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

Insight: And your students carry the discipline they've learned at your academy into the whole of their lives?

BEO: If you organize your life and your music training properly, of course it influences the other things in your life. My students and their parents understand that music training develops students intellectually. They become good students generally.

Learning pieces so that you can play them without the music in front of you helps to establish confidence in your memory. You need to know every detail of the music you're playing in order to perform it publicly from memory with confidence.

Insight: You have more than 100 students, yet only the top 25 or so perform at the many concerts you give. Isn't that an awful lot of competition for children so young?

BEO: America always has been a most competitive country! Of course it is wrong to smash one another around. But how are you to know what inner resources you have without competition? And when you compete with your friends you aren't afraid to come out the worst because this helps you to see what is best.

There are ways to make competition more comfortable by making it a regular part of the training. I arrange to have 11 or 12 concerts every year, sometimes more. So, because every month there are one or two competitions in which the students participate, this means the children are judged every step of their way. They adapt. It's not stressful -- it's a regular part of life and they feel comfortable. They think, "Yes, I was chosen as one of the good ones," or they think, "No, I wasn't chosen because my job is not satisfactory."

Insight: Such competition isn't fashionable now in many American public schools. It's regarded as unfair to those who don't come out on top.

BEO: There are aspects of education in America with which I disagree. Here parents are told by the system and by many teachers in the public schools that every child is equal.

Of course every child is equal in our hearts and we love them. But it is also a fact that in many ways they are not equal. They are not equally talented. They are differently prepared for work. They are differently treated by their parents. As a result, they are differently ready and capable to learn to play the piano and to study music.

Insight: What other factors do you consider essential to good piano training?

BEO: I try to bring different composers to the attention of my students. It is important for the child every year to play different styles -- baroque, classical, romantic, contemporary. Each year, students will be judged [according to standards established by the Music Teachers Association International, of which Oster is vice president] on four pieces, one from each of these areas. Students must understand that what they like right now -- Chopin, for example -- is not necessarily beneficial for them right now. I tell them they may like candy but they must not eat it all the time. Sometimes something sour is in order, sometimes medicine is necessary.

Also, I need to develop in their musical minds understanding of what is good and what is bad. I have a collection of CDs of star performances. Imitation plays a big part in good playing. I also have a collection of bad performances to let children know the meaning of the difference between good and bad performances. Then I have recordings of performances that aren't good and aren't bad, which help them to see what mediocrity means.