By Scott Slapin: With all the books I've read by violin/viola teachers, I can't remember anyone ever mentioning a system to stay in shape *for their students*.
Of course, performers detail how they stay in shape for their own benefit (usually lots of scales, Paganini, Bach etc.), and this would also apply to teachers.
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Past those basics though, there is a lot of specialization for performers - concerto soloists keep a lot of concertos around (memorized and played through at regular-enough intervals), recitalists have a version of this for their own repertoire, orchestral musicians keep the most common excerpts in their fingers (at least while still auditioning) etc.
Teachers, however, often have studios with a much wider array of interests, so they have to have a foot in all of the aforementioned repertoires.
I've come up with my own schedule that has evolved with time (and continues to do so.) With a little over an hour a day, over the span of a month I play through the Bach books (vln. and clo.), the Paganini Caprices, the Hindemith and Reger solo viola pieces, concertos (17 of the most major ones used for auditions), shorter pieces (Ernst, Sarasate, Wieniawski, Kreisler, my own etc.), and scales and arpeggios. All from memory, but with copies of the music nearby so I can easily check a note when I need to. The tunes that are the trickiest for me (either because of their technical difficulty or because they're hard to keep memorized), I have in there twice (a month).
Sure, some of that is for my own benefit, but quite a bit is really only for my students. That is to say, I have no plans to perform some of those pieces but they are standard to study, and I like to have them from memory and "in my fingers" enough to demonstrate passages.
I have students of all levels...and even the absolute beginners will surprise me sometimes with something along the lines of "I heard this Ernst piece with left-hand pizzicato.... how do you do that?" So I came up with this monthly schedule to keep things *around*.
What sorts of regimens are being used (or have been used in the past) by private teachers to stay in shape for their diverse range of students? Please share your thoughts on this.
Merry Cremonusmas and Happy New Year!
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