The Polish guitarist, Tomasz Radziszewski, has garnered a lot of attention recently for his brilliant performances and his dynamic interpretations. In addition to performing and teaching, Tomasz is passionate about personal growth and sharing his approach to practice. Between his busy schedule of performing, arranging, and practicing, he sat down with Six String Journal to share some of his discoveries on everything from practice to performing and some of his life philosophies. Enjoy.
When did you start playing, and why? What drew you to the guitar initially?
My journey with guitar was not love at first sight. I started to play at the age of 7. My mom signed me up for music school for guitar against my will. I wanted to be a pianist! We had a piano in the kindergarten and my hobby was to play some melodies by ear like Ode to Joy and others which I don’t really remember. But I was always passionate about music thanks to my father, who played in a local band on an acoustic bass guitar and a keyboard. Although he preferred some rock/metal or electronic music, I was always only into classical music. Of course, that changed over the years, but I have memories from when I was 6-10 years old and loving only Mozart and Beethoven. The other music, pop, jazz, rock, made me feel awkward as a child.
What repertoire do you enjoy playing the most?
Nowadays I am much more open. With years of discovering music I fell in love with many different kinds. If I am totally honest, I love to play film music the most of all. It’s both the joy of arranging and performing something really emotional. I love to perform what people know and can enjoy with me. I like to arrange pieces from different instruments to give the public my new vision of them. From the standard repertoire, I am really into baroque and classical music. Mostly Bach, Sor, and Giuliani. From the XX century, my absolute favorites are Villa-Lobos and Rodrigo, because they offer some nice harmonies. I am not so much into performing contemporary repertoire, although I compose myself and I’ve had a few compositions written for me.
What guitar or guitars do you perform on? Strings?
I like my guitars how I like my wines: perfectly aged and in great condition. I hardly ever like new instruments. In my small collection (that’s really too big word for five instruments, but I cannot find a better one) I have three old instruments: José Ramirez 1979, Salvador Ibañez ~1900 and Jerome Thibouville Lamy 1890 (romantic guitar from Mirecourt). The sound of those is so charming and yet so different, one from another. Ramirez is perfect for any kind of repertoire and allowing me to play with huge expression due to its volume and color range. The Ibañez is my absolute favorite for playing late romantic music (Tarrega, Barrios, Chopin). Lamy is wonderful for Sor, but also I really like it in baroque music, too.
I’ve played many kinds of strings in my life. I like different styles depending on the instrument and my mood, but now I’ve settled for Savarez Cantiga Premium Evolution. They give me a perfect balance of tension (1 string is nylon, the rest carbon), which cooperates perfectly with my Ramirez. They last really long and have this bright color. It’s also easier to keep intonation in high positions with the 2nd and 3rd carbon string (Ramirez has 664mm scale and it gets really crazy in high positions). Personally, I much prefer the color and vibration of nylon strings and I used D’addario EJ45 for their lovely tone but my hands get really sweaty sometimes and those strings did not last very long. I remember a few recording sessions when they were done after 3 hours (and I changed them just before playing). I also had a period using John Hope strings but I think this brand doesn’t exist anymore. Hopefully I’m mistaken, because those were also very nice.
Which guitarists/musicians have had the most influence on you?
1. Sergio Assad – the few classes with him changed not only how I play, but also who I want to be, how I want to shape my vision of music and how to listen to myself. He never says “play like this” or anything similar. He’s always asking and listening, looking for the best musical solutions.
2. Cassie Martin – she made me realize how important and beautiful the relationship with the public can be. I neglected that a lot before. Now it’s become the purpose of my playing. Cassie made me understand many more things, not only about music – she influenced my life the most by becoming my wife. It’s really wonderful to share passion and life with someone who is so passionate herself.
3. Łukasz Kuropaczewski – he motivated me to practice hard and helped me prove to myself that dreams come true. Without him I’d never achieve my present technical level
4. Ryszard Bałauszko – from him I learned that playing fast and loud is not the goal. He showed me how to play beautifully and how to operate with time in music.
5. Mateusz Kowalski – he showed me how to take risks and why it is important. Also, I learned totally unconventional solutions for fingerings (like apoyando a-m-i, for example).
6. Listening to Vladimir Horowitz – helps me find many reasons to play how I want. Particularly in Bach.
7. Listening to Julian Bream – my greatest guitar idol. His approach to colour is a priceless lesson.
What recording(s) are you most proud of?
Are there any recordings that you consider to have the finest recorded sound for guitar?
I consider my recordings the documented steps of my journey. It’s hard to tell what I am most proud of, because usually a month after the recording, I want to improve more, change the vision of the piece, and I stop being a fan of the previous approach. I wouldn’t say my recordings provide the finest guitar sound or interpretation, but I rather focus on delivering something new, interesting in terms of both: arrangements and performances. I usually like my own recordings, because I play the way I like to listen. So far, I am really proud of my newest CD with Mateusz Kowalski “Orchestral Echoes” which will be released soon and the videos below of Sor, Rodrigo, and my arrangement of Ysaye.
What are some up-and-coming projects (recordings, concerts) you are excited about?
I am actually incredibly excited about new chapter in my life: I finally garnered enough courage and confidence to share what I know. I wrote a book “The Ultimate Classical Guitar. Technical Guide Not for Beginners” where I share the best exercises and motivations that I found/developed/invented. This is my way of saying thank you to all the people who support me while helping those who need it. I was one of them myself and haven’t got anything similar to progress, but had to figure it out all myself. And it took me 10 years. I include solutions to 15 of the most common technical problems with almost 50 exercises, which I’ve learned over the course of ten years. I hope it helps others. It is available on my website: www.tommusic.art for free.
Besides the book release, I also started to publish some content on YouTube, seeing how much guitar world needs common education. It is really important for me to provide as much positive impact on our guitar community as possible; to help guitar players make progress and enjoy their passion even more and to help them overcome their technical barriers and make the music more accessible.
I also launched the online course, Guitar Mastery Path, for advanced and professional classical guitarists. It’s inspired by my own desire to improve. I decided to put all my experience into a precisely tailored journey to help others achieve the same transformation that I experienced some time ago. Changing the of mindset of needing a magical solution, a trick or hack, to play better, to adopting the midset of, as Alex Hormozi says, “being extraordinary is doing ordinary things for an extraordinary period of time”. Hard work is not really exciting and most of the time, it is super boring. I learned that it’s just nicer to work with someone else doing the things that I do. That’s why my course has the idea of guided practice sessions, where the student plays exactly the same as me in real time.
I am also focused on designing some new repertoire for my next CD. I’d like to record an album solely with my compositions and arrangements. This year I completed my first sonata for solo guitar, some other compositions, and finally scored my favorite arrangements of Chopin’s Mazurka op. 17, no 4, Valse op. posth. no 19, Bach’s Prelude from BWV 1007, and others.
Technique and Performance
How much do you practice? And do you structure your practice in any particular way?
The way any musician practices depends on their situation and knowledge, developed by their experience during years of practice. I remember when some teachers of mine or friends used to say that you need to practice 8 hours or that they practice 12 hours per day and that’s why they’re so good. So I was doing that, too. I had a period when I was practicing 6-9 hours every day. And the results? Nice, but really not enough. Not what I expected. That’s why I started to wonder HOW to practice.
Imagine a chef cooking mediocre food in a food truck. Some people pass by, try it, hate it, don’t even finish it, and never come back. And the chef doesn’t care about it, he makes TONS of mediocre food. And he is left with plenty of burgers, hotdogs or whatever else – crap, which no one wants to even touch. His input then was totally wasted: he produced food, which will not be used.
What if he saw the feedback? The food is not good enough. So he repairs the QUALITY first: “I’ll make the BEST fast food in the whole state or even the country!.” Then people would absolutely love it, come back for it, recommended it to others, and finally the chef would have so many people coming, he would have could increase the QUANTITY of his production.
All guitarist, musicians, performers, and everyone who wants to be good at something, should think that way if they want to improve. Quality comes first and then, and only then, when your quality is fixed, your standards are high, then you repeat the quality work. Because what on earth is the point of repeating some nonsense multiple times?
Unless there is an emergency, I practice every day. If I don’t have to prepare for any concert or project, I play warm-ups depending on my mood and goal, and then after, I just play some fun stuff and give myself new challenges. I like to come back to studies by Villa-Lobos, Carcassi, Rodrigo’s Aranjuez, and other pieces, which I want to keep in my repertoire for years. It takes me no more than 1.5-2 hours. Not a lot. But every single day.
If I prepare for concert, I practice a bit more warm-ups to help me precisely with the problems in the particular repertoire of the upcoming project. Often, the warm-ups are fragments of the pieces turned into exercises. Then I practice every piece of the concert in a very specific method (if it’s less than a one hour recital) or split practicing into two parts (half of the concert during first half of the week and the other one during the 2nd half of the week).
I developed a method which works perfectly every time, though it took me ages to develop, thanks to which I have a clear pattern of how to work. I choose the right fingerings, apply preparation technique, apply speeding methods, and then repeat until it is boring, and repeat more after that.
I’ll be posting a video discussing this method in the context of Villa-Lobos’s Etude Nº7 soon.
If you do these four things with everything you do on the guitar, there is no chance you’ll have any confusion. Of course, we can draw this path with much more detail, but those general rules cannot change. This is all how I practice and since I discovered that, there is nothing which I am worried about in my practice.
Are there aspects of guitar technique or performance that you struggle with or that you find you are still working on?
I struggle all the time with so many aspects of it! I recently started working on some uncommon solutions, like applying apoyando a-m-i to scales into pieces I play (like Rodrigo’s Aranjuez or Villa-Lobos’s Etude Nº7). I also started playing scales with tremolo fingering. I’m not yet prepared to publish something on that, but I will, because this unlocks a totally new level of speed. I work on arrangements of film music which are hardly playable on guitar – recently I made an arrangement of Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and the Star Wars main theme in the original key. Practicing those arrangements made me realize that I know very little about real playing. People in orchestras play such difficult things. Compared to the complexity of orchestral pieces, Giuliani’s Rossinianas seem like studies for babies. It really humbled me to realize how my ideal vision of these pieces differs from what I can present with my current technique.
Every video I publish also gives me reflections on my own practice and helps me to solve some of my own problems, or to go one step further at least. I find it really inspiring, that by sharing, I am also learning all the time and I’m able to provide better and more accurate education.
Do you deliberately memorize music or have a technique that helps assimilate music into memory?
One of the consequences of learning in the method I follow is accidental memorization. I never think of learning the piece by heart. I know, that if I practiced well, I’ll understand the music, understand the movement of my fingers, be conscious of it and memorize it automatically. When I teach to my youngest beginning students how to play a simple song. We learn it phrase by phrase, slowly, repeating each phrase a few times. There’s no way they don’t remember it after 15-20 minutes. Why do they always remember it? Because they understand it. And when they understand it, they don’t think that they need to learn by it heart. They can do it. This is good quality work repeated enough times.
Have you published any editions, or do you plan to publish any editions in the future?
I am about to publish new compositions and arrangements on my website which should be available later in June. I’ve always been passionate about arranging and composing. I finally have the courage to share my work.
Do you have a favorite drill or set of exercises you use to warm up?
Yes, scales in intervals. You can see precise analysis of this warm up here.
Sometimes I use also different methods of practicing arpeggios to warm up on Villa-Lobos’s Etude Nº1 or Giuliani’s Etude, Op. 48, Nº5. I’m fascinated by arpeggios!
Do you have any pre-concert rituals?
Yes. I call it the four steps. I do them just after walking on stage and sitting with my instrument, after making sure it’s properly tuned: I relax, take time, take a breath, and prepare the first note.
It sounds cheap and easy. But it’s deeply physiological. I studied therapy after I graduated in music and took classes on Alexander Technique. Wes Howard, who happened to be a former classical guitarist and is an absolute master of AlexanderTechnique, inspired me to observe and control my reaction to stress. I know I cannot control my heartbeat directly, right? But I can train my consciousness. And these steps are making me more present on stage: what I do is not just randomly driven by emotions and risking all for the sake of luck. I’m consciously thinking to calm down and take time, and asking myself whether my shoulders are relaxed or whether I feel comfortable. Take a breath, take time again, think of music, and then going. When I am that conscious and present, I am prepared. It has improved my stage performance by at least 50% and I’ve started to enjoy what I play for people.
Advice to Younger Players
What single most important piece of advice about practicing would you offer to younger aspiring players?
Work hard. It can be boring, unpleasant, and uncomfortable, but that’s why success feels so good.
If the work were easy, light and exciting, everyone would be successful. Either in guitar or life, it is not luck or talent that makes people brilliant players, it is focus and the ability to say no to distractions and focus on the one thing you’re doing. Again, “Being extraordinary is doing ordinary things for an extraordinary period of time”. It is hard and it’s okay to have some hard moments in life, at least we will be better people and not too spoiled!
The price for your dream outcome is your comfort today. To motivate myself I often think about death or about observing my life from the perspective of a different person (an exercise from Anthony de Mello’s book Awareness). When I observe myself practicing from the perspective of another person, I realize that I could do it better. When I think of my own funeral, I think of what impact I want to leave on the world, what did I accomplish in my life and are other people happy with it? Or when I am dying and reviewing my life whether, will I have regrets? Definitely not that I did some new arrangement or practiced some new piece to perform and inspire people. But definitely yes – wasting time on Instagram or sleeping too long just because it’s nice to have a free day. I could use it to make something good for the world.
What repertoire do you consider essential for young/conservatory students to assimilate? Why?
I’d say to first understand the classics. The queen of music is opera. Guitar can be such a vocal instrument and in order to sing on the strings, we need to understand singing. What is the difference between portamento and glissando? What is mezzo voce? Understanding that changing the color in the middle of the phrase makes absolute sense! If you have objections to this idea, just listen to how Pavarotti does it at the beginning of the second verse of Una furtiva lagrima. Singing gives the guitar the opportunity to charm. Fernando Sor understood this and he composed two operas. Giuliani knew it, too, and he was constantly making variations and fantasias on opera themes.
Then, second, deep dive into baroque music. On the surface this music can come across as boring. How can you make it interesting and yet respect the style or philosophy of that music? That’s something very individual I think. This is why so many performances of baroque music are wrongly deemed controversial. Let’s say they’re individual. The fact that Kazuhito Yamashita plays Bach’s BWV 1012 a certain way doesn’t insult the music or anyone, it’s just the way he likes it. There are people who like their steaks well-done. Let’s not judge them. Same with how people like their music, or wine, or even love. Baroque music teaches us a lot about expression of our deep selves. At least it is teaching me this.
And thirdly, study a variety of repertoire. In the age of studying, it’s good to try what you like and what you don’t. Don’t avoid a composer because you think it is too difficult. If it’s difficult, work on it until you like how you play it, and then see if you enjoy the music or not. I was having trouble liking contemporary music. But when I started to play it, oh, it was so exciting! Ultimately I just prefer other kinds of music, but only because the day is 24 hours long. If I had more time, I’d play all of the Takemitsu in the world!
Recordings that every young guitarist should be familiar with and why?
Every guitarist should go and see performers playing live. Recordings do not always give the full experience. Go watch how Aniello Desiderio plays Gaspar Sanz. This is what I said about baroque music being individual. Watch Pavel Steidl playing classical music. He understands opera like no one else I know. Go see Duo Assad playing anything. They are just the most inspiring guitar experience of my life. Here’s a list of recordings that have inspired me.
1. Julian Bream and his version of Aranjuez with Gardiner. And it’s not only because of Bream’s playing which for me is extremely inspiring in terms of color, but also because of the outstanding orchestra and conductor. It’s an amazing cooperation and interpretation of the piece.
2. Nicola Hall and her performance on prize-winners concert of Silesian Guitar Autumn. I wish I knew anyone being able to play with such a charisma and character and keeping the music on such an incredible level.
3. Kazuhito Yamashita and his recording of La Catedral. So beautiful and calm 1 at movement, 2nd movement really deep and 3rd full of dynamic and energy. Lovely.
4. And the must see Yamashita playing in duo his arrangement of Scheherazade. I’d say 4th movement goes beyond what is possible in playing guitar. It’s unimaginable how they do that. And this is a live concert recording. I am really inspired to do crazy things in life, which seem impossible, and that is thanks to this arrangement. I tried to play it. But after reading the score I doubted myself. Festival in Bagdad is something truly special.
Are you accessible as a teacher?
Yes, teaching is my true passion and mission. I love to share all I know. Although I always prefer to have live contact with my students because it imparts a higher level of understanding, inspiration and motivation.
Tangent
What is the last book that you read? Favorite author/s?
Dead Poets Society. Incredible book. Life is an art. Let’s live every moment and not waste any second! One before that – Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazanakis. Life-changing.
Do you try to stay healthy? Exercise? Have a favorite pre-concert food?
Absolutely. I was having some health problems (sleeping, sugar problems, I was overweight). I went on ketogenic diet for few months, it completely transformed me, not only how I look but also how I feel and play. Also, when I moved to France, I improved my eating habits simply by the quality of products and ingredients. I cook for myself a lot, I absolutely love that and for me the quality is incredibly important. I go to buy fresh meat, fish, vegetables just from the farmers, who have their market downstairs. Amazing stuff. Now in my everyday life I value much more a healthy lifestyle over a comfortable one.
My favorite pre-concert food is none. My ideal day has one meal only. I prefer to eat after concerts. I stay much more focused this way. I do eat twice a day sometimes, too, in this scenario I’d eat some piece of incredible meat or scrambled eggs.
Do you meditate in any way?
Not really, but I am a big fan of Wim Hoff. He is educating people about a way of breathing. It’s very inspiring and it’s helped me deal with stress in general.
What is your favorite way to spend time when not practicing?
I organize wine masterclasses from time to time at my place. It started when I was working in a wine bar and afterwards in a wine-importing company. I fell in love with wine. To me this is art. To be able to express the taste of the land you’re growing a fruit on, influence it with your own wine-making methods and create something unique. Wow. So I started to educate myself about it. I don’t have a wine degree but maybe I’ll get one someday. But I love to organize the meetings with friends or sometimes even strangers. I cook a tasting menu paired with wine, and talk about the region, grape, producing, the differences between the wines, and how to evaluate wine. It’s my huge passion.
I love to work on myself, development is some primal purpose in me. I try to improve everything I do. I’m arranging new pieces, try to compose new music, I’m gathering new ideas for future projects and recording content.
Besides that, I consume a lot of knowledge about having a business, since I am starting mine now (the course and scores on the website). I listen to the fantastic podcast The Diary of a CEO and also get more inspiration from Alex Hormozi for marketing strategies.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Enjoy your life like you’d know that you’ll die tomorrow. Don’t postpone your dreams. Life is much shorter than we want. Only we usually realize it when it’s too late.
Tomasz book: The Ultimate Classical Guitar Technique Guide
Six String Journal 