Indiana Alumni Magazine
A student of internationally famed cellist Janos Starker relates the ups and downs of …
Playing for the Master
by Jane Soung
Janos Starker corrects Jane Soung's finger position in his studio in the Music School annex. Photo Tyagan Miller.
It's a good thing caffeine is habit-forming. If it weren't for a daily cappuccino routine and a little luck, I might never have had the chance to study with one of the foremost cellists and teachers in the world. Janos Starker, Distinguished Professor of music at IU Bloomington, likes to have a daily dose of caffeine midway through his afternoon teaching. For a little over a year beginning late in my junior year, I was the delivery girl.
I had already watched Mr. Starker teach for a couple of years, but I was reserved about approaching him one-on-one. Why? I had several plausible reasons. He is a revered and highly sought-after performer and teacher in the cello world, and in my mind on a 50-foot pedestal. I never felt "ready" enough to play for him. I could come up with a whole list of excuses, but most likely I was scared to death. I was terrified of what those penetrating blue eyes would find inside me. After all, Mr. Starker has a reputation for being a formidable teacher. There's never any sugar coating; everything is direct and straight to the point.
A memory permanently engrained from my freshman year illustrates just how blunt he can be. A Juilliard student had flown in from New York City to play in Mr. Starker's Saturday afternoon master class. After the student finished playing the first movement of the Dvorák Cello Concerto, Mr. Starker asked him, "Tell me, have you ever considered a career in conducting?" Everyone in the class was taken aback, especially the young man in the hot seat.
But my experience has been very different from that cellist's. I happened to be at the right place at the right time. Delivering Mr. Starker's daily coffee, seeing him for those brief five seconds, opened the door to a relationship for which I will forever be grateful. He got to know me and eventually offered me a lesson, as compensation for my faithful delivery services. But more important, as a result of seeing him regularly, I became less afraid. After all, the gods drink ambrosia, not cappucinos.
Before I ever set foot in Bloomington, Mr. Starker played a huge role in my journey here. In reality I knew very little about his prolific recording career — he won a Grammy for best recording by a soloist without accompaniment in 1997, during my freshman year, for his fifth recording of Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello — the honorary degrees, the numerous honors and awards, or the long list of successful and well-known students he already had produced. But David Premo, my high school teacher and a former Starker student, could never say enough about Mr. Starker's abilities as a teacher, performer, and mentor, and his word was enough for me.
Like all other new cellists in the Music School (whether they will admit it or not), I came to IUB with high hopes of one day studying with this cello legend. My hopes were quickly dashed when I found myself surrounded by great cellists. They all seemed at least 10 years ahead of me technically, and I quickly realized that my lofty goal might not be so easily attained. I had a lot of catching up to do, and the dream where I became one of Mr. Starker's star pupils and a phenomenal cellist all in a short time was clearly a fairy tale. There was nothing to do but to put my nose to the grindstone and get working.
The first part of this process was to realize how little I really knew about cello playing. Many factors contributed to my ignorance: I didn't start early or have a great first teacher; I hadn't put in enough hours with the instrument; and during high school I had been focused on academics, other activities, and other instruments, mainly the piano. All of these contributed to my lack of confidence, comfort, and consistency.
But I couldn't have come to a better place to acquire the knowledge I needed to fill in the holes in my playing. From Day One, I was exposed to a plethora of ideas and experimentation that over time have developed into the IU school of cello playing.
As a freshman, I was overwhelmed by what seemed a million new cello-playing principles. What were pronation and supination? Over and over I heard Mr. Starker say "an-ti-ci-pa-tion." While I knew what the word meant, I didn't understand for another two years how it applied to music-making. And who would have thought it would be so difficult to breathe before phrases, to lift your head up on upbeats and put it down on downbeats? These practices didn't come naturally, and only through constant reinforcement have I been able to consistently incorporate these and many other ideas into my playing. And they still don't always happen correctly.
Top, master cellist Msitlav Rastropovich, far right, conducted the IU Philharmonic Orchestra at Janos
Starker's birthday concert. Photo Paul Riley, Photographic Services
While Mr. Starker's ideas and teaching form the foundation for the IU school of cello playing, his legacy in Bloomington includes the efforts of several others. The cello department prides itself on being a family, a close-knit group with connections among the four professors and their students. Mr. Starker is the grandfather of the family. Helga Winold, DM'67, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and Emilio Colón, MM'88, all three former Starker students, are his children, and their students are his grandchildren. In this unique atmosphere I have been able to prosper.
I dove in head first and began soaking up as much information as I could. The resources are truly amazing: multiple weekly master classes, the freedom and opportunity to have lessons with all the teachers, Mr. Starker's open-door policy for observing lessons, working with and learning from other students, opportunities to go into the lab and have your bow strokes measured and analyzed, and celebration weekends and recitals given by the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center — a nonprofit organization founded by Mr. Starker in 1979 and devoted to the art of cello playing — to name just a few.
I have always had interests outside of music. Being at such a large university gave me the opportunity to explore these options. I decided to do my outside field in journalism, with a minor in biology. Beyond my academic endeavors, IU offered me a multitude of outlets for other interests, especially in athletics.
Mr. Starker has often encouraged his students to begin swimming in order to develop the back muscles needed for cello playing. While he swims in his own indoor pool, jokingly labeled as "the pool built by Zoltán Kodály" from the recording royalties Mr. Starker received from the solo sonata, I took advantage of the new aquatic facilities at the Student Recreational Sports Center and began lap swimming my sophomore year. I had played lacrosse in high school and continued on the women's club team during my undergraduate years, too.
After a year and a half of intense swimming, I found myself interested in yet another sport — cycling. The switch culminated in my participation in the Little 500 my senior year. It was an experience unparalleled by any other at IU. Although Mr. Starker couldn't attend the race because of hearings that afternoon, he wished me well and with a grin asked me to return "safely and with no broken bones."
As it turned out, it was my journalism skills that helped me learn even more about Mr. Starker. I spent much of the summer following my junior year assisting with the planning and organization of Mr. Starker's 75th birthday celebration, held in the Musical Arts Center Sept. 12-14, 1999. It was a tribute that set new standards in the music world: live Internet broadcast; video and audio recording; performances and master classes by some of the best-known performers and cellists in the field; alumni, friends, and fans from around the world; a 170-plus mass-cello ensemble; a 100-page tribute book; a black-tie dinner; a huge birthday cake — in short, the works.
It took tremendous planning and that was where I fit in. I helped Professor Colón and his wife with many of the details: advertising, designing a T-shirt for the event, and editing and proofreading much of the tribute book, which includes a complete biography, discography, photographs, and several short stories Mr. Starker wrote throughout the years. This project made me realize the magnitude of his accomplishments and the number of people he has been able to touch all over the world.
My work with the birthday celebration fostered my relationships with the cello family, and word eventually found its way to the leader. As I continued delivering Mr. Starker's daily coffee during my senior year, he offered me more lesson times. I cashed in on every opportunity I could.
Music students are extremely lucky because they receive one-on-one instruction. Each lesson, each master class performance is a chance to receive the utmost personalized attention from a teacher. One of my fellow students said he felt as if he left every lesson and master class experience carrying buckets of technical and musical ideas tailored just for him. I couldn't agree more. I often find myself running to write down everything Mr. Starker just told me, or to the practice room in an attempt to recreate a certain feeling before it becomes all too foreign again.
When registration time rolled around during the fall of my senior year, it wasn't clear with whom I would study the following spring. Dr. Winold, with whom I was studying, was supposed to go on sabbatical the next spring. I had studied with Professor Colón previously, so I was ready to start my last semester with Mr. Tsutsumi. Imagine my surprise when Dr. Winold asked me during a lesson if I wanted to study with Mr. Starker. I was elated! This was the chance I had been hoping for since I first arrived at IU.
The other members of IU's cello faculty, from left Emilio Colón, Helga Winold, and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi,
are all former Starker students. Photo Tyagan Miller.
My last semester as an undergraduate turned out to be a learning experience that was both trying and fulfilling. I was never more frustrated with playing the cello. Mr. Starker began tearing apart my technique to fix the holes in my playing. So many things in cello playing are tactilely ingrained in our hands and bodies, and he was asking me to unlearn these feelings and to replace them with completely unfamiliar movements. I was frustrated that I couldn't grasp these new concepts more quickly, but I knew I was being bombarded and overwhelmed with a wealth of new ideas.
During one lesson I felt especially defeated. As hard as I willed myself not to cry, the tears just streamed down my face. I think I may have actually made Mr. Starker feel bad that day, too, because he reminded me he was not there to make me cry, but to give me the tools I needed to become the best cellist I could be. Even though it was more than a year ago, I remember that lesson vividly. While I kept playing, I couldn't stop the tears from pouring onto my cello for the rest of the hour. It's a long process, and Mr. Starker reminds many of his students, "With me, you have to play worse before you start to play better."
After three semesters of lessons, I feel I'm finally headed in the right direction. I've begun to notice how the things he's been so diligently working on with me — vibrato, my bow arm, shifting, high positions, intonation, left-hand position — now occur more naturally than that first semester. One by one, each of them is helping me make great strides. My playing has never been so consistent, comfortable, or open, with remarkably less tension at the same time.
And while I still have a long way to go, the concepts that were once so foreign now make a lot more sense. I actually understand why anticipation has been Mr. Starker's mantra. I know I have the rest of my life to continue incorporating and experimenting with the principles the IU school of cello playing has instilled in me.
Today Mr. Starker is no longer intimidating. I still get nervous, but as he often reminds me, "I'm the toughest audience you have to play for. If you can play for me, everything else will be easier." Now, when I sit across from him on the wooden platform in his studio, what I see behind the stern and commanding façade that once prevented me from approaching him is the face of a proud grandfather: proud grandfather of three in real life, but thousands in spirit. Perhaps the cliché that age softens everyone is right, because these days Janos Starker cracks a few more jokes, tells a few more stories, and carries a smile on his face more often than not. 
Jane Soung, BS'00, stayed at IUB an extra year to take advantage of further studies with Professor Starker and to gain experience as the editorial intern at the Indiana Alumni Magazine.