A wonderfull weekend in Winkel

From 10 till 12 October the International Swiss Panflute Seminar was
held in Winkel near Zürich for the 8th time. For me it was the 5th
time that I was there. Since Landgasthof "Breitti" were the course was
held was fully booked, I stayed in Gasthof "Hecht". Most of the
students come back. So, after the first time, you will be meeting
friends again. As usual, it was organized by Michael Dinner and Dan
Herford.
Maybe you know that they always invite a guest teacher. In other years
they had invited for example Damian Luca, Cornel Pana and Radu Simion.
This time it was Vasile Iovu from Moldavia. He had been there once
before and the whole group was clearly glad to see him again!
Normally, the weekend starts Friday afternoon with Michael's welcoming
speech and everybody taking his turn to play a piece. This last thing
is to make it easier for the teachers to define who is going to be in
which group. However, this time it was possible to book a private
class for the Friday morning. I had a private class with Dan. I can
recommend it. It is a good way of getting to know what are your
weaknesses!
As far as the playing in the afternoon is concerned, you will
definitely not be the only one who is nervous! I always am, even
though I know that I have no real reason to be. I mean I am not a good
player, but they are not likely to send anybody home! Even if you make
a mess of it! Like I did.
When everybody has played, it is time for eating together and after
that: more music. You know, some students cannot resist the temptation
to play and the teachers certainly can't. The others love to listen.
On Saturday morning we all came together. All the students heard in
which group they had been placed.
My group started with Michael. We did lot of warming up. Michael, I
will do my best to keep my flute straight! After the exercises we
started practicing some of the easier pieces for the final concert.
After lunch we had a third hour with Michael and 3 hours with Dan.
Dan and Michael are quite different characters, but both good and
patient teachers.
With Dan you must be prepared for hard work, but you are likely to
learn a lot.
Dan, I will do my best not to take air at places where I shouldn't!
But bad habits are often difficult to get rid of.
This time apart from Dan, Vasile Iovu and me several other persons
stayed either in Breitti or in Hecht. And more stayed for the evening
meal and the festival after!
On Sunday Vasile Iovu had my group. His classes are special too. Did
you know that he has written a book "Metoda de nai"? It is in Romanian
but it contains a lot of exercises and many melodies. You can use it
even if you do not speak Romanian. Apart from our Romanian teachers
Ciril is the only one in the course who has learned Romanian.
When speaking about the final concert Maestro Iovu told us not to
worry. He said you can compare this with a philharmonic orchestra.
There there are allways a lot of violinists. So a player who gets lost
can stop playing and the audience won't hear it. The weaker players
can hide behind the stronger ones. I allways get lost somewhere. In
his classes we were also glad to have our interpreter Virginia Gaus!
She is a Romanian painter and professional interpreter who lives in
Switzerland. You could see that she loved to do this. And she learned
a lot too!
By the way, Vasile Iovu does have a certain knowledge of French, but
he is a bit out of practice. No doubt that language is not used much
in Moldavia.
In the afternoon came together to practice for the concert. Usually
all the tunes in the course-book are played, but don't worry. You only
have to play where you feel at ease! And, as said, you can hide behind
the better players. The students play during the first part of the
concert assisted by the teachers and by Kiyomi Higaki on the piano. We
ended with "La vie en rose".
The second part of the concert is for the teachers who play solo's.
For example: Vasile Iovu plays his favorite doina. Dan another
Romanian piece. Michael and Kiyomi classical music.
It ended with us all playing "La vie en rose" again.
Of course the audience consists for a large part of family and friends
of the participants. Virginia invited a colleague of her who clearly
liked it too!
After dinner it was a really jolly party again!
Thank you very much Michael, Dan, Maestro Iovu, Virginia, Kiyomi and
of course all my co-students. See you in the next year!
Famke
P.S. if you like to see the pictures you can go to the site of Michael
Dinner. He has added picturee to the German translation.