György Sebök

The video www.youtube.com/watch?v=h427L7297xM of György Sebök prompted a friend of mine, who was his student, to reminiscence thus:

"I was told he lost his mother and sister in the Holocaust. He never spoke of that though. But I remember one lesson where I played the Prokofieff "War" sonata #7. Afterwards, he just sat there. Then he said, "never play that for me again" and it was the end of the lesson. Sometimes when I tell people that they laugh, like "wow you played badly". But I understood exactly why he said it. For me it was one of the best lessons ever. I learnt that in art, there is a human limit. And it is sometimes necessary to step observe that limit in art, that even in art, one cannot become inhuman. I feel that Sebok's survival to an old age was an act of will to live as a human. He saw things inhuman, and he was the most sensitive person I've ever met. And somehow, he found his humanity and taught us to see ours. He was a great, great teacher. When he died, Janos Starker called him "the greatest pianist of the 20th century". He wasn't perfect but he was excellent and took care of us and I loved him."

"He never ever judged a competition or entered one. Once I decided to go to one. He said, "well, enjoy the circus". Though he won the Grande Prix du Disque for one of his 50-odd records. He could sit down and play anything in the classical repertoire. His Bartok was a revelation but so was his Schumann. He didn't believe in repetition in practising. He believed in understanding what you did. Re promotion, he told us once that he had never solicited an engagement. He had only played when others asked. He had no agent. Some people thought he was a poor model for university students that way, he wasn't in the "real world" because he didn't teach PR and competition winning. The odd thing though is that of all my teachers, he is the one who taught me the most about the real world. Because his way of focusing the mind showed me how to cope with life situations and professional situations. I think of his words all the time and they give perspective."

"I owe so much to him."


FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Sebök looked back on his concert at age 14, and drew a connection between that event and his teaching philosophy. "During the third movement I made some mistakes," he recalled, "but I didn't feel guilty about it because I felt I had done my best." Similarly, Sebök helped his students overcome fear of mistakes in order to give their best performances: "One has to accept that to be human is to be fallible, and then do the best one can and be captured by the music."