When I was a child, I really, really wanted to play the cello. But my mom (who had never had piano lessons and wanted to make up for that deficiency by giving them to her daughter) said I had to take piano first. I took my piano lessons from the late Mamie Malinowski in Grand Rapids, Mich. Everything she did made me hate the piano. Worst was insisting that I play with my fingers curved, even though I had really little hands that wouldn't reach more than about a fifth without flattening them out over the keys. To remedy my bad flattening-out habit, she made me play everything with a lemon in my hand. (My range became limited to about a fourth using that technique.) This was NOT the right way to teach me.

When mom finally relented and let me take cello lessons, my music "took off." My teacher, Deanna Mitchell, prescribed exercises and taught proper technique, but I wanted so very much to play that wonderful singing instrument that I was willing to do whatever it took. When I was in high school, I heard a recording of Jacqueline duPre playing the Hayden C major cello concerto -- a piece that had just been discovered, and that Mrs. Mitchell had never heard, much less played. I wanted to play it so much that she and I learned the concerto together. What a terrific experience. I still have a reel-to-reel tape of my first full-length recital playing that piece. It was a true thrill, and that experience epitomizes to me what good teaching is all about.

My biggest thrill as a cello teacher while I was in college was reminiscent of the Hayden experience. I had a young student, a twelve-year-old boy, very new to the cello, who wanted more than anything in the world to play in the pick-up orchestra that accompanied the annual "Singalong Messiah" organized by his uncle. It was a tremendous stretch of his technical abilities, but working with him to help him realize his dream, and seeing him get creditably through the entire performance, was a great inspiration to me. He learned more by doing something that made a difference in his world than he ever would have learned studying technique.