Cello Kids

A few months ago, a new youtube channel dedicated to the cello was born. It’s called “Cello Kids”, and is the result of a project by two cellists, Valérie Aimard and Antonina Zharava, and a pianist, Cédric Lorel. Let’s get to know Valérie and Antonina.
When did you first see and hear a cello? And when did you decide you wanted to play that instrument?
Valérie I can’t really remember when I first heard a cello as I attended concerts very early. When I was 6, my brother who is a pianist invited the german cellist Julius Berger to come to our house in the summer for a week. They played together a large repertoire. I remember very well Prokofiev Sonata with the pizzicato, Brahms F Major with the pizzicato too (!), Arpeggione and especially Prokofiev «March for children». Julius Berger is a fantastic human being who left a profound impression on me. The following September, I said: «Well, I’d like to start the cello» and that’s how all started! We are still in touch today after all those years. He has invited me to give masterclasses in Augsburg where he teaches. We’ll play a concert together in June 2020 in Füssen (Bavaria) in the memory of our parents. I decided «I’ll be a musician» when I was 14. I kept it secret at that time because I was also playing tennis at a very good level. I thought people would tell «if you want to be a musician you have to stop tennis!» and I wanted to do both! But I never considered not being a cellist, it was clear for me.
Antonina My mother is a cellist so I think the first time I actually heard this instrument was before I was even born! I remember myself at the age of 10 listening for the first time to the Schumann Cello Concerto and knowing exactly what was coming next, I think it was in my DNA! At the age of 4, after months and months of asking I got a little cello at home, I think I considered it as a toy and my mum secretly hoped that I will soon forget about it. She even tried to make me play the violin! After a few lessons, I told that the violin has a very high pitch and definitely too high for me! So I switched to the piano, my first cello lesson didn’t happen till I was 7, I needed to struggle for my choice!

Where and with whom you completed your musical studies?
Valérie I was originally from Lyon where I was lucky enough to have Patrick Gabard as a teacher from 10 to 15. So important years where he helped me to build a very healthy technic on the cello and (most important thing!) taught me how to practice. Then I studied at the Paris Conservatory with Philippe Muller and Michel Strauss, who followed me for almost ten years. He was the one to tell me about playing with freedom, to speak about rubato and to give me the confidence I didn’t have at that time. After many masterclasses with David Geringas, Lluis Claret, Janos Starker, I met Bernard Greenhouse in Berne in 1992, who became my mentor. The first thing he told me was: «Express yourself and be creative». He changed my musical life.
Antonina From 7 to 17, I studied in Minsk, Belarus. I had a great teacher: Irina Stepanova. Her approach to the cello technique and position was very Starker-like, the priority was a strong and healthy playing. Then was Paris and Philippe Muller – I learned a lot about style, baroque and contemporary music. Working on Lutoslawski Cello Concerto with him was amazing! After my Master’s Degree in Paris, I met several great teachers: Emmanuelle Bertrand, Frans Helmerson, Eckart Runge, Ralph Kirshbaum, all very passionate about teaching. And the best part of it: you never stop learning! I got my Master’s Degree at 21, so all master-classes and festivals that I’ve managed to attend since were really helpful. For me, traveling around the world with my cello, meeting incredible young musicians as well as renowned artists and making music with them is the best part of being a musician! Ravinia Festival, Heifetz Institute in United-States, Verbier Festival in Switzerland, Rome Chamber Music Festival: all are great memories.

Did you like the way your first teacher introduced you to the cello?
Valérie I started the cello in private with a very old lady, a very affectionate «grandma». She was very «Vieille France», totally devoted to the cello and her students. My bow hold for a while was more like 19th-century drawings! I still have the notebooks of her lessons. Her teaching principles were very close to what we would call today «kinesthesia». I was not practicing much but I loved the cello!
Antonina When I think of introducing the cello to the child, I think always about William Pleeth and how he describes this moment in his book «The Cello». A little magic at this moment can make you dream about the cello for years, I guess I was lucky enough! I remember my teacher explaining some technical points with incredible kindness and smartness: for example, I was in trouble trying to vibrate and she said: «Just think about petting your dog!» From that second I got it!

Was there a moment during your formative years when you thought about abandoning the study of the cello and dedicating yourself to something different?
Valérie No, really never. I always loved the cello, I don’t really know why. I’ve always loved to practice, to learn new pieces, to play chamber music, to rehearse, to meet great masters, to attend concerts and now to teach. It is such a privilege to devote your life to what you like most. At some point in my life, I had the feeling I could do just one thing: play the cello. I needed to start something new and meet other people than musicians. I started mime, pantomime. I have worked on mime for the last 15 years. I play shows, one-woman shows (!) as a mime, also cello and mime, and cello speech and mime. It has been a great opening in my artistic life. If you ask me «why mime?» …it would be the subject of another interview!
Antonina I love painting, it was my first passion before the cello. My father is an artist and I’ve always been quite jealous of the fact that as an artist when you expose your painting you can be sure your work is presented in the best possible way, while as a musician you never know! But after my first cello competition in Prague at the age of 11 I got really committed and serious about the music and I’ve never doubted since! I think I learned to love the risky part of the job!

What was the moment of your musical activity that you remember with most satisfaction?
Valérie It was the 3 wonderful summers I spent at the Marlboro Festival (US -Vermont). When I was 14, I read an article in a music magazine about this Festival created by Rudolf Serkin and Adolf Busch in the 50ties. These legendary musicians playing with younger ones, day and night during all summer in little white houses lost in the woods made me dream! I thought «Surely it is unreachable but that must be SO wonderful». Finally, years later, I was invited there. I spend 3 summers playing with the greatest American chamber musicians: Felix Galimir, Isidore Cohen, Samuel Rhodes, David Soyer, etc and with so many marvelous musicians of all kinds from which I learned so much. I worked on hundreds of pieces, sight-read another hundred, played with so many different musicians. I learned about people, about myself, about rehearsing, listening, performing, looking deep into the scores and enjoying yourself in life. Marlboro was a major influence on my musical evolution.
Antonina Seeing my students discovering themselves into the music makes me really happy. Have a talk with your teen student about his way to understand a Bach Prelude is something very special! Playing on stage and sharing with the audience is also a very important part of my life – my last concert at the Philharmonia of Belarus with the National Orchestra was a great feeling for me! I haven’t played in Belarus for more than ten years and I’ve got really moved when after the encore all 800 people were standing and applauding in front of me, I never experienced such a moment before!

Do you think it is better for children to start studying by learning to use their right or left hand?
Valérie For me it is important to introduce both hands from the first lessons. I start with the left hand placing the 4 fingers with pizzicato, exercises to hold and feel the bow outside strings and open strings after a few weeks. Very important is to develop right away a little of rhythm, a little of singing, reading notes, memorizing, understanding and writing fingerings, learning how to practice alone. So the pupil has a stimulation on many aspects of the instrument. It is easier for him to be able to practice at home working on many different «little» things.
Antonina Russian school is very strict about hand separation for beginners. Karl Davidov’s cello method is full of open strings! However, I think it’s less frustrating to start quite fast with all four fingers on the fingerboard using pizzicato and prepare the bow on the open strings. The exercises without the instrument are very important, especially for younger children.

Do children, according to your experience, learn more by looking at where they place their left-hand fingers or listening to the sound they are creating?
Valérie As many things in teaching, and in life, it is a combination, you must find the right balance. An excess of something and you lose the rest. Personally I use stickers to place the left hand at the beginning. I know it is a great debate! It gives security, and help for the hand with the eyes but, of course, you must be very careful about how you use it. Developing the ear and listening is the main goal of each lesson.
Antonina The most important is to connect the gesture to the ear at the very first stage of learning. First of all, children need to learn how to listen and don’t forget it later! Stickers could be very helpful at the beginning, especially if the kid has no piano at home or any other way to check his intonation. Personally, I recommend my more advanced students even to practice in the dark, with their sleeping mask on and so! It’s very funny and you discover a lot about your playing! By the way, playing from memory helps.

Is it helpful for children to sing while they play?
Valérie Of course, it is a necessity to develop singing early and not to be shy about it. It is not easy to develop it after many years if the pupil has never sung. It is a very important part of growing as a musician to develop the «inner ear», the «inner singing», what we hear inside, our idea of sound, of music, what we want to express. I would say that is what separates mechanical playing from musical playing.
Antonina Singing is the basis of my pedagogical approach: if you can sing a melody, you can play it! Even for more advanced students, I always say to «speak» or sing out the little notes to get the articulation perfectly clear at the fast passages. I know one French teacher who asks his students to sing the Mozart Sonata for cello and bassoon while accompanying themselves on the cello – so, as you see the sky is the limit!

When and why did you decide to create CELLO KIDS? Was it your idea or was it born from a collaboration with other musicians?
Valérie We know exactly when the idea appeared. It was the 1st of October 2018! We were with Antonina in a Parisian café speaking about cello, teaching, as we do very often. Suddenly we had this idea together: «…if we create a YouTube channel for the cello teaching repertoire?!». It was so clear, it was a piece of evidence that we will do it. We have known each other for many years with Antonina Zharava and Cédric Lorel, our fantastic pianist. We teach at the same school Conservatoire Maurice Ravel in Paris, where Cédric accompanies our cello classes. We have played in concert as a group 2 cellos and piano and the three of us have this deep implication in teaching. It was a piece of evidence to do that together.
Antonina I was thinking for a while that something was missing on the Web, some kind of tool to help budding cellists at home, to get the discovering of a new piece more motivating and clear. Nowadays more and more kids are on YouTube, so the idea of the Channel with our «best of» of pedagogical repertoire seemed to be right. Last November, Cello Kids received the «Prize of musical Education – Category Innovation» by Music Editors of France! In the current context where after Italy, France is stopped by the quarantine many colleagues thank us for this remote teaching tool and I use it constantly with my class.

Do you all work together in designing videos or does each one have specific tasks? (choice of compositions to perform, screenplay, direction…)
Valérie and Antonina We spoke a lot as a group to define the whole project. To know exactly what we wanted and especially what we didn’t want! So everything has been discussed together. We tried to consider every single detail with the greatest care and managed all by ourselves from beginning to end: very careful selection of the pieces, searched for a good quality of image, of sound, how to dress, how to place the accessories, how to edit the videos. While we were sharing the cello parts, our magical pianist Cédric Lorel managed to record all the pieces with piano: more than 100 works! Antonina has a complementary approach to the repertoire with some rare works to discover. In the beginning, Valerie was more the initiator of all the humoristic staging and poetical details. In the process, everyone got involved in it and gave imaginative ideas. It was a lot of fun to do! After the recording, Antonina took care of all the videos: making photos, editing, uploading, and managing the channel, and the Facebook page, which means hours and hours of work. The final touch is always controlled together. There is a «Cello Kids spirit»!

What are the problems and what are the satisfactions of the work you are carrying out?
Valérie and Antonina We were so motivated and able to concentrate on it, that Cello Kids came to life very quickly on 1st October 2019. We did tremendous work recording about 150 pieces and launching the whole thing one year after the idea appeared. Normally it should have taken 4-5 years to do that. It is a great feeling of accomplishment for us! Another satisfaction is that Cello Kids shows an enthusiastic and joyful way to approach teaching. Though our recording sessions were very intense, we enjoyed so much playing all these charming pieces and also imagining all the funny staging! It shows how music can be played with the greatest seriousness but with joy and fantasy. Cello Kids is very well received by our colleagues, who give us a very positive and supportive response. It is truly a new idea! 100.000 views in 6 months: it shows there is a real need for it! We have a ton of ideas and more than 50 videos are still to come on the channel! The main problem…? it took all our time during the past year!

What are the dreams for CELLO KIDS in the coming years?
Valérie and Antonina We would love to become a reference in the small world of cello teaching. We dream that teachers, students, amateur cellists, and beginners, when they want to listen to a piece, say «Let’s go on Cello Kids!» Thanks to YouTube, our videos can be seen all over the world. It would be wonderful if the cello community which is quite active on the web could help us to spread the news. That’s what we need most! 1.000.000 views on the channel seems to be a goal to achieve!

And certainly, the goal will soon be achieved! Thank you for your availability and congratulations on making your beautiful dream a reality.