Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg Masterclass

This weekend, world-class violinist, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, will perform Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" with the San Antonio Symphony. Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg also visited San Antonio in 2004, and as a child I had the opportunity to learn from her in a masterclass hosted by the Tuesday Musical Club of San Antonio. I was 13 at the time and performed the fourth movement of "Symphonie Espagnole" by Edouard Lalo. If I recall correctly, that was my first slow, emotional, and mature piece to learn.

At the time, my violin teacher, Clive Amor had very recently passed away, and I had just started studying violin with then-San Antonio Symphony Concertmaster, Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio.

It was both intimidating and comforting to learn from Nadja- she clearly has "old school" training, and I remember thinking how much of the technical advice she gave was worded very similarly to that of my previous teacher, Clive Amor. It wasn't until later that I realized the reason for this was probably because both my teacher and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg were students of the famed violinist and teacher, Dorothy Delay of Julliard.

Many of the things taught in this masterclass I still use as a professional and pass on as a teacher to my private lesson students. I hope you enjoy the video! It was a trip and a half to figure out how to digitize the video from an old camcorder that used Hi8 cassettes!

Time breakdown:

0:00 Context

2:19 Initial play through

7:13 Masterclass