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When the ACCOMPANIST comes from the RECORD player ...
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 Observations on the DOWANI "3 Tempi Play Along" series for classical music, by Prof. Dr. Peter Roebke, Professor of instrumental and Vocal Pedagogy at the Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst, in Vienna, Austria
An American after work idyll: At the end of a tiring work day, the successful surgeon and talented amateur pianist places the piano part to Beethoven's fourth piano concerto on the music stand of his valuable grand piano. Then the CD player is brought to life: after four dry metronome clicks which set the tempo, a famous orchestra comes in with the desired music. From the speakers comes, of course, a version without the solo part. And so, for the next forty minutes, our piano lover can make music, perhaps more wrong than right, but in any case with full enthusiasm with a virtual orchestra, and maybe with the dream of revelling in the center of a performance to an ecstatic and adoring public.
Most readers will know this scenario: for many dozens of years the series "Music Minus One" has allowed the musical pleasure and the wonderful illusion just described. "MMO" now has a music paedaogogic relative in the German-speaking lands. A few years ago the company DOWANI produced CD's for violin, flute and clarinet with piano or orchestra accompaniment with typical repertoire. The selection of works showed that the makers of DOWANI genuinely understand what plays a role in the teaching of these instruments. The choice ranges from light songs and minuets through the first Vivaldi concertos on to Mozart's flute concertos, for example, or Bach's double concerto for two violins. The student concertos, that every violin student knows and loves, are not neglected, even though their compositional content is of such a level that they remain totally unknown except among violinists. But before this is misunderstood: DOWANI should be highly praised for taking such works as the Kuechler concerto in G or Rieding's B minor and A minor concerti seriously. And none other than Theodor W. Adorno had respectful words for these forms of literature, with which one learns to delight in playing, and which are unquestionably more exciting than pure technical material. He writes, "In these puffed up solo works exists a piece of utopia; the gestures of a child, that to the tremelo of the piano for one moment feels like Kreisler, has something of the musical omnipotence fantasy, in which vibrates the idea that music itself is the whole, the freedom, the absolute" .from Th. W. Adorno: "Kritik des Musikanten" in "Dissonancen, Musik in der verwalteten Welt" (=Gesammelte Schriften, Band 14), Frankfurt/Main 1973, page 107
As far as the designing of the CD is concerned, DOWANI goes beyond the practice of simply leaving the solo voice out, way beyond, in order not only to stimulate the private musical pleasure, but also to enable and stimulate systematic practice as well. Let's take a violin CD as example. After the tuning tones for the four open strings one hears the piece to be practiced in complete form in original tempo. This is followed by a version in a very slow tempo wherein the solo violin part can be heard discretely in the background. Two versions in medium tempo and concert tempo in which only the accompaniment is recorded come next. With the help of the included accordion-style sheet music in which the CD track numbers are marked, the student has the possibility to work on just the difficult passages and to start and stop at different places throughout the piece.
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| Quelle: Professor Dr. Roebke, University of Vienna |
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