Sandor Végh walking with his grandson

Sándor Végh – My Teacher at Camerata Salzburg

In this short video, Susie Mészáros, professor of music at RCM, RNCM and viola player with the Chilingirian Quartet talks about music, ‘Hollywood vibrato’ and her teacher, Sándor Végh’s influence.

Susie first met Sándor Végh at Prussia Cove, aged sixteen, going to study with him in Salzburg for two years, playing as principal violist in the Camerata Academica Salzburg, which he conducted, and studying with this fascinating and demanding teacher.  Featured is an interview with Susie in June 2021, where she talks about the transformative influence Végh brought to her understanding of music, musical voice and a very grounded philosophy of playing, which gave her absolute confidence in her musical ideas. The video features footage of Royal College of Music student quartets, which illustrates some of the ideas she learnt from Sándor Végh. She debunks the cliché of the furrowed brow string player, all intensity and emotion. As her decisive musical influential teacher would say sometimes, “it’s too beautiful to be true!”   Life is richer, subtler, has fragility.

Interview transcript: My Studies with Sándor Végh 

[June 2021] first met Sándor Végh when I was 16 years old, at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall. I went there to take part in master classes and continued to playing chamber music with Végh himself. He was teaching and playing and I found him absolutely fantastic. A revelation of ideas for me, and a huge personality. His playing and teaching were so rich and just so direct. He spoke in terms that really resonated with me. He talked about the physics of music and the imagery he used was very natural and comprehensible. He explained about things like tension, relaxation and breathing in a really clear way.  He seemed to like my playing very much, took a great interest, and I would play alongside him frequently too. But at that stage I didn’t consider going to a violinist for my college studies.

Telegram from Végh – ‘Come Now!’

Later, when I needed to look for a teacher seriously, I wrote to him asking for advice. He immediately said, ‘Come now!’ He actually wrote that in a telegram! I had been unhappy where I was so when I received that telegram I just packed my bags and went to Salzburg! I was lucky enough to be appointed principal Viola of the Camerata Academica straight away, performing and touring a lot. That was my first professional job, aged 19.  So I immediately was working all the time with him, as a chamber musician, as an orchestral principal with him as conductor. And, of course, as the only violist in his wonderful violin class.

The Teacher’s Gift to Students – Independence!

I stayed with him in Salzburg for about two years. But those two years were packed. I felt that he gave me the tools to completely understand what I needed in my own playing and how to keep developing. A great teacher gives the gift of independence to a student, in the sense of opening their eyes and ears and mind to the tools to be able to tackle everything in their own playing themselves. I found I was beginning to lose any doubts about my musical and instrumental ideas. I realised I could very quickly tackle technical problems that for a long time I’d gotten away with; you know, bad habits or failings in certain technical areas. And suddenly, I felt that I was given a clear insight into the philosophy and practical approach of what a technique is; that it’s not just certain exercises, or this or that book of studies, or repetitive things, but actually understanding the why, rather than just the what. Question: So Sándor kind of really transformed your idea of music? What were the limitations of the kind of the teaching you were getting previously?  Well, I felt that because I’m quite a natural player, and I’d had a very good training in an intensely musical context in a specialist music school. I had taken many things for granted. I started playing when I was eight, which actually isn’t all that early, but at age 10 I went to the Menuhin School and absorbed a lot from a great range of musicians. It was a really rounded education. It taught me to be very disciplined. But I think that the one thing I didn’t have, as a musician and as an instrumentalist, was a backbone to my playing, of really understanding what was going on.

‘To Give only what you feel is there. And not to lash on emotion. To pump emotion into playing is almost fraudulent. Sándor Végh, he was my teacher.  Végh used to emphasis not to be afraid to do less. Life is also fragile, vulnerable, not always beautiful.  Végh was scathing about lashing on the emotion. He called it, “Hollywood Vibrato”

I knew what I should do to practice, but I didn’t quite understand the central column of what makes one listen and join one thing to another. I think it was Végh’s idea of uniting the technical, the musical, the intellectual and the human. So all of a sudden I felt that I was able to connect those many dimensions that had up til then been rather separate elements.

Practice, left & right hands, finger flexibility, dexterity

For example, practising the left and the right hands – yes they are very different, they have very different roles of course, and they must be independently exercised, you know, and the elements must be really broken down very clearly. Like finger flexibility and dexterity, shifting, bow control in a horizontal sense, bow pressure.. things like that. But then bringing the two hands together so that what one hand does, the other is reflecting because, really, you may have two hands, you may have a bow and a violin, but you have one sound. We are best when we play a violin or a viola as one voice. Just as a singer has vocal chords, they have lungs to propel the air, they have lips, teeth and tongue etc.. so you should also think about these elements within the bow. Enunciating text, for example, is pretty much the same as right hand articulation. Within the human voice these are innate. We walk around with all of those things in the one body all the time, whereas we have to manufacture stringed instruments – they’re machines, tools, and we have to then bring all those mechanisms back together for the creating of that one voice.

Like being out of focus -Suddenly two blurred images come together

The violin and viola are our lyrical instruments. That’s what I felt had suddenly became so coherent with Sándor. What I was doing in the left hand was perfectly reflecting what was in the right and vice versa. It’s like having been seeing out of focus and suddenly the two blurred images come together in one. And that’s the central point of my own teaching; it is always to see, to show, how especially the right hand can really influence the left in terms of tonal variety and things like vibrato, intensity, shifting..all of these things.

The Voice – What I learnt as leader of Kent Opera Orchestra

In 1984 I became Leader, concert master, of the Kent Opera orchestra. Suddenly I was exposed to opera in all its glorious forms. The colour, the costumes, the direction, the theatre, the music, the voices, the personalities, the wonderful chaos. It was just a fantastic immersion. I fell in love with singing and decided that I wanted to learn singing myself. I had a nice enough voice, it wasn’t a great voice but what I enjoyed was just to understand it for myself, how to use it properly, all the many elements. And that also fed into a unique

Swallow your violin or viola – Singing with your instrument

experiencing of the most intimate relationship with sound – you have your instrument inside you as a singer and when you start understanding that, in a way I found I was able to ‘swallow’ my violin in the same way as I contained my voice inside my lungs, my throat, my mouth – you start doing that with your instrument too when you have a sense of singing.  Because it is exactly those things. Who doesn’t want to sing on their instrument? Who doesn’t aim, if they’ve played a string instrument, not to sing? But to speak as well – of course. Végh was always taking about ‘speaking’ on the instrument, it was not enough just to sing. He always went on about that. Because why on earth would we have sophisticated bow articulations if it wasn’t to reflect in some way spoken text? Consonant, vowel, articulation.. So I was Leader of Kent Opera orchestra with another very inspiring Hungarian, the conductor, Iván Fischer. So exciting and excitable..an innovative conductor. He’s a world class musician and I very much loved working alongside him. From an interview with Susie Mészaros 4 June 2021

Ask about Zoom Lessons with Susie

Lockdown restrictions have popularised Zoom lessons. In the past year, I have been teaching many student and amateur players over Zoom. It’s enabled me to teach people remotely. It’s shown that geography can be overcome for constructive violin and viola coaching. I’ve been teaching Chinese students based in China and amateurs based across the UK during 2020-21. 

Are you interested in a consultation?

Have you played in the past and would love to return to playing as an amateur or work on aspects of your playing? There’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Every amateur player has their particular strengths and weaknesses. Read more on my amateur violin or viola teaching Contact me using this link

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