Slice of life: Learning about music and life | Music - Mail and Guardian

I was 16 and living on my own in Johannesburg, attending high school at the National School of the Arts, summaizes Franny Rabkin, Mail & Guardian.

Photo: Daniel Hutchinson (Paul Botes)

I was practising myself to a standstill, trying to get into the school’s annual concerto festival with a Mozart piano concerto. I wasn’t sleeping — well, sleeping very little — I was just working, spending all my time at the piano, every moment I had.

The auditions were the following day. I went to Ros [Liebman] for my final piano lesson in preparation. She took one look at me and cancelled the piano lesson. She gave me a large vegetarian meal, with freshly made beetroot juice, and drove me home to rest. She said : ‘Any practice now is pointless, you have to rest’.  I didn’t play well enough the next day to make it through for the festival, but her kindness stayed with me. Ros used to say she really didn’t feel like a piano teacher, she couldn’t be a piano teacher because, every week, there was a different challenge. And some weeks, the challenge wasn’t the piano. So she used to say some weeks she was a psychologist, some weeks a doctor, you know. 
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Source: Mail and Guardian