Making Music

The music, “it sounds scared,” Alla Aranovskaya tells her violin student during class in Music Mountain’s Gordon Hall. Lauren Betts, an 18-year old from Wichita, KA, is playing Paganini, a work studded with tricky glissandos and double stops. “Straight bow,” Aranovskaya orders. She is intense and verbal, working very close to Betts, hovering, touching the student’s bow, her shoulder, her hands, her neck. “Curled fingers.” “All the weight in the elbow, not the wrist.” “I want richer tone on the eighth notes. Get bow to catch on the string before moving.” “It’s preparation,” Aranovskaya says. Like aiming the arrow before letting it fly. “Beautiful,” she says. Betts was one of 20 students at the St. Petersburg String Quartet’s International Music Academy earlier this month, a chamber music workshop that meets annually for two weeks at Music Mountain in Falls Village, CT. Betts, who also studies with Aranovskaya at Wichita State University, is getting a lot of heat, this day. But Aranovskaya picks her battles. This founding member and first violinist of the St. Petersburg String Quartet is focusing on tone, style, color, and ignoring off notes here and there. She is pressing hard. Betts tears up a little. Her teacher keeps pushing. “I know how much a student can take, and what they cannot take,” Aranovskaya says later. “My job is to inspire them to find their own way.” And Betts says she is inspired. “I would follow Alla anywhere.” It’s a diverse group of string players at Music Mountain this year. One fellow, late teens probably, is standing on a grassy mound, practicing scales on his violin. Outside Gordon Hall, a five-year- old violin and conducting student is rolling his miniature car along the arm of one of the Adirondack chairs. And a few miles away at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT, another diverse group of string players is just settling in to the Summer Portals Chamber Music Program. For the last three months these students, who audition for a place in the program, have studied chamber music parts assigned to them for the two-week session. They are to know this music, “Inside and out” says Eva Zavarro, a 15-year-old violinist from Paris. She is serious and polite, and she thanks people who note she has no French accent. Eva is rehearsing the first movement of the Schubert Trio in E Flat Major with cellist Connor Kim, 14, from Serrano, CA, and Jenny Wang, 15, a pianist from Shanghai. Their coach is Harumi Rhodes, a teacher at Juilliard and violinist with Trio Cavatina. Rhodes listens, standing, making notes, as the students play the first movement without interruption. “That’s beautiful,” she tells them. Then she wonders if the pianist would get a more bell-like tone if she slowed her trills a little. “That’s personal, of course. You can do what you like.” Jenny slows her trills. To the cellist, “more singing, not loud. More vibrato.” Connor gets it. “This is very exposed here,” Rhodes tells the string players. “You two should have the same bowing. You work it out.” To the cellist, “I really like the shape you’re giving this, but it’s too soft.” “Does that make sense?” she asks her students. “Do you see what is happening here?” Rhodes says she spends half of a rehearsal time on technical matters, and the rest of the time on ways to color a piece. “Otherwise, it’s all about the details and not about the music. And we are here to make music.” The St. Petersburg String Quartet will perform music by Brahms, Shostakovich and Schnittke with pianist Alexander Mekinulov at 3 p.m., Aug. 21 at Music Mountain. For tickets, call 860-824-7126. Portals performances at the Hotchkiss School’s Elfer’s Auditorium are July 14, 7:30 p.m., with the Miami String Quartet, playing Mendelssohn and Schubert; July 16 at 7:30 p.m. with the Miami String Quartet, the Portals Resident Quartet, violinist Ida Kafavian and the Portals Student Chamber Orchestra playing Vivaldi, Piazzolla and Elgar. Information: 860-435-3775.

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