{"id":766,"date":"2015-04-05T22:28:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-05T22:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stringsmagazine.stringlettermusic.com\/?p=766"},"modified":"2022-09-23T11:41:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T18:41:31","slug":"the-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/the-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Bigger-Than-Life Cellist and Educator Frans Helmerson\u00a0Dispenses Tailor-Made, No-Nonsense Advice to His Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Inge Kjemtrup<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a week of watching Frans Helmerson play and teach, the phrase that kept running through my mind to describe him was \u201cquiet dignity.\u201d That\u2019s not to say he is solemn\u2014a smile is never far away from his face\u2014but his playing, his teaching, and his conversation radiate refinement, calmness, and gentleness. He seems perfectly cast for the role of the cellist: a tall man whose well-padded fingers move confidently around the cello.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, Helmerson will turn 70. The great Swedish cellist can look back on a distinguished, multi-faceted career: soloist (his 1984 recording of the Dvorak concerto for the Swedish BIS label is still highly regarded), chamber musician (most recently as the cellist in the all-star Michelangelo Quartet), conductor, and teacher at several leading European conservatories, lately including the Hanns Eisler Conservatory in Berlin and the Kronberg Academy near Frankfurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eun-Sun Hong, who won the 2014 Enescu Cello Competition in Bucharest, is one of his students in Berlin. I ask her to describe what Helmerson is like as a teacher. \u201cHe is very precise, yet thoughtful,\u201d she says. \u201cHe knows exactly what advice each student needs and helps to develop one\u2019s own artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hong first came to him in 2008, having been taken with his playing when he was visiting her native South Korea in 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson was memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe questioned me about what the music is to me,\u201d Hong recalls. \u201cSince then, I always remind myself of this question. I think it is important to know exactly what we are doing and what the music is about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some seven years after that first lesson, Hong continues to study with Helmerson. \u201cIt is always fascinating to talk with him in lessons about the language of composers, different musical ideas, styles, and artistic aspects,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, I watched Helmerson give master classes to the young students (aged 18\u201328) of the Verbier Festival Academy. He was friendly and supportive, but forthright in his comments, which were clearly the result of careful study of each student\u2019s playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After one student played the third movement of the Brahms C minor Cello Sonata, Helmerson remarks, \u201cEverythingwas emotional there. There\u2019s not only sentimental and romantic emotion, there can also be exciting or energetic emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helmerson also urged the student pay more attention to her vibrato, which seemed to be on automatic pilot. \u201cVibrato should come from the ear, not the hand,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted the young player\u2019s extraneous body motions, saying that she has to control the bow more because of the extra body movement. He tempered the criticisms with a positive remark: \u201cI like the reason you move,\u201d he points out, \u201cyou feel energy, the rhythms, but watch and see where you are and be more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another young cellist, whose performance of the Haydn D major Cello Concerto more closely matched Helmerson\u2019s exacting standards, was given a challenge: play a particular passage again, but in completely a different style. For one thorny passage, the student was asked play it again while Helmerson interrogated her about what she had for breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you have coffee?\u201d \u201cNo, I don\u2019t drink coffee,\u201d said the cellist, who smoothly played the passage through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

Further Resources<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

What Frans Helmerson Plays <\/b><\/p>\n

Helmerson\u2019s primary instrument is a cello by Domenico Montagnana, 1742. Students often ask for advice about finding the right endpin. He plays with a long endpin, but says, \u201cI don\u2019t have too many fixed ideas about what is good. I can have student who is one meter, 95 tall [about 6 foot, 5 inches] and sits with a very short endpin, and I can have a rather short girl, who likes to have a long endpin. In my experience, I think it has more to do with the proportions in your body more than how tall you are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Forty years of teaching experience have doubtless equipped Helmerson with a bag of tricks to deal with any kind of student, but he can also draw upon the received wisdom of his own teachers, who include Jacqueline du Pr\u00e9\u2019s teacher William Pleeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helmerson began playing the cello in Sweden at the age of eight. At 12, he started studying with his first major teacher, Guido Vecchi. \u201cHis parents were Italian, he was born in Sweden, but he was probably the most Italian man I have met in my life, a very sophisticated person,\u201d Helmerson says. \u201cHe had an unbelievably beautiful sound, which made such a deep impression on me, and I think I still hear that sound in my ears and try to achieve it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swept up in this Italian sound, Helmerson made a pilgrimage to Rome to study privately with Giuseppi Selmi. \u201cHe was very methodical and that was exactly what I needed at that time. It was very much about left-hand technique. I still practice a couple of his studies every morning to warm up,\u201d he explains. \u201cHe was a wonderful man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a young cellist in Europe in the 1960s, there was one idol above all others: Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1967, Helmerson was living in Gothenburg, playing with the orchestra there, when du Pr\u00e9 came to play the Dvorak concerto. He arranged to play for her (and her new husband, Daniel Barenboim) and ask her advice. Should he go to Rostropovich?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Pr\u00e9 told him that in her six months in Moscow, she\u2019d had very few lessons with Rostropovich because of his busy performing schedule and suggested that the young Swede should go to her teacher in London, William Pleeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI admired her so much that I took her advice just like that!\u201d says Helmerson. \u201cA couple of weeks later I got a letter from her that on the tenth of January, at 3 o\u2019clock, you should be at your first lesson with William Pleeth. She had arranged everything for me. It was very moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Pleeth\u2019s lessons focused less on the technical side, there were other things to discover. \u201cFrom him I learned how to hear music before I play it, to not just take the instrument and play it, but to always have a picture in the ear. He was an amazing musician,\u201d Helmerson says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his experience with these great teachers, when I asked Helmerson to name his the greatest influence, he cites Sergiu Celibidache, the Romanian conductor who led the Radio Symphony in Stockholm where Helmerson played for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCelibidache had such a structured, conscious way of thinking about music, knowing music from the most basic information and how to bring it out,\u201d he says. \u201cTogether with that, he had an incredible temperament, a talent for music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He credits his understanding of how to find the priority of voices in music as something he learned from Celibidache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in his 20s, and still playing in an orchestra full time, Helmerson won prizes at several major competitions, including the Cassado Competition in Florence in 1971. He\u2019s characteristically low-key about his competition prizes and the solo career that came as a result. \u201cIt was an unbelievable experience to go to competitions. In Sweden at that time, there were no instrumentalists who played outside of Sweden. There were singers, very famous singers, but not instrumentalists. So I had never thought in my head while studying about making a solo career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As his career expanded, Helmerson was soon playing concerts and recitals around the world and making recordings. As well as his recording of the Dvorak concerto, praised as \u201ca powerful and brilliant reading\u201d by Gramophone <\/i>magazine, Helmerson made several other recordings for BIS including an all-Britten disc, Bach\u2019s cello suites, and The Solitary Cello<\/i>, with solo works by Kod\u00e1ly, Crumb, Hindemith, and Sallinen. He also recorded the Brahms Double Concerto for Arte Nova Classics with his wife, violinist Mihaela Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many soloists in the early stages of their careers can find little time for teaching, but Helmerson was always \u201cextremely interested in teaching\u201d and he began taking on students by age 28. Chamber music, too, became a major interest, and by the end of the 1980s, he was a regular at major festivals and directed his own festival for several years, the Umea-Korsholm International Chamber Music Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flash forward to 2002, when Helmerson and Mihaela Martin were performing with the Japanese violist Nobuko Imai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin and Imai had been discussing the idea of starting a quartet for a while, but it was Imai\u2019s suggestion that brought the project to fruition, and the Michelangelo Quartet, with Stephan Picard playing second violin, was launched. (Daniel Austrich occupies the other violin seat in the current line-up.) For a quartet with four busy individual schedules, building a vast repertory is not in the cards, as Helmerson freely admits. \u201cWe live in different places, so we come together for very concentrated, almost panicky, rehearsing sometimes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last season the ensemble performed the Beethoven cycle in Perth, Scotland, a feat they\u2019ll be repeating in Japan over the next two years. They\u2019ll also tour the US East Coast in the autumn, making a stop at Carnegie Hall on November 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, you may come across Helmerson, as teacher, conductor (he has a steady career wielding the baton), and soloist, in many places around the world. Last October, for instance, he played a double concerto for two cellos by Tristan Keuris, with Johannes Moser, at the Cello Biennial in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are nerves ever a problem for him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of us have nerves,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to concentrate on the communication. It cannot only be me with the piece, it has to communicate to other people. Of course, when I\u2019m teaching, sometimes I experience a young person who shows so much respect to Beethoven or Bach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t see these great geniuses as having lived a life, we see them as sculptures. I think it\u2019s important to have 100 percent respect for composer, but if you don\u2019t have 100 percent respect for yourself also, then the composer will suffer. Don\u2019t make yourself smaller than necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It hardly needs saying that musician such as Helmerson will never be small and never anything less than true to both the music and himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a week of watching Frans Helmerson play and teach, the phrase that kept running through my mind to describe him was \u201cquiet dignity.\u201d That\u2019s not to say he is solemn\u2014a smile is never far away from his face\u2014but his playing, his teaching, and his conversation radiate refinement, calmness, and gentleness. He seems perfectly cast for the role of the cellist: a tall man whose well-padded fingers move confidently around the cello.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, Helmerson will turn 70. The great Swedish cellist can look back on a distinguished, multi-faceted career: soloist (his 1984 recording of the Dvorak concerto for the Swedish BIS label is still highly regarded), chamber musician (most recently as the cellist in the all-star Michelangelo Quartet), conductor, and teacher at several leading European conservatories, lately including the Hanns Eisler Conservatory in Berlin and the Kronberg Academy near Frankfurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eun-Sun Hong, who won the 2014 Enescu Cello Competition in Bucharest, is one of his students in Berlin. I ask her to describe what Helmerson is like as a teacher. \u201cHe is very precise, yet thoughtful,\u201d she says. \u201cHe knows exactly what advice each student needs and helps to develop one\u2019s own artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hong first came to him in 2008, having been taken with his playing when he was visiting her native South Korea in 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson was memorable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe questioned me about what the music is to me,\u201d Hong recalls. \u201cSince then, I always remind myself of this question. I think it is important to know exactly what we are doing and what the music is about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some seven years after that first lesson, Hong continues to study with Helmerson. \u201cIt is always fascinating to talk with him in lessons about the language of composers, different musical ideas, styles, and artistic aspects,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer, I watched Helmerson give master classes to the young students (aged 18\u201328) of the Verbier Festival Academy. He was friendly and supportive, but forthright in his comments, which were clearly the result of careful study of each student\u2019s playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After one student played the third movement of the Brahms C minor Cello Sonata, Helmerson remarks, \u201cEverything <\/i>was emotional there. There\u2019s not only sentimental and romantic emotion, there can also be exciting or energetic emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helmerson also urged the student pay more attention to her vibrato, which seemed to be on automatic pilot. \u201cVibrato should come from the ear, not the hand,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted the young player\u2019s extraneous body motions, saying that she has to control the bow more because of the extra body movement. He tempered the criticisms with a positive remark: \u201cI like the reason you move,\u201d he points out, \u201cyou feel energy, the rhythms, but watch and see where you are and be more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another young cellist, whose performance of the Haydn D major Cello Concerto more closely matched Helmerson\u2019s exacting standards, was given a challenge: play a particular passage again, but in completely a different style. For one thorny passage, the student was asked play it again while Helmerson interrogated her about what she had for breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you have coffee?\u201d \u201cNo, I don\u2019t drink coffee,\u201d said the cellist, who smoothly played the passage through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forty years of teaching experience have doubtless equipped Helmerson with a bag of tricks to deal with any kind of student, but he can also draw upon the received wisdom of his own teachers, who include Jacqueline du Pr\u00e9\u2019s teacher William Pleeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helmerson began playing the cello in Sweden at the age of eight. At 12, he started studying with his first major teacher, Guido Vecchi. \u201cHis parents were Italian, he was born in Sweden, but he was probably the most Italian man I have met in my life, a very sophisticated person,\u201d Helmerson says. \u201cHe had an unbelievably beautiful sound, which made such a deep impression on me, and I think I still hear that sound in my ears and try to achieve it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swept up in this Italian sound, Helmerson made a pilgrimage to Rome to study privately with Giuseppi Selmi. \u201cHe was very methodical and that was exactly what I needed at that time. It was very much about left-hand technique. I still practice a couple of his studies every morning to warm up,\u201d he explains. \u201cHe was a wonderful man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a young cellist in Europe in the 1960s, there was one idol above all others: Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1967, Helmerson was living in Gothenburg, playing with the orchestra there, when du Pr\u00e9 came to play the Dvorak concerto. He arranged to play for her (and her new husband, Daniel Barenboim) and ask her advice. Should he go to Rostropovich?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Pr\u00e9 told him that in her six months in Moscow, she\u2019d had very few lessons with Rostropovich because of his busy performing schedule and suggested that the young Swede should go to her teacher in London, William Pleeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI admired her so much that I took her advice just like that!\u201d says Helmerson. \u201cA couple of weeks later I got a letter from her that on the tenth of January, at 3 o\u2019clock, you should be at your first lesson with William Pleeth. She had arranged everything for me. It was very moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Pleeth\u2019s lessons focused less on the technical side, there were other things to discover. \u201cFrom him I learned how to hear music before I play it, to not just take the instrument and play it, but to always have a picture in the ear. He was an amazing musician,\u201d Helmerson says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his experience with these great teachers, when I asked Helmerson to name his the greatest influence, he cites Sergiu Celibidache, the Romanian conductor who led the Radio Symphony in Stockholm where Helmerson played for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCelibidache had such a structured, conscious way of thinking about music, knowing music from the most basic information and how to bring it out,\u201d he says. \u201cTogether with that, he had an incredible temperament, a talent for music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He credits his understanding of how to find the priority of voices in music as something he learned from Celibidache.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in his 20s, and still playing in an orchestra full time, Helmerson won prizes at several major competitions, including the Cassado Competition in Florence in 1971. He\u2019s characteristically low-key about his competition prizes and the solo career that came as a result. \u201cIt was an unbelievable experience to go to competitions. In Sweden at that time, there were no instrumentalists who played outside of Sweden. There were singers, very famous singers, but not instrumentalists. So I had never thought in my head while studying about making a solo career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As his career expanded, Helmerson was soon playing concerts and recitals around the world and making recordings. As well as his recording of the Dvorak concerto, praised as \u201ca powerful and brilliant reading\u201d byGramophonemagazine, Helmerson made several other recordings for BIS including an all-Britten disc, Bach\u2019s cello suites, andThe Solitary Cello, with solo works by Kod\u00e1ly, Crumb, Hindemith, and Sallinen. He also recorded the Brahms Double Concerto for Arte Nova Classics with his wife, violinist Mihaela Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many soloists in the early stages of their careers can find little time for teaching, but Helmerson was always \u201cextremely interested in teaching\u201d and he began taking on students by age 28. Chamber music, too, became a major interest, and by the end of the 1980s, he was a regular at major festivals and directed his own festival for several years, the Umea-Korsholm International Chamber Music Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flash forward to 2002, when Helmerson and Mihaela Martin were performing with the Japanese violist Nobuko Imai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin and Imai had been discussing the idea of starting a quartet for a while, but it was Imai\u2019s suggestion that brought the project to fruition, and the Michelangelo Quartet, with Stephan Picard playing second violin, was launched. (Daniel Austrich occupies the other violin seat in the current line-up.) For a quartet with four busy individual schedules, building a vast repertory is not in the cards, as Helmerson freely admits. \u201cWe live in different places, so we come together for very concentrated, almost panicky, rehearsing sometimes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last season the ensemble performed the Beethoven cycle in Perth, Scotland, a feat they\u2019ll be repeating in Japan over the next two years. They\u2019ll also tour the US East Coast in the autumn, making a stop at Carnegie Hall on November 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, you may come across Helmerson, as teacher, conductor (he has a steady career wielding the baton), and soloist, in many places around the world. Last October, for instance, he played a double concerto for two cellos by Tristan Keuris, with Johannes Moser, at the Cello Biennial in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are nerves ever a problem for him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of us have nerves,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to concentrate on the communication. It cannot only be me with the piece, it has to communicate to other people. Of course, when I\u2019m teaching, sometimes I experience a young person who shows so much respect to Beethoven or Bach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t see these great geniuses as having lived a life, we see them as sculptures. I think it\u2019s important to have 100 percent respect for composer, but if you don\u2019t have 100 percent respect for yourself also, then the composer will suffer. Don\u2019t make yourself smaller than necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It hardly needs saying that musician such as Helmerson will never be small and never anything less than true to both the music and himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swedish cellist and educator Frans Helmerson has a quiet dignity about him. His playing, his teaching, and his conversation radiate refinement, calmness, and gentleness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Swedish cellist and educator Frans Helmerson has a quiet dignity about him. His playing, his teaching, and his conversation radiate refinement, calmness, and gentleness.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[120],"ppma_author":[1686],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-april-2015"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Frans-Helmerson_large1.jpg?fit=360%2C194&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p77Kt7-cm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1686,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"stephaniestringletter-com","display_name":"Stephanie Powell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2c8a15ad72feb752802157f952ea32693ae9e5a980b31db190c13fc621fabcef?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24035,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/24035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stringsmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}