Josu De Solaun
I met Edna Golandsky in February of 2009 at a moment where I had finished my formal music education at a conservatory. I was 27 years old. I had already nearly 20 years of piano studies behind me, ten of which had been in New York city, studying with the most wonderful teachers, some of them absolutely incredible pianists themselves, and even great pedagogues. I felt I could play well occasionally: they had given me and taught me so much, and with such love and dedication; in their own way, they were amazing teachers too, and I would not be the person and musician that I am today without their expert guidance. However, I was, at the time, even slightly ashamed to feel and admit that, despite all this, despite having acquired great and invaluable musical and pianistic skills from them, and despite never having been injured, I nevertheless always sensed that I did not have a completely firm grasp of the instrument's capabilities and intricacies, and always felt, deep inside of me, that mastery of it was something only accessible to a few chosen ones, a select group of which I was clearly not a member. There was always a lurking insecurity concerning my own technical skills and general ability at the piano, that had both an obvious and also a less evident, psychological impact on my playing at all times. There were moments when I seriously doubted if it was worth it to continue in a field to which I had given my whole life, when I felt at times such stumbling blocks that nobody seemed to be able to help me win over, and which some of my closest friends could not even realize. These blocks went from my general sense of fluency at the instrument, which is no small thing, to the mere question of phonation, of sound production, of how to connect my will and intentions to the instrument, to sonorous realizations. There were also sporadic feelings of discomfort that crept in when the number of practice hours increased. I felt I could not always rely on my skills and knowledge, especially on stage. I felt there were not always clear goals every step of the way, that there was not always immediate feedback to my action's at the instrument. I felt there were pieces which I could never even dream of playing, passages which despite years of practice never got better, moments in my repertoire that I had given up on. I went again into one of those frenzies of technical research that anyone that calls themselves a pianist knows all too well about. Sleepless nights, endless frustration, reading treatises on pianism, books, articles, videos of great pianists, web pages, libraries, listening, watching, searching, asking… I knew that music was my life, and the piano my connection to it, but I also knew that I had a reached a point where I literally felt my progress was dwindling. I was bustling with musical ideas that I could hardly realize in sound at the level that I knew was possible and that I had witnessed in other pianists whose playing I deeply loved and admired, some of which had even been my teachers. On a wintry, lonely, New York night, after hours of searching, I found a video of Edna Golandsky teaching on the famous youtube webpage. After about two minutes of listening to her, the calm assertiveness and confidence of her delivery, the crystalline logic of her ideas, the refinement of her physical relation to the instrument, the non-dogmatic yet assured tone of what she said, the clear vocation to help others, the sense of quiet joy, the tremendous soundness of all the detailed information she was offering about such difficult and confusing concepts, the beauty and power of it all won me over and I instantly knew, at a deeply intuitive level, that I had reached an important moment in the road of life, both personally and musically. I decided to contact her immediately and started playing for her. At first, the lessons were not regular. The summer came and I had to leave for Europe. But when, during the Fall of 2009 I started taking periodic lessons with her, both my ability and my sense of general fluency at the instrument, even my own music-making-fluency, my own self-image as a performer, they all changed immensely. Here was a true enabler, someone who guided you from a rigorous and solid knowledge of that tripartite world which is the piano, our body, and the musical score, into a magical world of focused and mindful practicing and performing where the relationship between listening, feeling, and play merged into an undivided whole. Here was a truly walking encyclopedia of pianistic knowledge, with a level of nuancing that I had not ever witnessed before. Questions that had occupied me for years suddenly became clear, little by little my relationship to the instrument strengthened, and continues to do so. Ever since then, Edna and the people at the Golandsky Institute have been, not only dear and loyal friends, but authentic repositories of a vast pianistic culture that I am lucky to be able to have access to, a clear light in a field that is absurdly tainted with obscurantist dogmas and rigid academicism. I owe her and them the strengthening of my life vocation as a musician and I know they will continue to play a paramount role in my musical life for years to come.
Josu De Solaun
http://www.josudesolaun.com
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