Oster uses music to mold young lives: acclaimed piano teacher Bella Oster mentors music students with an approach that instills lifelong values such as discipline, respect and a love of competition

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 25, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

To hear a group of Bella Oster best piano students play at one of Washington's embassies, as they often do, is one of the capital city's great experiences. Often as young as 5 or 6, and none older than 12 or 13, these already impressively sophisticated musicians play from memory complex pieces by great composers such as Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt, and perform them with admirable skill. Perhaps even more amazing, these boys and girls always look like they're happy to be onstage and delighted to be playing great music.

Oster was trained in the Soviet Union in her native Tashkent. When she was 6, her piano teacher exclaimed, "You're a teacher, a natural teacher!" and had her young student help by mentoring other piano students, Oster tells INSIGHT. She went on to earn a doctorate in piano and to study how the intellectual development of children is influenced through learning to play that instrument. She has taught students for 31 years, 12 of them in the United States.

Oster now teaches 106 pupils at her European Academy of Music and Art. Her approach must be described as holistic. Music isn't just one 45-minute lesson per week for her students; it becomes something that influences their whole lives, even though the vast majority of them go on to be doctors, lawyers or engineers. Oster emphasizes old-fashioned values such as discipline, competition and respect. She often takes students as young as 3, believing that by age 9 it's probably too late to begin the serious study of piano. Twenty-five of her very young students, each of them winners in international contests, will perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City on June 29.

Insight: How many hours must students practice to do their best, as your students always seem to do?

Bella Eugenia Oster: It doesn't work like that. It depends on their level. Our school is open not only for very advanced students but to all who are willing to learn. Some come to learn just enough to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and it does not take much practice to do that.

But to absorb serious pieces requires hours and hours, and the student must be willing to devote the necessary time. It's very important not to count hours but to do what's necessary to develop naturally, to develop what God has given you.

Insight: Proud parents always are prominent at your students' many concerts. Parents play a very important role in their children's piano training, don't they?

BEO: Of course parents must get very deeply involved in the work. A triangle develops -- parents, teacher, students. With the proper triangle, everything is possible. Take one of the angles out, however, and work is impossible.

In the beginning one of the things I must explain to parents is that now they've involved their child in the musical world. Among other things, this means you must help your child feel comfortable in that world. And one of the ways to do that, for example, is to help the child feel comfortable with performers and the cultural world. If Alfred Brendel is giving a concert, then you must go to that concert with your child and listen to Brendel play.

Insight: Do you take your students to hear the great pianists perform?

BEO: I don't need to take them. My job is to educate them to want to go hear the great pianists. I must offer them the opportunity to become sophisticated. My own early piano teacher taught me to develop on my own the ability to know what I need to look for to improve myself, and developing this ability is an important part of anyone's education.

It is very important to develop in the child the ability to do this kind of analysis of one's own situation: how to know who you are, how to know where you are going. This includes recognizing the top pianists and how they can help you to do what it is you were born to do.

But it also is much more. The good teacher will every day help the student to understand the importance of the great questions. This means that I won't need to write down what they need to do for their next step; they can analyze this for themselves. Analysis of that kind is the most important lesson in life.

Insight: Discipline plays a very important role in your teaching, doesn't it?

BEO: Discipline is very important. The child must understand what discipline of the mind means. When a child comes to my school I ask them to share their life schedule with me, how they organize their time. I'm pretty tough with my students, but it is very important that they learn to distribute their time properly. It's not how many hours you put into music, it's how much you can put into an hour.

You know what my students call me? Dr. Stalin! [Laughter.] But part of the discipline is learning to understand the teacher-student relationship. It includes respect for an older person who is more knowledgeable than you are. Of course these bright children can verify for themselves who is more knowledgeable, or not, but there must be respect once the relationship is established. I have my rules and regulations, and the parents and the students must understand that here I am No. 1.