Eleonora Bišćević is a Croatian/Italian flautist based in Basel (CH), active throughout Europe in orchestras, as a chamber musician, and as a soloist. She regularly collaborates with ensembles such as Le Concert des Nations, Gli Incogniti and Le Parlement de Musique, and is co-founder and member of the ensembles Alter Ego and Girandola Quartett. She is particularly active in the field of improvisation, regularly including elements of it in her performances.​
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The first thing you do when you pick up your traverso to start the practice day, and why?
I usually start my warm-up with some sort of long-tone exercise. The most common one, at least at the moment, consists of ascending intervals: first small, then progressively bigger and bigger, legato. I find the exercise great because it allows me to gently enter my practice by working on different aspects of flute technique: breathing, legato between different registers, control of the fingers, intonation… In the meantime, I also have the time to focus on my body posture and position, occasional tension etc., and to train my concentration; like in a meditation exercise, I make sure I notice when my thoughts start wandering and bring them back to the present moment and activity, trying to put everything else aside.
Any recurring piece to play every day, and why?​
No, I don’t have any.
Do you have a daily routine?​
Yes. I always do some physical warm-up before even picking up the flute. It consists of a series of body exercises that combine stretching (of the arms, legs and back) and strengthening (of the arms and abdominals). It helps me to “activate” the body and strengthen it for the activity that will follow (we should never forget how playing actually affects our body and really is a physical activity that requires care and training!). After that my practice is always organised differently, according to the things I am preparing, to the amount of work (also considering different instruments I have to play) and to the time at my disposal. But it always has a warming up/technique introduction which I’d never skip (if I have very little time then that’s the only one I do), then focused work on the pieces or things that I am working on. I also always take care of the length of practice sessions and of the breaks, in which I include stretching and relaxing techniques for the arms.
What kind of goals do you set for your practice?​
It very much depends on the work that I have to do and on the amount of time at my disposal, but I generally try to “define” the practice session in advance, in order to at least have a time frame and to not lose energy and focus.
I am a big fan of gradual practice, that is: better little but often, and step by step instead of all at once. It allows the body and the brain to better assimilate the information, in my opinion, and the music to find its own shape “naturally”, with experiments and proposals, instead of fixing things early on and “forcing” them in me. Therefore when I have to learn a new piece I generally try to start quite far in advance, and for instance the first day only look at the score, the next one perhaps play the piece a bit spontaneously, then in the following days experiment with different tempi and sound colours. After that, define (at least provisional) breathing, then focus on the technically demanding passages and invent exercises to make them easier, then think of possible phrasings, and so on… I have the impression that this way the pieces grow nicely, and I don’t feel the pressure of having to focus for a very long time on one thing and get it perfectly very soon. Moreover, having different pieces at different stages helps my concentration because with each one I work on different things and therefore train different parts of my brain, ears, muscles… It’s refreshing, stimulating, and in my experience the different pieces end up “helping each other” a lot.
Do you do any systematic warm-up?
Yes, although it changes. I think it is very important that the word “systematic” always keeps its positive meaning, and doesn’t evolve into something we do without thinking, losing the sense and purpose of it. Therefore, I think it is important to always consider and reconsider the type of exercises we are doing and their goals. Every player experiences different life- and learning- stages which require different types of training. Of course, it can also be that a specific piece/repertoire/instrument we are playing requires a specific technical ability, and I love “training” such abilities in the warming-up phase. I always had great admiration for those musicians who seem to be able to do “anything” with their instrument: like a machine with so many functions, if you will, where one only has to pick their favourite or necessary one. This applies very well to flute-playing: if we possess so many of those skills, we can just “pick” them in the right moment and apply them to the piece, without working on them a lot only for that musical moment. Those skills can be, for instance, a specific tonguing, dynamic ranges, intonation in different temperaments etc. As I said, for me it varies very much from period to period (and of course from time at disposal and phase of practice). At the moment, for instance, I do:
     -  Ascending (gradually growing) intervals, legato
    -  Did’ll-articulation (different types of exercise, starting on one           single note, and only later in scales and arpeggi)
    -   Scales (gradually in all keys), legato
To take other examples, in other phases of my learning I’ve done a lot of exercises on dynamics (long notes, even with the help of a metronome, with a specific dynamic; for instance 4 beats crescendo and then 4 beats diminuendo), on different types of articulations (titi, tidi, tiri, tiki etc…), on chromatic scales, etc. I think it is particularly important that each musician (at any level!) learns to “create” and invent such exercises according to their needs and wishes of improvement.
Do you have a specific structure for warm-up and practice sessions?​
Again, it depends on the phase and on the work I have to do. Another aspect that is important to mention is the “long term” practice organisation. One can’t practice five hours a day every day, and most of all, one can’t stop playing and then start directly with five hours a day. Musicians regularly have all kinds of physical problems, sometimes due to bad habits or lack of awareness, but sometimes just due to the amount of hours spent on physical activity, without a good compensation (stretching, pauses, but also training, etc.), not even to mention the stress that often comes on top of the physical effort. Luckily, in the past few years we have been thinking and talking about it more and more, as well as including such topics in musicians’ education systems; I think it is extremely important that each musician learns to know their own body and needs (which again, will keep changing in time!). I organise my time on the long term considering phases of complete rest (not playing) followed by gradual increasing of time and intensity of practise sessions. All of this has to, of course, fit the professional ​life and therefore requires planning and discipline, but in my opinion, the advantages, both for the health and for the musical results, are unmeasurable.
Any distinctive characteristics of baroque flute daily practice vs. modern flute or other instruments?​
I don’t and didn’t really play the modern flute before, so that I can’t make that comparison, but I do play keyboard instruments (organ especially) and I can compare it to that. What is peculiar to the flute is that it’s a wind instrument: the approach with the body and everything that regards breathing, posture, etc., is vital for the creation of the sound. The sound of each flautist is perhaps what mostly characterises him/her and gives them value. One could say the sound is the soul of everything, and because it is so connected to our own breathing that aspect is even more crucial on wind instruments than on string or keyboard instruments (perhaps only less than singing). On the organ there is of course an aspect of posture and sound production, but it is rather little compared to the work we do on the flute, without mentioning aspects we as flautists have to fully take care of, like dynamics or intonation. On the organ, on the other hand, the big difficulty is the polyphony: to put together many different voices (with hands and feet) and make them come out distinctively as we want them requires a lot of coordination, which makes the job of a flautist who has to focus only on one voice, seem rather “easy”. But therefore… to each their own difficulty.
Another thing worth mentioning is the difference in the way of practice and preparation according to the type and genre of music we are working on. To prepare a solo sonata is not the same as to prepare the part of a chamber music ensemble player or that of a first flute in a symphonic orchestra.
What are the key elements and unmissable points of daily practice?​
The key element of practice is for me: progress. The goal of practicing is to make something somehow better. Otherwise we just play, or read, or discover. But the focus of practicing should be on the progress. Many musicians (it happened to me as well, in the past) waste a lot of time and energy by not focusing on the problems: for instance they just play the piece through multiple times, or they use a metronome without really knowing why, or they ​repeat difficult passages that eventually start getting worse. In my opinion it is much more efficient to focus on how we can make things better: what (exactly) is the problem? What is it (specifically) that I can’t do and why? What is that element in my performance that doesn’t satisfy me? What doesn’t sound as I imagine it in my head? Then our attention should be entirely focused on fixing those things: finding solutions to the specific problems - either direct ones, or through exercises that can gradually help. Better less, but therefore focused (…and by the way, as obvious as it can sound, that of course also mean concentrated, avoiding distractions as phones and so on).
How long and distributed should warm-up and practice be?
I think this is very individual. I know musicians who prefer to practice in large blocks and others who profit more from multiple short sections. I prefer short sections spread throughout the day, because I find it less tiring both for the body and for the brain (and for the flutes, by the way!), but I did experiment with different ways before finding out what was working best for me. Also I feel that one is in a different “mood” in the morning vs. midday vs. in the evening, so that it can be inspiring to profit from different moments of the day. But of course, needless to say, one doesn’t always have the choice at disposal…
Any  specific tip to address difficult technical passages during daily practice?
Once more, a good starting point is to (really) focus on the problem. For instance, in a digitally difficult passage, it is very useful to “analyse” it like with a magnifying glass. What is it exactly that makes it difficult? Which note to which note, and why? Is it the first finger that is too slow? Is it the second and fourth that are not moving together? Is it the sixth that is doing an unnecessary big movement? And so on. I recommend everyone to try and see how fascinating it can be: often if we understand it, we fix it. After that a good system consists of splitting the difficult passage into smaller fragments, and making sure every single “connection” between notes works well, before trying to put the whole thing together. Basically, repeating and repeating entire passages doesn’t necessarily help (and can even make things worse!). Other tools that I find ​very useful for the fingers are of course increasing the speed, and using different rhythms and articulations.
As for intonation difficulty, I simply recommend listening. And if it doesn’t work while playing, I recommend recording ourselves. Working with other musicians of course helps a lot as well, especially with certain instruments (for instance with an organ accompaniment the intonation issues are more evident than with a harpsichord!).
For phrasing I recommend singing: every musician can naturally sing, and what they naturally (without too much thinking) find, is usually the most beautiful; after that, one “only” has to translate it on the instrument, which can be hard at times, but one always has a lead to follow inside themselves!
For ornamentation, the question is more complicated because there are also a lot of questions about style etc.  Ideally one should work on ornamentation separately, analysing historical ornamentations, copying and transposing them, trying to apply them in similar spots, etc. When I worked intensively on Corelli sonatas, I was doing a whole work of study of historical Italian ornamentation parallel to my practice, which combined reading examples on the flute, learning them by heart and then playing them while reading the plain version, noting beautiful passages, writing down sort of “rules”, that is, key elements one could find in common in different sources, reading treatises, etc.
Are there any tools that are particularly useful for practicing?
Yes, tuner, metronome, sound recorder, mirror, all of them! I also use some apps and “karaoke”-CDs for improvisation and ornamentation training.