Mary Wendelken

Every memorable moment of my life has a soundtrack to it; or put another way, I don't believe I have a memory that doesn't have music attached to it in some way. From the moment I started my earliest piano lessons, I was hooked. Nothing has ever made me so happy and yet frustrated me so in the way music has. To me, it is the ultimate challenge and reward. I found out later, much to my surprise, that I not only loved teaching music, but that I was really good at it. One of my specialties is getting students who were ready to quit to fall in love with the piano, madly, obsessively in love with it. I've had parents actually say, "Wow, you know you did too well. Now they won't stop practicing and it's driving us a bit nuts!" and I laugh and say I have no pity for them. I love my students at every age and level of study. There is one basic thing I demand, that they want to learn to play masterfully. I teach the proper, classical, German-style technique. No cutting corners. I tell my students that if we could send them back in a time machine to have a lesson with Beethoven or even Bach, their goal should be that no one could tell from the way they play that they are from the 21st century. We aim to interpret our music with "no accent", nothing to belie that we are in fact playing music that is centuries old. My primary teacher was Schnabel's last protege', Tung Kwong Kwong, and passing on pure classical training and interpretation to the next generations is one of my duties as a musician. I would never do anything to weaken, lessen, or water down what is already perfect. It takes patience to never cut a corner, but I have a lot of patience for things that are worth doing well.