Bernard Zighera

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

I remember Mr. Zighera from my summer at Tanglewood. He was gracious, and I admired his huge, relaxed, powerful hands.

What was he like as a teacher? What did he do in lessons?

[joyce-rice]

I studied with Mr. Zighera from age 14 to 17, after 10 years with the Custances, also in Boston. In hindsight, I guess he accepted me because he must have seen some potential in my bland, too-fast rendition of Clair de Lune and of Maxwell’s Fantasy on Chopsticks, but for a year he was extremely hard on me as he completely reshaped my position while teaching me classic French solos by Tournier (his teacher), Pierne, etc. I remember him yelling in French and pounding on my shoulder – it was very intimidating. I would concentrate so hard that my mouth would hang open, and he kept some hard candies nearby and would pop one in so I’d close it. But after the first year, by which time I had pretty well absorbed his changes, he mellowed. I had become bored with the music the Custances were giving me, but Zighera’s assignments were both beautiful and challenging and I made huge gains, for which I am forever grateful.

One day when I was perhaps a sophomore, he asked me where I wanted to go to college. “I dunno, Juilliard, maybe,” I ventured. His wife happened to be passing by the living room where we worked and said, “Don’t do it! You’ll end up just like Bernard! He’s at Symphony all day, and at night he’s studying parts or scores. It’s music, music, music all the time!” I wasn’t really one to practice hours and hours, anyway, so I went to Wellesley where didn’t feel I had the time to take lessons, but checked in with him after learning, but before performing, the Mozart flute and harp concerto my senior year. I took my junior year in Paris, and I remember years after that going with my two very small kids to see him in Falmouth, where they had a summer home, and chattering away in French with him. He was so kind and loving to my kids that day. I feel immensely fortunate to have been able to study with him.

[carl-swanson]

Joyce- You’re experience with him was a lot better than mine. I studied with him for two years after having studied with Pierre Jamet. I only did it because I wanted to get my Masters degree out of the way. I told him, diplomatically, that I didn’t want to change anything about my technique, which I had learned from Jamet. He watched me play something and then said “Your technique is set. There is nothing to change.”

But he was very negative and destructive with me. Most of the other people who studied with him in his last years had similar problems. I will say though that he was a wonderful musician and played beautifully at Symphony Hall. I think that those who studied with him earlier in his career fared better.

[Misty Harrison]

if you look at it from his point of view,

it must be difficult to teach someone that basically says they don’t want your help

and most people can see through students that just want something… a degree or a network connection

[carl-swanson]

That’s not what I said. I said that I didn’t want to alter my technique, and he agreed with me. I would have been very happy with musical coaching or particularly learning orchestra parts from him. But he was simply nasty and destructive. He would endlessly change fingerings, on the same pieces from week to week no less. He never once listened to what I had prepared. As soon as I started a piece that I had worked hard on all week, he would stop me two measures into it and start changing fingerings, even though he had done the same thing the week before and the week before that.

At the end of my first year(of a two year program) I had to play a “promotional” exam, basically a final exam on the instrument which every student in the school had to do. I was going to play the Hindemith Sonata. He tore it to shreds week after week, and at the last lesson before the exam, stormed out of the room saying, “This is a mess. I don’t know what you are going to do for that exam!” I had three weeks to work on the piece by myself before the exam. When I played the exam, in the main concert hall, the jury was Zighera, Gunther Schuller, and Louise papoutsakis, the other harp teacher at the school. I was so angry with him it helped me overcome my usual nerves and I played it well. 20 minutes later I ran into him and Louise in a hallway. He smiled broadly and said,”That was wonderful. Why didn’t you play it like that in the lessons?” I could have killed him.

He was like that with most of the students who studied with him in his later years. Most of us wanted to spend a summer at Tanglewood in the fellowship orchestra, but he never once picked one of his own students for that. He would pick someone from a tape, and then often end up with someone incapable of playing the parts required and they would have to send a freelance harpist from Boston out to cover the parts. But his nasty behavior went beyond that too. He assaulted a female student at a private lesson. She is a good friend of mine and told me about it. So please, don’t criticize someone when you don’t have all the facts.

[Misty Harrison]

nobody’s criticizing carl but when you write that you only studied with someone to get a degree it’s not hard to imagine that the person could feel that and not want to work well with you

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Well, I guess I didn’t miss much!

[zoraida-avila]

The Zighera’s harp (L & H 23 golden) is for sale in Venezuela.

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