Eric:

Well actually she can if she practices for hours.
Now if you or your husband want to send her to a conservatory any conservatory will do. If she practices and practices until she learns everything in her sleep she’ll do great.
And there are teachers that have thought professional violinists.
My Teacher is a world-renowned Pianist.
Yes it’s possible.

Nemesis:

Someone’s going to have to say it, and perhaps on this occasion it is going to have to be me, but as a senior professional musician I owe you at least one duty, which is that of complete honesty as well as care.

The answer, as your Q stands, would have to be: No.

With all I have to go on being your description as well as the actual phrasing of your Q I can draw no other conclusion. But I hope you can bear with me as I underpin my reasons for this answer, next.

On a ‘normal’ journey towards the beginnings of a conservatory career, your daughter is a very late starter, by about 5-7 years a late starter. That is no problem whatsoever for anyone simply wanting to learn to master an instrument for the sheer joy of doing so, but it has distinct repercussions as regards entry to a professional degree-level education that conservatories exist to deliver.

Those 5-7 years don’t simply ‘disappear’, even in the light of perhaps a miraculous talent, because they are directly linked to physical developments in the body which have their own time requirements to bear fruit. While you can expedite cognitive skills by, in effect, ‘cramming’ — not wise, but it can be done — motor skills are not so accommodating. They take their time to mature, and exerting artificial time pressures on that process will simply lead to adverse results. The harder you push, the less is learned *and retained*. Mother Nature is fond of her Own Ways in that regard. Put differently, one way or another, your daughter — like everyone else — will have to put in the ‘body years’ for which there are no short-cuts, and no amount of ‘cramming’ will alter that fact.

When I look in detail to your Q, I am however struck by a number of phrases which cause me unease:

> “to a famous music conservatory”
> “more advanced pieces in a short amount of time”

Why the haste and why the ‘famous’? Is that what this is really about?

I would have hoped to be able to say that, with regard to your final Q, as to whether there are teachers about who would offer such ‘cramming’ tuition, there are none, but alas, that would be an untruth. There are still too many who will do that for you, without real regard for the realities of musical, artistic & *physical* development. I hope for you and your child’s sake that you will manage to avoid running into too many of those.

Your child has clearly, from what you say, embarked upon a course of learning that is giving her enjoyment and offering her considerable opportunity for marked attainment at a (still) young age. A wise teacher could make that an incomparable journey which may, with time and consistent learning and hard work, eventually lead to considerations for your daughter whether she might wish to turn this into something of a professional nature. When she is ready in *every* respect to make such choices!

Until such times, thoughts of ‘famous’ conservatories and ‘short amounts of time’ should be as far from everyone concerned’s minds as possible.

With kind regards,