What Milstein Said About Warming Up

During my first summer of private sessions with Milstein I had lodgings with a couple in Eastbourne, down on the English Channel. Each week I made a 2 1/2 hour schlep to London where the maestro and his wife lived in a beautiful Georgian town home in Belgravia, one of the most fashionable areas of London.

In fact, the square they lived on, Chester Square, was also home to Margaret Thatcher, Morizio Polini, Yehudi Menuhin and, two years later, my benefactor, Richard Colburn.

When I arrived, I felt nervous and tight. It seemed to take forever to warm up and settle down. On my third visit I even complained to Nathan about how difficult it was to play my best coming in ‘cold’.

‘Vhy you should need warm up’, he said. ‘The music is in your head, not in your hands.’

Well, in those days, the music wasn’t in my head. And standing in front of one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century made me painfully aware of it.

You see I had a history of letting my hands take over in pressure situations. To be successful this way I required a lengthy warm up.
Even then I could easily be overwhelmed by ‘nerves’.

It was after that lesson that I began developing my power of visualization.

Though painful at first, I quickly realized the advantage to training this way. While sitting on the train, I visualized myself playing my repertoire, in exquisite detail. I continued visualizing as I walked the short distance from Victoria Station to the maestro’s home. I visualized as I tuned my fiddle…

From the feedback I’ve been getting from users of ‘Kreutzer, Vol. 1’ I know that many of you are employing the same technique, and enjoying equally satisfying results.

Keep up the great work.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. Visualizing, in and of itself, is wonderful. Supporting it with proper breathing and my counting technique gives it awesome power. Kreutzer For Violin Mastery shows you exactly how get this power working for you.