What this covers
Ana Vidović, a classical guitarist trained from childhood, sits down to discuss what actually separates successful musicians from the merely talented. The conversation moves through her own path—shaped by a Croatian work ethic and years of disciplined training—to her larger argument: that while natural ability matters, the mechanisms of success lie elsewhere. She emphasizes deliberate practice, mental preparation, and the architecture of a career built on honest repertoire choices and the courage to develop an unmistakable artistic voice. The core tension running through is that talent alone cannot sustain a musical life; only commitment, discipline, and the willingness to outgrow the label of child prodigy can.
Vidović draws distinctions that cut against common assumptions. Two or three hours of focused work on troublesome passages—practiced slowly before fast, assembled in pieces—outperforms seven or eight hours of playing through repertoire. Mental rehearsal and score study away from the instrument matter more than physical practice hours. In performance, roughly ninety percent comes from the mind: a relaxed mind eliminates tension in the hands and shoulders, whereas anxiety manufactures the very mistakes a performer fears. She discusses how incentive structures—particularly competitions and YouTube—can flatten individual style into technical homogeneity, threatening the distinctive artistic identities that defined figures like Andrés Segovia, Julian Bream, and John Williams. Conservatory education teaches technique well but leaves graduates unprepared for the psychological demands of live performance and the realities of sustaining a career. She argues that exposure to non-classical music—jazz, blues, rock—enriches a classical guitarist's range, and that studying scores seriously, learning from teachers who understand the instrument deeply, and resisting the proliferation of online content helps preserve the irreplaceable connection between performer and live audience.
Vidović argues that natural talent is necessary but vastly insufficient for musical success—disciplined work, mental preparation, individual artistic identity, and the right repertoire choices matter more than raw giftedness, and modern tools like YouTube help but threaten authentic live performance and individual style.
- Talent must be developed through lifelong hard work; 'talent is not enough'
- Mental relaxation and preparation matter more than physical practice hours
- Competitions and YouTube create homogeneity that threatens individual artistic identity
Talent alone is insufficient; sustained music careers demand lifelong commitment, discipline, and quality practice habits developed from youth and maintained throughout life.
- Sustaining a music career is not inertia but requires a conscious commitment made (in her case in her teenage years) to continue despite no guarantee of success, periods where nothing seemed to happen, and the difficulty of the profession, with perseverance being essential to keep going.
“you have to make a commitment. You can’t just say, “Oh, I’ll see what happens.” It’s a commitment because it’s a difficult profession.”
- Natural talent is necessary but insufficient for a music career; commitment, perseverance, discipline, and good working habits allow even less-talented people to make it work, and the term 'child prodigy' is something one must outgrow because talent must be continually developed throughout one's whole life from the twenties onward.
“Talent is not enough. I’m fully convinced that it’s not enough. You have to work hard throughout your whole life to develop whatever you were given.”
- The number of practice hours matters far less than the quality of practice; two or three hours of focused, concrete work on troublesome technical or musical sections—practiced slowly before fast and assembled in pieces—is more efficient than seven or eight hours of playing pieces through, which risks not actually working on weaknesses.
“the amount of hours are actually not important as much as the quality of the practice”
- Successful performance depends above all on thorough preparation that begins not weeks but a whole lifetime in advance, requiring being '200 percent well prepared,' choosing repertoire that fits and lets you be honest, and repeatedly drilling insecure sections 20 to 40 times until you never play something you aren't fully secure with.
“I have to be 200 percent well prepared.”
Mental control and thorough preparation determine performance success far more than physical technique or technical perfection alone.
- In performance the mind is more important than the physical constraints—roughly 90 percent comes from the mind—because a worried, tense mind creates physical tension in hands, shoulders, and back, whereas a relaxed mind allows everything else to fall into place; managing this is a skill learned over many years.
“I think it’s more important than the physical because everything comes from your mind. If your mind is relaxed, if your mind knows what it’s doing, then everything else will fall into place.”
- On stage, constantly worrying about making a mistake psychologically causes the mistake to happen, so a performer must learn to ease the mind before performing, because the audience will sense tension.
“I think it’s more important than the physical because everything comes from your mind. If your mind is relaxed, if your mind knows what it’s doing, then everything else will fall into place.”
- Studying and visualizing the score before touching the guitar—writing things down and memorizing away from the instrument—lets a performer see the music's structure, ups, and downs more clearly, leading to a more secure and higher-quality interpretation when they finally play it.
“Even visualizing the music and memorizing it that way, without the actual instrument, is important as well. It makes you learn the piece in a more secure way.”
Individual artistic voice and interpretive depth matter more than technical competition-driven perfection in building a meaningful career.
- Guitar competitions, while important for building a career, risk producing technically perfect but homogeneous younger players because the competition setting pressures artists to play in a certain way to win first prize, which can interfere with developing an individual, recognizable style of the kind that distinguished Segovia, Bream, and Williams.
“in a competition setting, it’s not a concert setting; it’s a competition. All these young artists — perhaps they feel like they have to play in a certain way to win the first prize.”
- Classical guitarists, unlike pianists, violinists, and cellists who are taught from an early age to analyze the music and study the composer's background, still have not fully learned to do this kind of analysis, which would change the quality of their playing because they would understand the composer's intentions.
“Pianists, violinists, cellists are taught to do that from a very, very early age. We, as classic guitarists, don’t fully understand that yet.”
- Listening to non-classical music—jazz, blues, country, rock, pop, the Beatles—broadens a classical guitarist's horizons and provides inspiration and techniques applicable to their own playing, because limiting oneself to only classical music would restrict the mind.
“If I was just listening to classical music all day, my mind would be restricted, I think. There’s so much great music out there.”
- Teaching others, especially in master classes, automatically improves your own playing because the act of having to explain something to a student teaches you yourself.
“When you have to explain something to a student, you learn automatically yourself.”
Classical guitarists need rigorous foundational training with experienced teachers to avoid ingrained technical mistakes and develop proper habits.
- Students who learn from YouTube without a teacher risk learning techniques the wrong way, and once wrong habits are formed they are very difficult to change and fix later, so learners must be careful which videos and teachers they choose—a contrast with the European model of years of work with a single teacher.
“If you learn in the wrong way, it’s very, very difficult to change it and fix the mistakes later.”
- Conservatory education for classical guitarists, while strong on technique, fails to teach the realities of live performance—how to deal with nerves and relax on stage—and offers little help navigating a career after graduation, leaving graduates to learn these crucial skills from their own mistakes.
“in a conservatory setting, we don’t learn so much about what needs to be done in a live performing setting — how to deal with your nerves, how to relax.”
- Effective master class teaching starts with putting nervous students at ease, because a comfortable student can register and learn the (clearly conveyed) information more easily, especially given the short ~30-minute format that demands clear, concentrated communication.
“number one is to make the student feel comfortable because a master class setting is a very nerve-racking setting... So I try to just put them at ease so that they can learn and register what I’m saying more easily.”
- Classical guitar would not have reached its current level of recognition and repertoire without Andrés Segovia, who acted as a catalyst by attracting composers to write for the instrument and raising the standard of performing and technique.
“I don’t think classical guitar would be here in this level and recognized by so many people if there wasn’t Segovia.”
Arrangement quality and respect for the instrument's natural acoustic capabilities determine how well non-guitar works translate to classical guitar.
- The success of playing non-guitar works like Bach on classical guitar depends heavily on the quality of the arrangement, requiring the arranger to deeply understand how the classical guitar works even if they come from a different instrumental world, such as a cellist.
“A lot of it also has to do with the quality of the arrangement. Obviously, Bach didn’t compose for guitar, so we have a lot of arrangements, and that’s when the arranger comes in.”
- When transcribing music for guitar, performers must be careful and mindful of their own and the instrument's technical limitations, choosing repertoire that will sound natural and good rather than pushing pieces (like those written for piano) beyond what the guitar can render convincingly.
“You have to be mindful of your own limitations and what you’re capable of.”
- Bach's music works exceptionally well on classical guitar because the instrument can bring out all the voices—bass line, middle line, and upper line—more clearly and organically than instruments like cello, even though Bach never composed for guitar.
“All the voices come out very clearly. The bass line is obviously very, very important, so I think it comes out completely in a more beautiful, organic way on a guitar.”
- Because the classical guitar is a very soft instrument, the ideal concert hall is around 500 seats—already pushing the limit—and halls of a thousand or more require amplification, which is acceptable if done with natural-sounding modern systems but is inferior to hearing the unamplified instrument.
“For guitar, the ideal hall is about 500 seats, and that’s already pushing it. When you have a hall that is a thousand, you have to use amplification.”
Cultural upbringing and audience contexts shape how classical guitarists approach performance, interpretation, and career decisions.
- Coming from Croatia—a culture without one major composer but with a long tradition of classical guitar and a rigorous early-age work ethic—shaped how Vidović performs music, instilling seriousness, focus, and discipline that persist even after twenty years in the States.
“we were taught from a very early age to work hard. I was taught in the right way. I had great teachers. So, all that shaped me — who I am — and to be serious about what I do”
- Concert audiences differ markedly by culture: European audiences are serious and quietly attentive, American audiences are appreciative and demonstratively responsive (standing ovations), and Asian audiences are very attentive but less comfortable with overt demonstrations, and post-pandemic audiences seem hungrier and more attentive than before.
“if you’re performing in Europe, the audiences are usually very serious and very quiet, and they listen very, very carefully. In the States, they’re also, of course, very appreciative, but after the performance, they stand up and they’re very responsive.”
- An experienced judge can sense when a young performer has 'something special'—a natural technical ability and an ease of playing—but this perceived talent comes with the danger that prodigies may fail to develop it to its full extent, and there are no guarantees of success in the industry.
“I just know when I see that natural technical ability and somebody that plays with ease. There are really no guarantees in this industry.”
- Keeping fingernails as short as possible prevents them from breaking and actually produces a larger sound when performing, while practicing too loudly damages the nails, so nail care is mostly about keeping them short rather than any special regimen.
“I find it’s very helpful, also gives you a larger sound when you perform.”
Video and online presence should serve the live performance connection rather than substitute for it or chase commercial trends.
- Video is particularly appealing for classical guitar audiences because classical guitarists like to watch the hands and see what the right and left hands are doing, making the visual element as important as the audio.
“classical guitarists also like to watch the hands, and they like to see what the right hand is doing, what the left hand is doing. The visual, and of course, the audience is equally important.”
- Vidović deliberately limits her online videos and studio recordings—releasing perhaps one video a year—because too much online presence would substitute for live attendance, and she wants to preserve the connection with a live audience, which she believes is irreplaceable; most of her online performances are single-take live recordings that reveal who she truly is.
“Maybe it’s not good to do too much, not to have too many videos, not to have too many recordings because you still want the audience to come and see you in person”
- Crossover music, which became a popular term and trend a few years back with many artists doing it, is now less popular than it used to be, so any crossover project must be careful to do something genuinely interesting and different rather than chase record sales.
“This was a new term that came — crossover music — and then everybody was doing a lot of that, but perhaps now it’s not as popular as it used to be.”