On a couple of occasions after I finished studying with Dorothy Delay, I went

to New York to watch her teach at the Juilliard School. On both trips I sat
with her all day every day for a week, and between the lessons we would chat
about the students. At the end of the day, often as late as 10 p.m., she would
drive me home to my apartment in Manhattan.
Every time we arrived at my address and she parked outside, she would turn
the engine off and sit back. It had been the same when I studied with her. My
lessons were often the last in the day, and she would drive me home each
time then too. I used to love those chats in the car with her.
During the second of these observation visits, the very last lesson I saw was
with the Japanese-American violinist Midori, who was then aged 14. Midori’s
mother was there too. I can’t remember who the pianist was.
At that time, Midori was already almost a household name, chiefly because
she had been featured on the front cover of Reader’s Digest when she was 12.
She had shot to fame as one of the wunderkinds whom Dorothy Delay
introduced to the violinist Isaac Stern (1920-2001) and to the conductor
Zubin Mehta.
Stern was the main power behind both the New York Philharmonic and
Carnegie Hall. Midori subsequently played the Paganini D major Concerto
with the NYP in Avery Fisher Hall (now the David Geffen Hall) when she was
eleven.
I heard her play when she first came to the United States. She gave a recital at
Aspen in 1980 when she was a few months shy of ten years old. Everybody
went to hear her. She was just about as high as the grand piano she stood
next to, or perhaps a couple of inches taller. Luckily, I took a picture of her.
She played the Bach Chaconne and Paganini’s 17th Caprice. In the
Bach, she had a memory slip in the long bariolage section, and
improvised her way back into the right key. In the Paganini, her
fingered octaves remain to this day the only time I have ever heard
them in tune. Not Itzhak Perlman. Not Michael Rabin. None of the
edited, recorded performances. Just Midori. Aged nine. powered
lesson from one of the most famous teachers in the world, to one of the most
famous young violinists in the world, look like?
The main part of it was when Miss DeLay showed Midori – or rather,
Midori’s mother – how to stand Midori in front of the mirror in order to
practice drawing the bow parallel to the bridge.
The latter consisted of dividing the bow into two halves – not by length, but
from frog to the square position, and from there to the point – and playing
very fast, single strokes with a pause after each one. I notated and developed
that exercise and put it in my Warming up book.
About Midori’s mother: she had been an orchestral violinist who gave up her
career in order to supervise Midori’s practice. From about the age of five,
Midori did six to eight hours practice every day, 360 days or more each year,
all of it with her mother sitting there helping her. It was the same with Sarah
Chang, who also studied with Dorothy DeLay a little later on than Midori:
Sarah’s father sat and practiced with her for eight hours each day from about
the age of four.
So it was for that reason that after the lesson I am describing, Miss DeLay
said to me that she was not Midori’s teacher, but that Midori’s mother was
her teacher. I tried to suggest that perhaps Miss DeLay supplied the
headlines, while the mother filled in the small print, and therefore Miss
DeLay was indeed Midori’s teacher, but she didn’t seem convinced
The lesson began with Midori performing the Chausson Poème. I use the
word "performing" deliberately. It was an incredible performance. Yet before
she started, she addressed Dorothy DeLay and me sitting on the sofa, and
apologized. She had been studying the Chausson for only one week, she said,
and had not heard the piece before that.
Then she played it from memory, without blemish from beginning to end. It
had all the expression, pathos and climax that the piece consists of, or which
it requires. She had gone from start to finish (of course there is never any
"finish" in making music, but here was a performance that could have been a
one-take recording), in just one week!
Watching and listening to her playing just a few yards away, I found myself
thinking that this was what it must have been like for people to hear Yehudi
Menuhin when he was only a little older than Midori was now. It was then
that he made the most fantastic recording of the Chausson Poème, conducted
by George Enescu.
Then Midori played the Mozart E minor Sonata, K. 304. This seemed rather
less impressive, at least in terms of musical grammar and vocabulary. After
the lesson, I playfully remonstrated with Dorothy DeLay for not pointing out
that occasionally Midori did not diminuendo the decorated appoggiaturas in
the second movement. All Miss DeLay said to that was, "Oh, that’s a really
interesting idea, sweetie!" But after that, Midori played Carmen Fantasy by
Sarasate.
Now I was astounded all over again - especially in the movement with the
thirds, which were so very fast her fingers were a blur. In the arpeggio
passages, she flew up and down the fingerboard without seeming to notice
the feats that she was achieving. It was all utterly easy for her.
At that time, I was many years away from the 17 years I spent as a professor
at the Yehudi Menuhin School. There I witnessed many children playing jaw-
droppingly well, and it is actually something that you get used to. But seeing
Midori at that time, so close-up, was a new level for me in one so young.
After the lesson, when Midori and her mother had left the room, I looked at
Miss DeLay incredulously.
"How is it possible?!" I asked her. "How is it possible to play the violin so
easily and so well like that?"
Miss DeLay did not reply immediately, but thought for a few long moments.
Then she looked back at me and said, "The thing about Midori is that nobody
has ever said 'No' to her."
If I had nearly fallen off the sofa listening to the young Midori play the violin,
this comment from DeLay really nearly had me on the floor. For I saw all at
once, in a flash, how my mindset at that time, when I was navigating my way
around the fingerboard, was all "No, no, no!"
When I was playing virtuosic arpeggio passages up and down the
fingerboard, I would basically be shouting "No!" to myself throughout. When
it came to passages of double-stopped thirds, I approached them with "No!"
at my every attempt.
But Midori, in the split second before playing any of those virtuosic passages,
was saying "Yes!" When she came to the double-stopped thirds, her mindset
was, "Yes!"
So, what is the answer to this? It is the same answer as to every other
question about how to develop technical and musical skills on the violin, and
how to grow perpetually as an instrumentalist and as an artist.
The answer is two-fold. First, more and more "money" needs to be put in the
violin "bank" – the bank of good technical habits. In particular, any exercises
that increase navigational skills around the fingerboard should be practiced
as much as possible, so that the intonation is secure whatever the group of
notes you are playing, with any fingers, in any order, in any key, in any
position, on any string – all without thinking about it.
Second, mental rehearsal. You have to build up images of yourself whizzing
around the fingerboard with freedom and ease.
Looked at from one point of view, whether one habitually holds a "yes" or a
"no" at the front of one’s mind could be a matter for a psychologist to solve.
No amount of technical work is going to help.
But in fact, Nature can be very kind. In many areas of life, the moment we
perceive our limitations they tend to be easily surmounted, or they just
disappear, bursting like bubbles in the moment of the realization. The simple
awareness that we are saying "no" to ourselves can signal the end of it, with
no more work to be done on the subject, and we are then free to move
forwards unhindered.