Let me express in a few sentences how it is that I think of my vocation. Among other things, why I feel that improvisation – or performances with improvisational undertones – is important, while at other times I hold so fastidiously to the original score and sounding.
 
I like to compare music to speech. I am not alone with this inclination. Besides Nikolaus Harnoncourt or Leonard Bernstein, there are so many others who held/hold similar views that the list of their names would go on for pages. To be sure, music is our most ancient, most real, most honest language. Even in our mother’s womb, we listened to the life-giving rhythm of the heart, and cannot exist without it through the rest of our lives. When I say that music “comes from the heart,” I think of this.  

It is also this that convinces me of the fact that music is a mother tongue which is not learned at music school. At such a school, we may only perfect our previous knowledge (just as we learn the word “Mama” at home, not when we get to the letter “M” in primary school…).

As an educator, and perhaps even to a greater extent as a performer, I would like people to gain a better understanding and feeling for this beautiful language. I say this for the present without regard for varying styles and music-historical eras, seeing as how good music is “good music,” and this in itself is enough for us to feel good in it.  

Using the language of music, we can express things and hear things that would not be possible, or permissible, to convey through words. We can say something beautiful, something kind, but we can also say something “outrageous” while behaving like a gentleman at the same time, perhaps even shedding a few tears (as it was “expected” from any self-respecting man in the baroque era of music, we find from written records). Furthermore, if the Reader will allow me to be quite frank, we can also give and receive erotic experiences through music, as it affects our body and innermost instincts as well. What is more, all of this is done in harmony with ourselves, our inner and outer environments. This feat is accomplished by music, if we pay attention to it. If we “open our ears,” – as I tell children – we will hear among the many notes the secret ones, hidden among all the rest, which nobody knows about, because they are there only for you, me, and them.   
 
What could possibly be the major task of a teacher-performer? There is no doubt from my part that as a teacher, my objective is not to teach the kind of “curriculum” that requires exams to be taken each semester, but rather I would like to initiate “musical conversations” with the students. My seventeen years of teaching experience confirms that “questions” composed of musical notes also elicit musical “responses.” The students are attached to what they hear, and even more importantly, to what they also comprehend and feel. This is underlined by the fact that some of my students, after only a few months of musical education, are very reluctant to part with their instrument.   

Is it possible to teach through conversation? If it works with English and French, then a mother tongue should really only be taught this way. When my daughter was two years old, she said, “zzz” (víz is “water” in Hungarian). I understood what she was requesting, and gave her a cup of water. She smiled and drank it. I did not tell her, “you are wrong, my dear, you said the word incorrectly,” yet after a couple of weeks, she nevertheless learned to say the word properly.

As a performer – and this is one of the most important, yet hardest accomplishments – instead of focusing on unraveling our own personality on stage, we must focus on the sounds produced in that moment. In my opinion, humility is essential in order for this to happen. I imagined what it would feel like one night to perform one of Vivaldi’s flute concerts with “dazzling individuality” on my part, and then to glimpse among the rows of the audience the reddish hair of the Composer himself...  It would immediately become quite clear that I am not the most important here. 

This is why, when playing pieces of music, compositions, or works, I carefully analyze the sheet music. But after playing the pieces over and over again, I begin to understand and feel much of what is written down. I begin to get attached to the notes, the sounds themselves. This makes playing without sheet music a very different experience than if I would simply have memorized the piece. 

Taking all this into account, I still find the continuous presence of improvisation very important within my concerts – and this goes for all musical styles. This is because it is through improvisation that we provide, then and there, in the all-time present, an honestly and naturally pleasant communicative atmosphere; that so called “artistic communication” which beyond reaching from the composer to members of the audience, also makes them organic, essential parts of music-making.

I would like to continue to “use my own words” as I play music for you. This way, I can more authentically “tell you” Bach’s sonata h-minor (perhaps playing a buxus flute); I can convey more eroticism in a Mozart D-major flute concert; but I can also play Prokofjev, Jolivet, Chick Corea, or Miles Davis, some of my own contemporaries, more understandably and with even more enthusiasm; and, naturally, I can also present to you with greater empathy, pieces inspired by Hungarian folk music – all of these with your help. 

This is what “From the inside out” signifies to me. The English phrase “by heart” is very interesting (after all Italian is not the only language from which musical phrases may be borrowed). I know, it only means: without sheet music.  
 
Or does it?