Lili TodesSheila Nelson and her work in Tower HamletsIn the 1980s, string pedagogue Sheila Nelson took her seminal teaching techniques to underprivileged schools in the London borough of...
Ariane TodesKopelman Quartet offers lesson in chamber music playingI'm just back from Wigmore Hall, where I watched the Kopelman Quartet demonstrate chamber music playing at its best: exquisite...
Ariane TodesArnold Steinhardt: ‘Don’t put your parents in hock to buy a violin’A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Arnold Steinhardt, leader of the Guarneri Quartet for 40 years, for the Cozio website. Steinhardt is...
Ariane TodesA Storioni violin that still thinks it’s a violaHere are some photos I took when I went to interview Arnold Steinhardt for Cozio.com. They're pretty terrible pictures taken with my...
Ariane TodesLionel Tertis offers hair styling adviceI discovered My Viola and I, the autobiography of Lionel Tertis, in the library at Magic Mountain. It's a charming read with great...
Ariane TodesLeading pedagogue blasts luthiersI discovered this tirade in a seminal string pedagogical work: 'It is most regrettable that our present-day instrument-makers take so...
Ariane TodesFritz Kreisler: ‘To practise is a bad habit’I've been raiding the library of the Magic Mountain library and came across The Memoirs of Carl Flesch. He's not the most compelling...
Fritz KreislerFritz Kreisler: Four Weeks in the TrenchesThe great violinist served in the Austrian Army during the First World War. Here he gives a moving and deeply humane account of his time...