Hello everyone! It's us, Dorottya Nizalowski and Fanni Nizalowski from Hungary and we are here in Hong Kong at the13th World Harp Congress.
– We played one of your pieces a few years ago and we really liked it, ’Cumbia Verde’, and we saw that you liked it on Youtube. I would like to ask, what do you think about social media and don’t you think Facebook attracts young musicians and children from the music? Isn’t it harmful?
– The reality is here – it’s not going to disappear. I think doing it the right way we can take advantage of the social media to actually promote the harp. Many people have discovered fun music that they never were aware of through Facebook, and started liking it, so... It’s not going to be gone, it’s here to stay, so we have to try to do the best possible out of it.
– In your lecture today you talked a lot about injuries, and health, and how to sit next to the harp and be careful with practising.
– Yes, today the lecture was explaining special effects, it’s something that just that normally I do in two hours and I tried to squeeze in 45 minutes and there are so many things I wish I had time to say but I do offer workshops and masterclasses about prevention of injury that has to do with the way you sit by the instrument, how all the parts of your body and tension effects your preformance. It is very complicated to explain in just a few words, but prevention is the clue. You don’t want to wait until you’re injured, to try to find out how I can fix this problem. Well, it shouldn’t have happened. So the ideal is prevention, prevention, prevention, and one concept that I express in a simple way was minimum effort. We have to minimize the effort for everything we do, that’s true for any instrument.
– What would you say or suggest to the youth nowadays?
– Have fun! That's the secret of it all. When you're learning an instrument, have fun! One of my rules: play the wrong notes nicely. My students sometimes laugh, because they play an arpeggio and half the notes they caught are wrong notes but the execution is beautifully done, I just: ‘That was wonderful!’ and they look at me like ‘what?’ It’s okay, don’t worry about the so called wrong notes, we all do that.
– Thank you very much for these positive words, and everything, for the lecture. Thank you!
– My pleasure! Have fun and I hope to see you in Hungary!
– Thank you!