Fitness on the instrument

Fit in 15 minutes is a collection by the well-known flute teachers Elisabeth Weinzierl and Edmund Wächter. They have put together a kind of training program for all abilities with basic exercises for various technical playing requirements. Learners, amateurs and professionals can put together their own personal sequence from the areas of tone, articulation and finger technique. The author advises: "Two to three exercises from each chapter can be selected and combined for the warm-up program. All exercises are models that can and should be varied." At the beginning of the volume, Weinzierl and Wächter also recommend improvising in the chosen key, as was customary in the Baroque period, and add an example from the 19th century by Giuseppe Gariboldi.

The tonal exercises are divided into two practice plans in the fourth space and in the fifth space within a tonal range up to the three-note B, with the highest and lowest passages for which a B foot is required in brackets. For "good sound and breath control", the palette ranges from long sustained "sun tones" to sound waves that prepare the vibrato, chromatic ties with crescendo to exercises with singing and playing that strengthen the throat resonance. A special training is "flute beat boxing", in which "speaking tools" are transferred to the flute and also used improvisationally. Other aspects of tone formation such as harmonics, large intervals, bendings and glissandi are also integrated into the exercises; colors and character in the tone are developed using examples from the literature and transposed into the upper registers. Articulation in the lower register is built up through diaphragmatic staccato and slurs in the lower register. The wide range of finger exercises also includes combinations of passages from scales and sequences of thirds, with particular attention given to the seventh chords, which are circled with a wide range of slaloms.

Even if some of the suggested practice methods are reminiscent of further developed tone and finger exercises, e.g. by Marcel Moyse, Paul Taffanael and Peter-Lukas Graf, or of tone exercises with contemporary playing methods, such as those already recommended by Robert Dick or Stefan Keller, among others, in their works Fit in 15 minutes is a very successful compendium due to its imaginative and variable arrangement of exercises, which helps to organize the playing time as variedly and efficiently as possible.

Elisabeth Weinzierl and Edmund Wächter: Fit in 15 minutes, warm-ups and basic exercises for flute, ED 22745, € 18.50, Schott, Mainz