Why Wunderkinder are not miracles

[Music] adjustment to manage that at eight years old even looking at it today at 42. it comes close to that strange term wonderkin musical child prodigies tetherway a quest for musical Perfection is their top priority my goal is to play Carnegie Hall the extraordinary Talent often appears very early I first started playing piano when I was two I started playing and composed a whole piece the cliche is that child prodigies are lonely with few friends and are drilled to Perfection not to cry Under Pressure not to shake Under Pressure there are kids five six seven years old who get incredible migraines after concerts I did too Miracle is there in highly talented children are they born with these extraordinary abilities we talked to former Child prodigies as well as a human development researcher a music psychologist and a music historian [Music] thank you [Applause] German star violinist David Garrett is one of today's most successful crossover musicians his Fusion of classical and pop fills halls and stadiums around the world [Music] [Applause] for me music has always let me breathe given me energy and joy the violin was a means to an end I was good at it I learned to play fairly quickly of course I also worked hard his journey with the violin began at four years old father Georg recognized his son's talent and started teaching him [Music] David took Giant Steps and gave his first solo concerts with an orchestra at the age of nine [Music] [Applause] you're very aware of all the hours you've spent on each note that you've worked really hard for it foreign working hard on the notes is one thing but what makes a child prodigy there isn't any doubt that the children have natural capabilities that are very rare it also requires the efforts of those around the child to be equally focused and equally dedicated and equally wise about how to support and promote that Talent David's father invested in him his career broke records at 13 he was the youngest musician ever to be signed by renowned classical music label Deutsche gramophone for several albums David has worked with stars like conductor Claudio Abado Zubin Mehta and violin virtuoso yehudi menuhin do you feel like a burden to you growing up every day absolutely no kid willingly sacrifices the time it takes to reach the top there's always someone in the background whether it's the mother the father or the teacher one of those three is always there slipper in hand what's it like to be a gifted child can they still have a childhood foreign [Music] miles and Maddox govern the family's daily life Simona masilek is driving her sons to piano and violin lessons today one of seven lessons per week she says she often gets judged I get labeled as a pushy mother who keeps her poor kids away from life and forces them to practice the piano and violin I've also seen someone on Facebook say the best way to make money is with small children people ignore the fact that it takes money time and nerves they see what they want to see nurturing her children's talents is a full-time job for this single mother in Berlin concert pianist elizabetha blumina has been teaching Medics and miles for about four years the boys cannot imagine living without piano and violin then if we see like here that there's nothing without music then I have to do everything to make sure that they have the groundwork to decide later if they want this or not has known this focus on music since childhood the 19 year old has already performed on many major stages and is considered a highly gifted pianist [Music] Philip is also a talented pianist in a normal week we practice a lot we have rehearsals sometimes concerts we spend three four sometimes five days at the University in Belgium and begin the siblings are multi-talented Leticia started school aged four and finished high school at 14. she studies at a conservatory in Belgium as does Philip they've never known the kind of schooling that other children have [Music] the way I describe my time is High School is that I always I only had to say half a sentence and everyone knew I was a bit different arranged their lives around their children's needs they have to be flexible in their work hours or intensive support would be impossible and that takes energy they normally play about 60 concerts per year right now there are more abroad in Japan China and South America Maddox practices the piano three to four hours a day he repeats the variations on a theme by violin virtuoso Paganini until every note is perfect there's hardly a music competition he hasn't won and has accumulated more than a hundred prizes so far yeah I never get to the point where I'm completely happy with the way I play Maddox is a fast learner and has an insatiable hunger for knowledge he needs to work on complex tasks and even as a toddler that was already challenging for his parents he got bored which often turned into screaming and Tantrums that would sometimes last for 20 minutes you could see that he just didn't know what to do with himself but his Godfather told us he's under challenged he needs activity and input for his brain he's so smart that he needs a different stimulus and that's where music came in at the age of three Medics played his first Melodies on the piano it may even be although there's no way to know this for sure that child prodigy is in music have as a natural endowment a preference for music as their primary way of communicating with the world more than speech and language and more than any other area but whether it's that or not it's certainly very powerful and it drives them at four Maddox was already giving his first concerts and at seven he played a concert at the prestigious mozartian Music Academy in Salzburg Austria Maddox and Miles have been taken out of normal schooling it's a decision that can actually be beneficial for musically gifted children he grasps things faster he doesn't need to spend six hours at school he can get it done in one or two that's why we said he doesn't have to do the time in school he can learn at his own pace when it suits him and that also gives him enough time to prepare for concerts and competitions since he doesn't have to spend as much time in school their world is not the same as your world or my world it's a different kind of experience and it has to be dealt with in its own way so that they often isolate themselves so that they can focus and the outside world would look at that as something that is objectionable but it may be necessary David Garrett's father made sure his son's childhood could be completely devoted to the violin music education concerts and Studio recordings were the highest priority he got David both the best teachers and meetings with the most important decision makers in the music industry in his recently published biography if you only knew David Garrett describes among other things a childhood without children [Music] I was definitely an outsider I was a child in an adult profession it's not usually a profession done by kids if it were it would be called child labor of course you can't call it that but I was only surrounded by adults I was only 13. but the conversations at the record company were with adults with the directors the conductors the teachers and the patrons after the concerts everyone around me was an adult and you never wanted to break away I didn't even know I was in something you could break out of I had no comparison when you grow up in a shoe box and you don't know anyone outside of the shoe box that shoebox is the world David kept exceeding audience expectations but that didn't save him from his father's criticism [Music] he put a lot of emphasis on me understanding very quickly what he didn't think was good so he always made his own recordings of the concerts [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the car ride home we listened to it through the speakers and of course he immediately began voicing his criticism [Music] looking back he believes he never would have made it to the top of the ultra exclusive classical music business without his father's perfectionism and pressure he made my life possible in a hard way but Mozart didn't have it any easier nor did Paganini in comparison I was probably handled with kid gloves they were beaten black and blue I'm pretty sure about that not every gifted musician experiences a childhood of pressure and sacrifice not all of them become stars but they do have one thing in common it's that they've always been fascinating [Music] history there have been many musical Geniuses whose taunt was considered otherworldly by contemporaries like Bach Beethoven and Handel [Music] people were more religious in the 18th century and Associated something Divine with the concept of these Miracle children that sentiment is probably a bit lost on us nowadays although the term Miracle is still used to describe them and I think it still influences our perception of this phenomenon [Music] one child prodigy most people will know is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born in 1756 he wrote his first compositions at the age of five his father Leopold recognized his son's extraordinary Talent early on and began to promote him publicly the script and brief there's a letter from Leopold Mozart where he basically says that a miracle had taken place in Salzburg that God had caused a prodigy to be born there his choice of words makes me think of the Nativity Story with a kind of musical savior having entered the world it's like Instagram it was all fake even back in the 18th century he just used these stories to fill the newspapers to create some Buzz creating an image absolutely [Music] could the whole concept of the child prodigy just be the result of a clever PR campaign his father made a profit by taking seven-year-old Wolfgang on extensive concert tours there's no doubt that Leopold Mozart was a shrewd businessman he wrote Somewhere we must do this now because in two years time this Aura will be gone the older Mozart gets the more his child prodigy status will fade Leopold Mozart knew that he had to act quickly again Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart the Prototype of a child prodigy also in terms of his talent there's a long history for example of trying to to portray Mozart as having had gifts that were protein across many different fields the reality is that Mozart was unbelievably gifted in his Musical talents but he wasn't particularly Adept in anything else and that's more typical of the child prodigy star conductor Daniel baronboy made a name for himself in childhood both as a piano player and a conductor he was already studying conducting at the age of 10 but is reported to have once said that he was never a child prodigy he merely got off to an early start [Music] to put it diplomatically if you take someone who is wonderfully talented and combine that with a lot of work it can come across as if it's something incredible but once you have a loop behind the scenes and you know how much work goes into it it doesn't seem like a miracle at all that they became a child prodigy but how exactly can we Define a prodigy and is there such a thing as natural Talent can any child become a musical Wonder it's just not true that you can take any child and if you work hard enough at it you can produce the highest levels of achievement it just is not true interestingly a child's IQ plays little to no role in explaining musical Talent Professor Feldman defines a musical prodigy as someone who from the age of 10 can perform at the same level as an adult professional and has the necessary dispositions one of those is that the child has a natural affinity for music and a natural ability to to perform to compose or or to be to be in the musical world in addition the child has to have discipline has to have a tendency to focus and to be persistent the wunderkin needs to have the potential to achieve outstanding things however in order for it to happen the environment needs to be just right these are definitely this definition of giftedness that is having the potential to achieve something great is pretty much hypothetical there are lots of ifs and buts and you need the right conditions someone who has just started to play an instrument won't be pulling off your top tier performance from the get-go but in some cases it is possible to see a trajectory forming and predict what the next five years might bring the lag is behind the scenes most child prodigies have highly invested parents they are the ones that with their support see their children progress in the vital first stages of development would you settle for first violin or is solo the only option only solo only solo and if that doesn't work out what then that'll work and if not well I don't know but why shouldn't it Anna Sophie mortal was right she's been at the very top tier in the world of violin for almost four decades now [Music] Anna Sophie had her first violin lessons at the age of five since then she hasn't put the instrument down here she is at age 10. I think if you're lucky enough to discover something early on that makes you happy and have the opportunity to do it professionally then it doesn't really matter how long you get to be in that profession be it 10 years or 50 plus her parents fully supported Anna Sophie right from the start and at any cost all right we spend a few thousand marks a year on Anna Sofia's musical education we never Force anything on her we let her develop her skills as she sees fit she herself wants to be violinist more than anything our role is to make sure that she has all the opportunities and can follow the path she wants to take was just 13 years old when conductor Herbert von carrion discovered her becoming her mentor the beginning of a fairy tale career that continues to this day without the initial support of her parents none of this might ever have happened the child could have all the talent in the world and in the wrong family in the wrong circumstances with the wrong teachers it will not happen the situation becomes problematic when parents live vicariously through their children encouragement and support can turn into Drilling and coercion the childhood of Chinese pianist Lang Lang was one marred by poverty and a despotic father hell-bent on promoting his talented son his early years were characterized by ruthless discipline and constant fear Japanese violinist Midori was also subject to immense pressure growing up under a strict and ambitious mother at the age of 14 she was already working with the likes of Leonard Bernstein but in her early twenties she suffered a mental breakdown so severe that it took a whole six years in several hospitalizations before she could find her way back to music there's always a danger in putting children under this kind of pressure it can quite easily become detrimental and not conducive to a successful career but individuals react to outside influence very differently how they developed then is down to psychological predispositions but Talent needs to be nurtured the question facing parents like Simona marzolek to what extent it's undeniable that Maddox and Miles live for their music and their performances they have toured the globe for countless concerts and competitions be it in Israel or a competition at London's Royal Albert Hall working with a prodigy is a different kind of parenting than it is for most other children it means that for example a family will sacrifice living where they live and travel halfway across the world to go to the place where they believe that child will have the best opportunity for the single mother caring for not one but two highly talented Sons means Around the Clock support [Music] piano lessons violin lessons singing lessons composition lessons and all the rest one day you have to go and get a new bow the next you have to go get a violin fixed you have to prepare for concerts and competitions it's a lot to do does that leave any time for you no no time for me miles and Medics were made for the stage and it's already clear to them where they are headed all the way to the top we'll be on the big stages soon enough my goal is to play Carnegie Hall but a career isn't guaranteed in this highly competitive world most child prodigies say goodbye to the idea of becoming a coming a fashional musician before they reach adulthood foreign you have to know what to do with that kind of talent how to use it for something that fulfills you and makes you happy [Music] today as a young adult letiziahan is sure of one thing being a Pianist is her calling I want to share my music with the world because it's what I enjoy it's how I express myself it's a kind of language without words as a mother I don't support my children in what they do that's destructive and we didn't want that David Garrett had to learn to withstand the daily pressure from his parents after all an international career in music requires Perfection day after day [Music] who am I to criticize how my parents raised me when it's made my adult life so much easier it's essentially an ethical question would you rather have a relaxed childhood only to struggle through the rest of Life afterwards or do you say okay maybe my childhood wasn't ideal but life got easier afterwards because of it you answer me that is but as a child you can't consciously make that kind of decision on your own true but I also can't look back and say it was the wrong decision I just can't it's kind [Music] so what does it all boil down to in the end the challenge for the child prodigy and the child prodigy family is to bring their talent to its full expression it requires deep knowledge and understanding [Music] the best way to navigate a child's upbringing and education is to cultivate their self-confidence parents need to give their children the courage to take risks and find their own way the best parents and best teachers don't put the child into circumstances where that child's sense of development is distorted It's Tricky business or children should be allowed to enjoy being young I do everything I can to make sure Maddox and Miles have their time off time where they can be kids like the others oh and um one's quite ahead Fate has been incredibly good to me I've worked hard to get where I am now but I am also aware that I've been very very lucky right time right place my past hasn't always been easy but I wouldn't change a single moment because it put me here today [Music] thank you

Channel: DW History and Culture

Views: 224,510

Keywords: DW, Deutsche Welle, Mozart, Child prodigies, Violin players, Child stars, David garrett, DW, Deutsche Welle, Mozart, Child prodigies, Violin players, Child stars, David garrett

Id: vZWUhXo2ohQ

Length: 26min 4sec (1564 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/zombiecherry]

Actually, real Wunderkinder still are miracles. I once heard a definition: "It's not a Wunderkind, when you hear a young child playing difficult music very well on a high level. But if you close your eyes, and you hear a mature musician, and you open your eyes, and there is a child - that's a Wunderkind! And they remain rare, even with many highly skilled child musicians."