaggerating

slightly, maybe four or five hours a day, nearly every day, five days a week at least. That's something that can come as a shock to some people sometimes, that amount of hours. I know. There's so much to be, so many details to be worked out. It doesn't feel like too much time when you're preparing for a competition. And most people I think that I've talked to feel like they have made the greatest improvement when they were preparing for competitions. I remember even talking to Phil Setzer of the Emerson Quartet, and he said that the greatest improvement he ever made was when he prepared for the Queen Elizabeth competition. And because you just are looking for that higher level. That's so true. Yes. And speaking about competitions, how was your experience at Fischhoff?

I know it was a while ago now, so the perspective might be different in hindsight, but can you talk to us a little bit about the experience of being at Fischhoff? Sure. Well, it was 20 years ago, and my memory is a little sketchy. Going to a competition can be really nerve-wracking for sure, and it always was for me. so I wouldn't choose to spend my free time that way but the fish of competition is quite short it's only one weekend, two days so we did also international competitions that would be a week long

we did a few other competitions around that time so some memories are blurring a bit together I do remember that we performed Janacek's second quartet Intimate Letters, which is just a great piece It's very dramatic, and we felt really connected to it. And, of course, I remember the excitement of winning the competition. But, unfortunately, there was a bad incident in this competition for us. In the middle of the competition, between the first and the second round,

we had a relatively serious car accident in which a cyclist was injured. We were not at fault, and none of us were hurt, but we were quite traumatized by the event. and it made us forget the competition for a bit. I think we played well the next day. I don't know if the accident had any obvious effect on our performance, but overall it probably removed some of the stress associated with the competition itself,

since it seemed suddenly less important. So it just made us focus on performing like in a regular concert. And in the end, that's what needs to happen. You have to prepare very carefully, but in the end, you just have to remember to just perform without thinking about small mistakes. Just approach it like a performance. The performance at the time was in a hall at Indiana University South Bend,

which didn't have the greatest acoustics, but now I think the competition moved to Notre Dame in a great hall. So when we started teaching at Indiana University South Bend, I remember a ton of memories flooding back. I saw the hall again for the first time. And I do remember talking to the jury afterwards and getting some very helpful comments from Anne Epperson in particular, a pianist.

You know, you were talking about the benefits that come from the preparation for the competition. And now can you talk to us a little bit about the fish-off effect and what happened afterwards and what you feel like the group, you know, what the competition brought to you on the professional level and where it took you? Well, the competition did help us in many ways.

Maybe the most helpful aspects were the performances that came out of it. We had a performance in Chicago, in Minneapolis, and a tour of Italy. The Italy trip was very memorable. All kinds of venues, some big, some small. There were some good venues, but I think the most memorable were actually the smaller venues. Among others, we had a concert in Sicily, in Catania. I think it was scheduled to start at 9.30 p.m., but we started at least 30 minutes late, and the audience only trickled in halfway through the concert.

And it was in an outdoors amphitheater on a Friday night. and apparently the entire city of Catania parties on Friday nights. So guys were cruising in their cars with these really loud musical car horns that were creating a whole concert that we were competing with. So it wasn't a great concert, but I will always remember that moment. It was very strange, kind of a surreal experience. But the competition also gave us great confidence moving forwards. And it was a bit like a calling card.

It opened doors for other projects. So whenever we were contacting people and we said we won the competition, things were a lot easier. And, of course, one competition is just the beginning when we continued doing other competitions afterwards, which were also helpful. And nowadays some groups do well without competitions because so much of what one needs to do creating projects that are attractive

publicity etc needs to be done regardless of the competitions uh yeah so i think young people nowadays are so aware of this because of social media but for us it wasn't the case 20 years ago we didn't realize how we had to fill so many more roles as musicians to speak for the music in some ways to be educators as well as performers so that is the one thing that was not taught by the competitions or needs to be worked on as well but the competition really helped us nevertheless in the career tremendously it just isn't all that you need to do it's just a part of what you need to do and would you have some additional advice for the young musicians about to perform at the competition i feel like i i feel like there's so much value in what you've told us

already but any more insight that you have for the young performers that are about to perform this week or maybe thinking about entering a chamber music competition in the future what would you tell them all right well there's a lot that could be said on this topic um in in the short term assuming that you're preparing for the competition this week or next week hopefully you're getting to the point where you figured out the timing the intonation the balance etc so i would do quite a bit of playing through make sure to practice performing and i would play through in different acoustics in big halls in particular and after playing through focus on the specific spots that don't completely gel because by then the music should be pulling you all together

every moment should be absolutely clear musically to every member of the group so that there are absolutely no holes in the performance so apart from fixing occasional intonation spots etc make sure to find the moments or often the transitions where you don't all agree where don't have a clear or unified musical intention and discuss those parts again play them giving each member a chance to express themselves until you come up with a strong unified thought and at that stage in the last week it's very helpful to do mental practice look at the score visualize yourself performing performing in the hall I could add that I feel that in chamber music performance there is always a bit of a conflict

between the dialogue on stage between the musicians on the projection to the hall and of course much of a repertoire was not even intended to be played in a large hall so sometimes for me it's not always it especially at that time it was not always clear if I should focus on speaking to one another on stage or project our intentions to the audience in the hall in the end you need to do both but it's very hard to achieve and in bigger halls the projection to the audience becomes more and more important so all the details can be heard now depending on the repertoire i feel like some pieces like shostakovich quartets don't really involve as much dialogue between the quartet members then it's relatively straightforward it's really a piece for the concert hall but

there's no easy solution to this problem but you just have to get used to it figure out how you feel like you're connected to each other and yet still projecting to the audience and now for the long term well first of all do it like create a chamber group it's always worth it whether you want to pursue chamber music career or not there is so much to be learned about listening about working together so i would create a group and prepare for a competition like fish off which gives you a clear goal find friends you enjoy playing with and you really don't have to agree perfectly musically because that's what the work is for and often in many ways different musical personalities make for a richer chamber music performance but make sure that all the

members of the quartet have a voice in rehearsal and participate in the decision making i believe in the end the performance will be much stronger and you'll have a much better time working together i would say about the preparation that there are really two main parts there is what i would call the tangible aspects of the performance which is like the sound quality the ensemble, the balance, intonation, the types of attack, et cetera, work those out very clearly, calmly, and carefully. And in some groups, some members tend to listen more carefully to some of these details than others, and it's actually nice

if everyone has a slightly different focus. But then, don't neglect the hidden or non-tangible aspects of the performance. Those need to be worked together with the others, So when performing together, it really helps. It's even essential that the inside beats, the inside conducting is truly connected between the members of the group. So it's not just about playing things together or following each other, but really about living the music together. If you're really connected this way, the group sounds really together and becomes very powerful in the performance.

and also you have to be ready to discuss the emotional journey of each piece the musical characters in great detail so you're really sharing the same storyline those elements will hide any small imperfections and make a really satisfying performance i will give a note of caution for the visual aspects of the performance some motion helps everyone feel the inside journey You do need to cue and show things visually, but avoid any kind of choreography, which I've seen done and comes off really artificially in performance. I have seen situations in which the students were actually coached to look at each other in certain ways, and that really bothers the audience. So visual contact is necessary at times and very important at the beginning when you first play together. but I think it becomes less and less so as you get used to playing together.

The ears, on the other hand, can never become lazy. So you'll see some established potets, and there's really minimal eye contact. It allows each member to focus on everything else in even greater detail. Now, in terms of the repertoire, this is an unfortunate side of competitions, but you should choose repertoire that makes you sound best in place to your strengths. this way you have clearly a better chance to win but it's also very important to study other repertoire that you are not so comfortable with to be well-rounded as a musician i have seen some students carry the same types of pieces from competition to competition and somehow miss on

musical development so make sure to study a great variety of repertoire regardless of the competitions another bit of advice work out carefully on your own individual playing it takes a lot of rehearsal but it also takes a lot of individual work to perform well when working on your part try to work it in such a way that you hear the whole score so you practice while imagining the score as if you were playing all the parts and don't miss out on the technical aspects of your playing because you're accountable to everyone else. In a sense, any student playing and practicing

should feel that they are on the path to a competition. It's the same work that you need to do to perform well and at the highest level. You don't have to approach competitions that differently. It's just a goal that motivates you to work even harder. and in the end remember that competitions are subjective juries often disagree so don't take results too much to heart i've been on plenty of juries where there were disagreements you have to be very nice to yourself when you lose and don't get too excited when you win i

think that's the most important advice blaise this is such incredible advice you know what you're so generously giving us here is really golden information thank you so much well thank you for having me it's a pleasure to do this and i'm going to put all of this information in the show notes but for the people listening would you please tell us where they can find more information about the avalon quartet maybe the website and the social media information Sure. You can go to avalonquartet.com or we have a Facebook page, Avalon String Quartet Official, that you can go to. Those would be the main places. And I really hope that a lot of our listeners have a chance to catch you guys live here, either in the Chicago area or in all of these other venues that you visit around the United States. Thank you.

How great was that? I really hope this conversation brought you a ton of value. As always, you can visit mindoverfinger.com for the show notes, which have more information about the competition and today's guest. And I'd love to hear from you. So please take a screenshot of the episode, share on Instagram and tag me at Mind Over Finger and tag the Fish Off competition at Fish Off Chamber Music and use the hashtag Fish Off 2019. That's F-I-S-C-H-O-F-F 2019. So we can see that you're listening, share it on our stories and give you some love.

To join in the experience and follow the competition, visit Fischhoff.org and their Facebook page at facebook.com slash the Fischhoff to get more info on the live streaming of the performances and, of course, the results. Thank you for tuning in, and I'll be back tomorrow for more Fischhoff Insight. À bientôt! Thank you.