Anne Akiko Meyers: Life Lessons

I still remember practising in the front seat of our Volkswagen Beetle through the Californian desert when I was seven years old. These eight-hour round trips from Ridgecrest to Los Angeles were frequent once I started lessons with Alice Schoenfeld. She had a strict approach, having been taught by a student of Joseph Joachim. Once, while I was practising Mozart’s G major Concerto, she asked me to make the first chord ‘sound like the lustre of a pearl’. How does an eight- or nine-year-old do that? It was incredible how she trusted me to understand such complicated concepts. With her guidance I went from playing the notes to refining the music. She would have me choose performance attire to suit the piece. For Mozart it was pure white and pink ribbons; for Lalo a fiery red dress; for Mendelssohn it was blue. I began to associate the music with emotions and storytelling…