The Strad

 

Violinist Aaron Rosand on why mem memorisation orisation is key to interpretation In the latest in his series on violin technique the American maestro discusses the

importance of understanding a work’s cultural background and performing by memory to convey this

Begin by studying the score with or without the violin in hand. Sing the line to yourself

to better understand how you want to hear it played. We must respect the composer’s intentions, such as markings, dynamics, and notations before applying our personal

ideas. The score is the ‘black and white’ canvas on which the artist, by using fingering and bowing appliesvaries colourdepending and character appropriate eachof composer. Vibrato and techniques, bowing technique on the country offor origin tthe he composer and must be tastefully applied. Understanding the cultures and manners of a country will certainly certainl y give you a better  picture of how to interpret the music. With films and computers to aid us and stimulate our imagination, we can get a better feeling of how to interpret a composer from Germany, Russia, France, etc. Each requires a different differ ent bow technique and vibrato variation to express the characteristics characteris tics of a country. For example, the approach to  playing Bach is entirely different to playing music of Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky. Bach needs bowing restraint with minimal vibrato and, at times, none at all, whereas Tchaikovsky needs a lush, throbbing vibrato with a more aggressive bowing style to depict Russian characteristics. Be honest with everything on the printed page. When beginning to learn a work, repeat a section many times while keeping your eyes on the page. As soon as you possibly can, close your eyes and play pla y it from memory. Unknowingly, your eyes have alread already y  photographed the music. If you lose a note, open your eyes and loo look k again at the page. Repeat the process until you can play it in your sleep. Memorisation is a process of hearing each note before you play it followed by motor reflex. You cannot fully express yourself in an interpretation if your eyes are riveted on the music. This applies to every composition that you play whether it be a concerto or

sonata. Yes, sonatas are for two equal partners. In Beethoven’s case, he notated sonatas as works for piano and violin. I would recommend learning them by memory or list the

 pianist’s name first on your your next program. Us Using ing a music stand may be acceptable acceptable in a salon but not on a concert stage. It is distracting dis tracting to see pages turned in the middle of a  performance.

 

Memorisation is the key to interpretation. The music must become a part of you if you are completely immersed in what you play. Remain focused on expressing what your inner ear wants to hear. Trust your memory and do not become preoccupied with fingerings and technical problems. Repetitive practice will do its part and motor reflex will take over. Concentrate on your bowing. The bow is your paint brush and capable of  providing all of the textures and nuances nuances required if sensitively employed. It is also your  breathing process and breathes life into every note that you play. Imagine Imagine how gratifying it can be when you can control your sound and characterise your music making with the fingers of your right hand. Interpretation and memorisation are within your grasp.

8 opinions on performance and career by violinist Ivry Gitlis The great violinist reveals his sometimes someti mes surprising views on performance and the

music business to Ariane Todes to mark issue

his 90th birthday in The Strad’s August 2012

 

  On learning repertoire repertoire

I was never a workaholic, except when I had to work really reall y hard, for example when I agreed to record the Paganini caprices. I had never played them all, so I would come home and practise until 4.30 in the morning and then get back into the studio for 9. To learn a Paganini caprice overnight takes an eternity! ete rnity! Funnily enough, I had more  problems with the ones I knew better than with the ones ones I had just learnt, because I really had to practise them. The lesson les son is that you should never rest on your laurels. Everything you do, whether in your fingers or your mind, has to be continuously  polished. On performing 

A concert is an event for me. I don’t play one concert exactly the same as another. Today people might be playing in Tokyo one night, then t hen flying to LA, then to Paris, and

then to New Delhi. I call this the ‘jet lag’ way of playing. How can you live music iinn that way? I’m not accusing anybody, but it makes it so that you’re trying to play evenly  not too much of this, not too little of that  –  and  and that influences the whole interpretation  –  not and expectations. People engage you if they know you’re reliable. What does that mean? Do you want music that’s reliable? Do you think Schumann wrote his music for someone who was reliable? On making a career  Today you have to have the stamina to make the kind of career that t hat is expected of you if

you’re ‘successful’. What does it mean to be a ‘successful’ musician? You can play a hundred oryourself. a thousand as long as there are two or three occasions that you but remember If itconcerts, meets what t he audience the wants, you made a good marriage, it’s more important that there is something that remains in your mind.  On managers  There was always business. Sol Hurok was the great European agent: he was my manager and brought me to America. He didn’t have 150 artists on his list, but the artists he had were all individuals. When Horowitz, Piatigorksy and Milstein were youngsters, they left Russia and came to play in bars and whorehouses. They came with their friend Alexander Merovitch –  he  he was their manager because he believed in them. He lived with them, suffered with them, played pranks with them. Those managers

don’t exist now. You have people with business sense, who treat their artists like  potatoes. It’s terrible, and and people go along with it. But I see a new generation of younger people who are beginning to play for themselves. That gives me hope.

 

On conflict in music 

When people say, ‘This quartet is wonderful –  the players all sound the same,’ it’s terrible. What is democracy? It’s not that everyone should think the same –  that’s a dictatorship. A real democracy is where people are individuals, and because of that they have an interest in living together and they find things to agree or disagree with. When you play together you sh ouldn’t follow each other –  you  you should each be yourself and get together somehow. Look at the Amadeus Quartet –  each  each one of them was a completely completel y different person, but what they did together was the most beautiful thing you can think of. People talk about peace as if it’s something something you pput ut on a table. It’s not. not. Life is a conflict  –  there is conflict every second. Of course, conflict where there’s killing is bad, but conflict in itself is a great thing if you live it and feel it, and see the contrasts. stars  On today’s stars  When you think of the period between the First and Second World Wars, there were many wonderful players, each one a monument in themselves: Elman, Kreisler, Heifetz, Heifetz , Milstein, Menuhin, Busch, Sammons, Oistrakh, Francescatti, Huberman, Enescu, Szigeti –  and that’s not all. Each one of them playing the same music would be a completely different work. Today you have marketable potential if you fit into a certain format that one can sell without wit hout too much of a problem. Sometimes you see one or two ar tists launched like that and after a couple of very cruel and very bad.

years you don’t hear of them, and it’s

On emotion in music 

I don’t think players allow themselves to suffer, or get upset about things that don’t concern them personally. If you make music but you don’t have the emotion to move  people, what’s what’s the point? In mas masterclasses, terclasses, I try to make students under understand stand that they shouldn’t only be motivated by perfect technique. It sounds like a cliché to say music is the most important thing –  it’s so obvious. Technique should be about gaining the ability to play what you are feeling and what you want to give, to create a situation where when you play, you forget about your work. If someone comes to me after a concert and says, ‘You must have practised a lot,’ it means I must have played badly.  On teaching  Everyone has talent –  all  all children are gifted in one way or another, until they are educated. Education has become an industry and it leads towards dislocation. I remember talking with Nathan Milstein, who was a good friend. He was an Auer pupil

and told me that Auer never talked about anything technical. Maybe that’s the best way to teach –  to bring out what is inside the t he pupil, not to say, ‘That’s the way to do it.’ it .’ I don’t like the word ‘teaching’ –  it’s pretentious. I don’t consider myself so grand to assume that I can teach you what to do.

 

How to develop great performing presence Great stage actors have an a n aura of positive energy and openness that string players can access, too. Acting coach Patsy Pats y Rodenburg tells Ariane Todes how

Sometimes it takes a person with a different perspective to be honest and objective. Voice and acting coach Patsy Rodenburg has worked with some of the biggest names in

theatre, film and TV, and for 26 years has run the voice department at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In her work with actors, and also with musicians, she helps them maximise their performing presence by training them to be aware of their body, how they breathe, use their voice, listen to others, and connect to their audience and fellow performers. Here she gives string players tips on staying centred, open and present, and offers some home truths about the classical music world. MUSICAL DISCIPLINE  I love working with musicians, because if you can find out what is going wrong, they know-how to work on it. They understand what they have to do. They The y have

worked from a young age, even if it’s just 20 minutes a day. da y. To make an actor do even 20 minutes of work is like pushing them up Everest. Actors understand right-brain activity, but not that of the left brain, the sequential way of working on a problem and getting it right. BREATHING AND BODY AWARENESS  String players forget how important their body and their breathing system are. If you’re breathing correctly, the breath is very low in the body, which takes pressure

away from the shoulders. Anatomically, we’re not designed to have tension in our shoulders and upper chest. We’re supposed to be open, to swing. If you’re not breathing from the diaphragm you cannot connect to your emotions. There is also a connection  between how a player breathes and the sound they make: you can hear the difference in quality when you take a proper breath while you’re playing.  I get quartets to breathe together. Rugby players get together before a match and connect so they play better together. Many musicians are scared of these techniques: they think they’re a bit airy-fairy. Actors understand them, though –  they’re social animals. A great lead actor will knock on the door of every member of the company just

 before the play starts and have a conversation, just to reconnect for the next time they meet on stage. I get quartet players pla yers to sit forwards, breathe down, breathe with each

 

other and then to start playing. Eventually a group that works together breathes together,  but if you start like that that you’re in sync immediately.  A four-year-old watching TV is perfectly positioned. positioned. But life gets to you and squashes you. If you watch great violinists, you see they are completely completel y connected through their bodies and they’re breathing properly.   String players should stand like actors do. You shouldn’t be back on

your heels, but forwards on the balls of your feet with your knees released. released. When you’re sitting, make sure you’re not slumped and that your feet are flat on the t he floor. If you’re practising

incorrectly for hours every day, da y, your body will eventually give up on you and you will start to get injured. STAYING FULLY PRESENT  I’ve worked with young musicians who are clearly very good but have dreadful presence. It can make the difference between being bei ng a very good musician and being someone special. You should come on stage fully present before you play. As soon as the audience sees you it makes a judgement as to whether it wants to listen to you. Come on stage with that full presence, stop, take the t he audience in, and make contact with it. You shouldn’t do a generalised scan –  that’s not authentic. It means m eans you’ve been told to look out, but you are not fully present. If you play looking down at the floor, after a

while the connectedaudience to you. loses interest. It might be listening to your music, but it’s not

fully

I divide presence into three circles of energy. When you’re in the first circle, you’re very interested in yourself, so your energy is inward. This happens when you are  practising something intensely, or pulling your your energy inwards. The habits of string  players tend to push them into this circle.

I call the second circle ‘full presence’. If someone were following you home with bad intent, you would become present: your antennae would come up. In this circle you connect to something beyond you. It could be your audience or another person on st stage age with you. We’re born present –  children  children have presence. Unless an actor is fully present the audience doesn’t get the full power of the piece. Any great performer is always in the second circle. The third circle is for people who push out their energy. Really bad acting is when  people just shout without connecting. connecting. They are heard but no one listens to them –  their  their energy is going out in a generalised push. We’re living in a phase when life is stopping young people from being fully present. I have to teach them to be present with each other, that otherwise it’s rude. Being fully present is being gracious. It improves the m usic. If artists don’t have best  practice with this, then what hope is there? The good ones ones have figured this out. You spend years practising, but only by staying fully present can you excavate the wonder of music. You have to offer something emotionally, and until people get

connected to themselves they’ve got nothing to offer. A great actor finds something new in a role every – night and ifget you’re fully you shou should ld always find something new in music  you never  you to the endconnected of it.

 

The solitary nature of being in a rehearsal studio alone, working on one specific thing, obsessed by the craft of music, is necessary.  However, it doesn’t help you feel connected when you play in a quartet or orchestra. Many musicians can play brilliantly, brilli antly,  but don’t know how to be present with each other or with an audience. CONNECTING WITH OTHERS  Most great conductors are very present and this makes the orchestra become te st a young conductor but the conductor has to take them on. I present. Orchestras will test learnt a lot from stand-up comedians: if you have to deal with a heckler you do it in full second-circle presence. And that’s the same as  a conductor holding their orchestra. If everyone becomes present with the conductor, they become present with each other and create better music. You can’t can’t get a really fine orchestra where deputies are be being ing  pushed in and out, unless unless someone –  the  the conductor –  is  is asking them to come into  presence.

Some orchestral players have an attitude of, ‘I just go in, play and leave.’  I don’t think that’s very satisfactory for them, but more importantly it doesn’t help the music or the audience. I brought one of the greatest living musical theatre t heatre composers to the Guildhall School and he was very moved by the young orchestra in the pit. He told me,

‘If only West End orchestras could be so present. But they’re not listening, they’re not connected and they’re bored, and my music suffers.’   You always have to respect each other when you work. The rehearsal room has to be  trying to change the way a safe place. If you’re doing something that is dangerous –  trying you’re playing something –  and there are people in the room who aren’t respecting that, then it’s very hard to progress. 

A lot of musical training is based on cruelty but I don’t think anything can be taught through unkindness.You’ve got to talk to students, to stay with them, and not  just make some clever put-down. You have have to have compassion and to understand fear: every great artist is fearful. Say something positive before you talk about the negative,

and help students out of their problem, otherwise there’s no hope. You have to guide them towards finding the solution. That’s what good teaching is. It’s not sitting on high, telling students they’re rubbish. How does that help?  In the music world ther e isn’t room for hundreds of top soloists, so there’s a sense that wastage is justified. I don’t think it is. Part P art of the problem with burnout is that

 players are not not given any time to re reflect, flect, to be present present with themselves. They’re They’re on a  plane to the next city on their schedule rather than taking time out out to make their connection to their work enjoyable again. a gain. People who burn out are iinvolved nvolved in a group

activity, playing with others, but they’re t hey’re always alone. They need the orchestra, they need the conductor , but they feel f eel under pressure and isolated. I’m not saying you should go and drink with your colleagues, but aligning yourself to become connected with them can be very gratifying. PREPARING TO PERFORM  Musicians understand routine much better than actors, because they’ve had routines from a young age.Ritual and routine are critical in order to focus one’s energy

 before performing. Everyone has their own routine, routine, but a good warm-up includes a  preparation of the body, breath, mind and heart. There’s There’s also an intellectual element,

 

which might be as simple as thinking, ‘This is a very important story to tell.’ It’s about focus. All great art is about making order from chaos. Going on stage is nerve-racking and you have to have some routines. It’s been said that someone going on stage for press night undergoes the same stress as someone suffering a major car accident. It’s a massive blow to the body in

terms of the adrenaline. When you’re about to perform you have to stay centred and not allow your shoulders or up per chest to tighten. tighten. It’s important to keep yyour our breath low down in the body. One acting trick if you’re nervous is to give yourself a hug. Part of stage fright is the body going into panic mode, when the frontal lobe of the brain begins to fuzz over. If you take in oxygen you have a chance to think again. Another trick is to to  push against a wall, without tightening your your shoulders, putting one foot in front of the other, and to breathe. This gets you calm. If you watch someone failing in their t heir  performance, you’ll either see them stop breathing, or sigh, or gasp. As soon as you see them quietly getting the breath in you know they’ve got a chance.  Before an audition, spend time centring yourself.  Give yourself time out for your work to distil, even if it’s just five minutes. Lie on the floor, get your breath down and

connect in that way again. You’ve done the work, so take the worry away from yourself and focus on wanting to play to somebody else. You’re playing for a reason: to give others joy. IN PERFORMANCE  I’ve never met a great performer who has ever played anything perfectly.  We’re driving young people to an idea of  perfection that doesn’t doesn’t exist. What makes music exciting is a human being expressing something at a very high level.

You can’t control whether an audience likes you or not.  However, you can control

whether you’re playing to the highest level of your humanity. Some people won’t like it and some will. You can only try to be your best and be open about it. PATSY RODENBURG ON…  ON…  Auditions

It’s important that people should s hould want to work with you. This means being open, generous and gracious. gracious. It’s obvious that if you audition for a job and you’re easier to work with than someone else, you’re going to get the job. Even the way you walk into a room is important —  many  many signs are subliminal. If you walk into an audition room, put your coffee down and slump, you’re saying something about your own self -esteem -esteem and sending out a negative vibration. If you come in open and present, people are going to  be more interested in you. Appearance

In the theatre, and increasingly i ncreasingly in the music world, we look at people’s physical beauty  if someone rather than what they’ve got to offer as a human being. This is ridiculous —  if  plays superbly, does it matter what they look like? And when the celebrity demands about such things as weight start destroying the artistry, artis try, you wonder if everyone has gone mad. I tell young actors that in order to play a major role they have to eat. You cannot survive three hours on stage without eating.

 

Keeping perspective perspective

At its highest level, the music world encourages conceitedness. It’s very tempting to be like that, but it’s not necessary. necessary. I tell my m y students to have someone around them who will say ‘no’, someone to tell them the truth. PRESENT AND CORRECT To communicate effectively, performers must be fully present and always operate in the second circle of energy, says Patsy Rodenburg. You know when you are in the second circle when you:

Feel centred and alert Feel your body belongs to you Feel the earth through your feet Feel your breathing is easy and complete Know you reach people and they hear you when you speak  Notice details in others —  their  their eyes, their moods, their anxieties Are curious about a new idea  —  not  not judgemental Hear clearly Acknowledge the feelings of others See, hear, smell, touch something new, which focuses this energy in the whole of you

 

6 ways to perfect your double-stops double-stops Tips from The Strad’s archive on producing even and finely tuned double-stops

The reason why the study of double-stops is so highly advantageous for the progress of

the student may be found in it’s great technical and musical value, which can be distinguished in four directions: 1. All possible faults regarding holding of the hand and placing of the fingers are here conspicuously exposed; double-stopping represents an excellent corrective of such faults and an infallible means of training trai ning the correct position of hand and fingers. 2. It teaches further the relation of stops between two string (intervals), furthering thus a thorough knowledge of the fingerboard as well as fingering. 3. It exacts great strengths, not only that of gripping, gripping, but in many cases of individual hammer-strength of each finger. 4. Finally it provides an excellent and indispensable training of the ear, as regards  purity of intonation, as well as beauty of sound. sound. As regards the hand-position, the hand should be sufficiently raised so that the fingers may be well rounded, stopping one string without touching the other. In normal stretch this is comparatively easy, unless the fourth f ourth finger here is well founded and standing on its tip, it will easily easi ly touch the A string and thus spoil the upper note. Emil Krall, The Strad, May 1915   Three key points to watch playing in thirds are: 1. Position the hand slightly more in favour of the upper finger of each third than the lower finger, and reach back with the lower finger. Do not base the hand position on the lower finger, stretching the upper finger forward. 2. To play a double-stop at the same volume as a single-stop s ingle-stop you have to play twice as heavily with the bow, but the fingers should still stop the strings lightly. 3. If there is tension in the fourth f ourth finger, release it by relaxing the base knuckle joint of the first finger. Simon Fischer, the Strad, September 1996   Folk fiddle tunes with an E or A string drone are great tools t ools for forcing students to bring their hands up and over the fingerboard, curving their fingers so as not to stop st op the open

 

string and setting the left-hand fingers correctly. correctl y. Laura Reed, The Strad, September 2002   Many players find scale passages in thirds particularly difficult to play in tune. There are frequent changes of position and to complicate matters further the intervals are sometimes major and sometimes minor. If we study the movements of the left hand in a typical passage, such as the G major scale, we find that the principal diffic difficulty ulty is to control the spacing of the 1st and 3rd fingers at a change of position. As the hand slides to the new position these fingers remain on the strings, and they must be set to the correct spacing for the upper interval during the progress of the slide itself. While slight final adjustments may be made ‘by ear’ to secure exact intonation, it is important to  bring the fingers as nearly as possible to the correct stops before the interval is sounded at all. During the shift the finger spacing between fingers 1 and 3 should remain  precisely constant. Dr H.R. Allan, The Strad, On Playing Thirds in Tune  When playing double-stops, it is essential to keep the hand and fingers as soft and free as they are when playing the simplest single notes  –  in  in other words, as free as they are when you are not even playing the violin. Doing mobility exercise is a good way to discover how to give and release, in the hand and fingers, while still stil l maintaining enough muscle tone to play. When playing in octaves, one of the most important elements is that the entire left hand is free of tension. A chief cause of tension comes from not releasing between octaves, which is like pedalling a bicycle while continuing to squeeze the brakes. Simon Fischer, The Strad, April 2008 and November 2013   When children play with a poor quality of tone on double-stops, it is usually because the angle of the bow is not correct and one string is getting more pressure from the bow than is the other string. Elizabeth A.H. Green, The Strad, September 2002 

 

5 ways to improve playing in thirds Tips for hand position, bow distribution and intonation from The Strad Archive

Three key points to watch in playing thirds are: 1. Position the hand slightly more in favour of the upper finger of each third than the lower finger, and reach back with the lower finger. Do not base the hand position on the lower finger, stretching the upper finger forward. 2. To play a double-stop at the same volume as a single-stop s ingle-stop you have to play twice as heavily with the bow, but the fingers should still stop the strings lightly. 3. If there is tension in the fourth f ourth finger, release it by relaxing the base knuckle joint of the first finger. Simon Fischer, The Stra Str ad , September 1996 

A common mistake is the exclusive concentration on intonation without considering the  placement and angle of the left hand. When the hand position is not correct, ease and agility in all positions, and thus good intonation, becomes impossible. To develop a good position I first recommend exploring thirds with the following exercise:

Finger placement should be lightly rounded (note especially the angle of the little li ttle finger) and should remain unchanged in all positions. This exercise also assists in developing sensitivity to the difference between major and minor thirds. Str ad , May 1999  Zakhar Bron, T he Stra Many players find scale passages in thirds particularly difficult to play in tune. There are frequent changes of position and to complicate matters matt ers further the intervals are sometimes major and sometimes minor. If we study the movements of the left hand in a typical passage, such as the G major scale, we find that the principal diffic difficulty ulty is to

 

control the spacing of the 1st and 3rd fingers at a change of position. As the hand slides to the new position these fingers remain on the strings, and they must be set to the correct spacing for the upper interval during the progress of the slide itself. While slight

final adjustments may be made ‘by ear’ to secure exact intonation, it is important to  bring the fingers as nearly as possible to the correct stops before the interval is sounded at all. During the shift the finger spacing between fingers 1 and 3 should remain  precisely constant. Dr H.R. Allan, The Strad , On Playing Thirds in Tune, 1959 

De Beriot, in his violin school, very wisely wrote: ‘True intonation in double strings requires an exquisite sense of harmony. In order to acquire this precious quality, the  pupil must become familiar with those thirds and sixths which are consonant consonant with the open strings G and D. These lower strings are only set in motion when the higher stopping is played with the most perfect accuracy; then a third sound is produced, which serves as a regulator to the ear and to the position of the fingers. This true intonation i ntonation of double strings once acquired will extend to all parts of th e violin.’  Str ad , December 1916  Percival Hodgson, T he Stra You can improve your playing in 3rds by practising placing the fingers separately. Put the third finger down on its own, without the first finger. Balance the hand so that the third finger is naturally curved, relaxed and comfortable. 1. Without altering the balance of the hand, or the shape of the third finger, reach back with your first finger and play a major or minor 3 rd. 2. Without changing anything else, go back to playing only the third finger without the first finger on the string. Imagine seeing two photos of your hand and third finger, one taken before reaching back with the first finger and the other after removing it from the string. The shape of your hand in both pictures should be identical.

Str ad , March 2012  Simon Fischer, The Stra

 

7 ways to play perfect chords Advice on unforced and resonant chord playing from The Strad’s archives 

One of the greatest difficulties difficultie s experienced by the student consists in making the chords resonant and yet free from impurity of tone. They are apt to sound scratchy. scratc hy. The best way to correct this fault is to avoid pressure at the impact of bow and string, and to  press only while the bow is in progress. progress. Once this habit is formed it becomes quite natural, and purity of tone is thereby ensured without loss of power. Alfred M. Wall, The Strad, December 1913  Three common misconceptions about chords are that they must be played near the fingerboard, with fast and long strokes. Although the strings are flatter nearer the fingerboard, chords do not have to be played there. Thicker, fatter, more powerful chords often need to be played nearer the bridge.  Near the fingerboard, chords can be played with with a faster, lighter bow; but as you play nearer to the bridge, you can play with a slower and more sustained s ustained bow. With the right  point of contact near to the bridge, it is possible to sustain three strings at the same time for several seconds. Although chords sometimes do require a lot of bow, often they can be played with very little. You can even play chords with a heavy spiccato stroke st roke at or near the point of  balance. Simon Fischer, The Strad, January 2005  As for chords, what poverty the music suffers if they the y are always played forte! We must divest chords of their aggression. They do not always serve as punctuation; most of the time they simply provide harmony. Try playing them in many styles: rolled at various speeds, with and without crescendo and at all dynamics. Try even caressing caress ing them as lyrically as possible. Ruth Waterman, The Strad, August 1997   A careful study of the technique of chord playing is of inestimable value to the whole technique of bowing, for it develops sensitivity and subtleness in the hand and arm. Harold Berkley, The Strad, August 2005 

 

Pivoting is the movement of the bow around the string. At the same time as sustaining an up or down bow on one string, st ring, pivoting gradually brings the bow closer to an adjacent string. To pivot smoothly the bow must always begin to move towards the next string before you want to play it. The later the pivot, the faster it has to move. Pivoting enables seamless string crossings without accent or disturbance. Pivots are essential in chord playing, joining together the bottom and top halves of the chord to create one, unbroken sound. Simon Fischer, The Strad, September 1994  The essence of the art of chord playing: the strings are not touched at the same time, but they must sound simultaneously. Yuri Yankelevich, The Strad August 2005  The weight that the left-hand fingers have to provide in order to stop the string sufficiently for a clean note is the same whether you are stopping one note or four notes. Excess pressure in stopping strings, as an unconscious reaction to the t he extra weight in the  bow when playing double double stops, is one of the most common causes of left-hand tension. Simon Fischer, The Strad, April 2008 

 

How to make scales enjoyable Encouraging students to practise scales needn’t be an uphill struggle, says Paul Harris –   in fact, it can even be fun!

‘You can have one biscuit now, or, if you tidy your room, you can have three when you’ve finished!’ That’s known as delayed gratification, and it’s essential for pupils to have at least some inkling of its significance if scale teaching and learning is going to be anything other than a continual battle! None of us  –  teachers  teachers or students –  underestimate  underestimate the importance of scales, but how many of us actually enjoy them? Thorough scale learning will not, for most young players, reap immediate rewards. ace it, practising scales is not as musically satisfying as unlocking the secrets of a Let’s f ace Romantic sonata, or as exciting as getting to grips with a showpiece for the next concert. Well- played  played scales will get pupils better mark markss in exams, but the their ir raison d’être lies in the less tangible but essential area of basic musical development.

It’s important to recognise the importance of scales, for you’ll never convince a pupil to ‘vote for scales’ if you don’t believe in them absolutely yourself.  Scales improve technique  Yes, they do, but not just by paying them lip service. Simply playing through a couple

of scales during a practice session will have very little impact on a pupil’s technical willSimilarly, only helpscales you lose as part of a caloriecalorifiedevelopment. ‘Slim controlled diet’, the-o-Food ads tell us. willweight only affect technique they are  part of a holistic approach to teaching. Time and concern must simultaneously be put into posture, arm positions, precision of finger movement and positioning. In addition, it is essential that the many connections with aural work are brought to the fore. Scales help control tone  Every note has its own sound world resulting from its harmonic make-up. Practising scales with precise and directed listening will help your pupil learn to match tonal and dynamic levels. Scales help playing in tune 

They will if you really try to play them in tune! You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve heard scales played appallingly out of tune in my work as an examiner. I find this very frustrating –  a real waste of a golden opportunity to gain marks. Again, it’s all connected with aural training: with active and musically perceptive listening.

 

Scales develop sense of key  Absolutely, and this is a very important reason for practising practi sing and playing them. But again, only if they are approached with a sensitive ear and with brain fully in gear. Scales improve sightreading  Again, yes. But only if they are learnt with music as well as by ear. Recognising scale and arpeggio patterns will only become immediate and reliable if pupils know what scales look like.

So scales can be worth their weight in gold. Our next job is to find a way to make them more palatable. The secret is to devise several related activities which make as many connections as possible with all other areas of musical development, prior to playing a scale. In fact, you may decide to teach scales s cales without pupils ever playing them! Spend some time listing imaginative ways you can connect scales with aural, technique, sightreading, rhythm, improvisation, composition and pieces. This is the basis of real ‘musical thinking’.  With such connections in mind, here are some practical strategies for introducing a  pupil to a new scale. Notice, at no time do we (yet) actually play the scale. Know the notes 

Pupils should on be the ablerelevance to say theofsequence notes and down. I’ve had manythat a debate with teachers knowingofthe noteup names, but I’m convinced the more ways we know something, the stronger the understanding will be. You’ll be surprised how difficult some pupils will find saying the notes descending! Write out the scale  Preferably use manuscript paper with a pen or pencil. A computer is OK, but nothing  beats creating your own notated scale. Sing the scale   Not to the taste of all students, but persevere with the more reluctant! For less enthusiastic pupils begin with just the first three notes, then eventually progress to five  before finally having a go at the whole scale. It may take a long time to cajole them to do this, but the ultimate rewards will be worth it. Instruct pupils to pre-hear each note before they sing it   This is a very powerful –  though  though for some exceptionally difficult –  discipline.  discipline. To awaken the aural senses, play scales to your students. Make deliberate mistakes, either wrong notes or more subtle errors of intonation, and see how confident they can become in picking up inaccuracies. Make up short exercises that cover particular technical manoeuvres  Sing the exercise first, slowly, pre-hearing notes and trying to hear and pitch the very centre of each one. Then play these exercises slowly, concentrating on all appropriate aspects of posture and finger movement. Make pupils realise how important it is to care about the quality and intonation of every note, and to be patient  –  this  this work will pay great dividends.

 

Find a simple and effective study in the key  Apply the same process as above. Improvise and/or compose a piece in the key  

Don’t underestimate the importance of such work. Over a period o f time your students will learn to produce interesting and effective pieces, which will really help their musical development. Improvisation, along with aural and memory work, accesses the all-important right side of the brain (notation and technique live in the left side). Allround musical development must allow each half of the brain equal activity. a ctivity. Maybe you can have a concert of pupils’ scale pieces from time to time.   Choose a well-known tune and play it by ear in the key  Don’t worry about mistakes. Si mply attempting to find the right notes is a very useful  process.

 None of these activities demand that the scale be played on its own. We are learning about the scale (and related patterns). patter ns). We are learning about the key. We are using the time to gather all the necessary ingredients and we are learning to understand those ingredients. You may simply like to leave it at that! Some pupils will not practise or  play scales whatever lengths you may go to. As As long as they are enjoying their pieces –   which, after all, are in a key  –  and you are giving some ‘scale-related’ backup (as above), this may well be sufficient until that fine day when they wake up and finally say to you, ‘I now see how scales can really change my life –  when can we start?’  For those students who are prepared to do so, it’s time ti me to play the scale. It’s a big

moment. It’s an important moment and we’re not going to let it i t pass without appropriate fanfares. Preparation is essential and we’re going to sing an octave, dead in tune, first. Then we’re going to hear it through silently, in our heads. Then a few seconds of stillness before the performance. The first time a new scale is played in full must be savoured, must be enjoyed. The performance must be accurate, in tune and played with a beautiful sound. This is not a romantic, idealistic and unattainable expectation. If you care then your pupils will also begin to care  –  it’s as simple as that.  What next? Continue to reinforce scale learning by revisiting all the above activities and add the following as and when appropriate: 

Play with varying bowings and articulations Play with varying rhythmic patterns Play with varying dynamics Vary the style of ascent and a nd descent (for example, up: bowed and forte, down: pizzicato and piano. The number of variations is vast) Vary the tempo (most pupils get into the habit of playing scales within a very narrow  band of tempos –   encourage encourage experimentation at both ends of the metronome) Vary the style (a scale in the style of Mozart, Brahms or Stravinsky for example) Play both by ear and with music Vary the starting note (eg G major beginning and ending on D or A –  or  or even F sharp!) Start on the top note and play descending followed by ascending If you wish your pupils to take scales (and all their thei r related patterns) seriously, seri ously, you will need to devote quality time to their study. As in all good teaching, they must be

 

approached with a combination of imagination, fun and high expectations. But, above

all allow scales to play their vital role r ole in developing the ‘whole’ musician by making connections and by treating them as your friends –  never  never as your enemy.

 

Scales and exercises are essential for all string players, says Heinrich Schiff  Not all players regard exercises as important, but without a sound technical basis you cannot achieve your expressive potential, writes the cellist

Some 25 years of teaching have taught me that we players pla yers must always define what each of our motions at the cello represents  –  this  this is essential in order for us to be efficient technical ease, stamina, physical power and musical depth. Toartists have capable control Iofmust develop thegreat ability to use my physical gestures economically and unconsciously. Craftsmanship –  the  the non-musical aspect of playing, such as finger velocity, bowing technique, shifting and so on –  should  should be studied separately from musical expression. Expressive possibilities are limited if the player is

not at home with the instrument, and the further one goes away from ‘home’ the t he more the basics are needed. This is why I believe in etudes and studies  –  and  and I still play scales –  as  as Heifetz emphasised. I don’t find this technical work pleasur able, able, but I do it anyway. A wonderful part of instrumental fitness can be found in exercises by Feuillard and Cossman for example..  Not all instrumentalists regard exercises as important; in fact, many artists think etudes are rubbish and that one can learn technique through pieces. I say yes, if you understand what you have to do. An etude is like a series of small limited structures and should be  played with complete control without the emotional emotional distractions of your concerto. If you apply that behaviour to your solo and find the pattern you need to work on, you can  practise the passage with the same sensibility that you would an etude. At this point all

enemies of this approach will say, ‘Now the concerto will sound like an etude!’ They are right. Anyone can describe what to do, but it takes knowledge of the basics to approach the problem. That’s why I work on etudes.  Consider other musicians. All singers certainly begin the day with basic vocal exercises: arpeggios, scales, exercises for tone and for intonation. They practise their routine in every key, making sure their voices are properly supported. Wind players hold long notes for endurance and breath control. We string players don’t do this enough –   especially players, should be trying to find their own voice. suggest starting onyoung the open stringswho with or without vibrato. I concentrate on theIphysical aspects of playing. I question myself. Is my body comfortable? Can I control the bow in

 

fast and slow speeds? How should I vary my vibrato? I keep the note plain then add

vibrato as a sheer physical exercise. If it sounds ‘dry’, I don’t do it. Even when the gesture is detached from the artistic artist ic act you must love the note, feel yourself relax, enjoy your instrument and get addicted to the sound you produce in order to be able always to find a home; otherwise, when the music makes increasingly difficult demands, you could lose control. The more aware I am of my physical approach, the easier artistic matters become. A tactic I often use in masterclasses ma sterclasses is to ask the student to play something quiet and small, like a simple row of notes at a moderato tempo. Then we increase the dynamics to mezzoforte or forte, playing full but not too loud. Perhaps we choose a few notes from the concerto, maybe with a slide because it i t makes us nervous. Sometimes I ask for a Šev?ík or Feuillard exercise –  we  we are looking for something simple in order to come back to basics. Basics include posture. When sitting at the instrument inst rument the torso must lean towards the cello. You must find a position in which you can sit for many hours. I control my neck, avoiding pushing away or pressing towards the cello, which causes tension. If I am relaxed from the hips, my torso can help my arms produce the weight. Tension in the hips reduces power. Likewise, lifting the shoulders (a mistake we all make) interrupts the flow of energy into the fingers by creating stress. This applies to both arms. Concerning power –  and  and cellists need a lot –  one  one can be lucky or one must train for endurance. Producing sound from force is wrong. You must be strong, but use body weight and gravity. Besides, we would have to develop more muscles than needed in order to have reserve strength, since we should s hould be able to play through three concertos in the practice room in order to perform one. In the same way, I have to master passages passa ges that are more difficult than the t he works I play on stage. So, I go back to etudes in order to make the Dvo?ák Concerto easier. You have to be fitter than required and you have to have more skill than needed. Developing the artistic ingredients and controlling emotions are difficult. We have  players who are well educated but lack imagination. Musicianship is, of course, as important to prepare as the craftsmanship aspect. Generally I find artistic information

about composers has to do with performance practice. How did Beethoven’s violin sonatas sound? There is a lot of information available and I think it is important to find that information, but it takes time and energy. Emotionally, though, I think the cellist has to try to develop colours and atmospheres with the pressure and speed of the bow, vibrato and expressive shifting, s hifting, and find a repertoire of possibilities that are called personal, but are connected to the instrument. In order to enrich the palette of human experience available a vailable to me I go to the theatre, exhibitions, opera and ballet, as well as experiencing experienci ng non-musical culture. I read. I learn as much as possible about psychology, for example, in order to nourish myself as a  person and to become more knowledgeable. knowledgeable. György Ligeti speaks about finding inspiration from scientists; their research makes him able to be creative as a composer. I

find listening to records is not enough to enable you to become an interesting artist. It’s fascinating, yes, and shouldn’t be missed. But engage your mind questions that will make you a richer person.

more widely. Ask

 

As an end result, I adapt my ability to apply the etudes et udes I practised to the Elgar Concerto. In the performance I repeat my exercises exercis es of relaxation and subtlety. I bring together the elements of vibrato and bow control with those of expression and, I hope, land at Elgar.

These are the rules I follow: Play scales to the end of your life! Practise slowly. Don’t  play loud and fast. Control your your body. Think like a singer and feel the breath from your stomach. And finally, be patient and don’t give up. 

 

What is the best scale system for string students? Teacher Talk: your string teaching questions answered by our panel of experts

What scale system do you recommend, and what is the best way to get students to approach scales? Rebecca Jorden, Michigan, US   Boris Kuschnir: I recommend the scale system compiled by Elizabeth Gilels,  published by Sikorski. These These are thorough, well-organised sets of scales with interesting fingering and shifting suggestions. Many students practise scales first, then arpeggios, and only after that double-stops, for which the y often don’t allow enough time. In Gilels’s system double-stops immediately follow the scales, and only after that come arpeggios and chromatic scales. This helps to remind students to play double-stops and

to allow time for it. It is very important to play octaves, 10ths and fingered octaves every ev ery day, from as young an age as possible. They should all be practised in a slow tempo, then medium, and it is also important to play them fast, even though sometimes intonation suffers. It is helpful to play all the different variations with different bow strokes and on different strings, and to include scales on one string up to higher positions, especially on G, D and A. As a rule, I recommend playing all scales sc ales without vibrato. Bruno Giuranna: A teacher who is convinced that scales practice is important will inspire their pupils to study them properly. You should tell students that a significant  part of the Russian school is based on scales, and the results of that are not bad! Easy

scales canshould be used first to develop an ideaand of what means to play them Students getatsome decent fingerings learnitthem thoroughly. But‘well’. my theory is that anyone who needs to read music to practise scales will have problems playing in tune by memory.  Bruno Giuranna teaches viola at the Fondazione Fondazione Stauffer in Cremona, th thee Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano and the University of Limerick in  Ireland    Boris Kuschnir is violin professor at the Vienna Conservatoire and at the University of  Music in Graz  

 

The importance of lateral movement in the left hand for string players Surprisingly little has been said in the literature li terature about the sideways left-h left-hand and movement, although any passages over more than one string uses it. i t. Rok Klopčič researches 

Lateral movements of the left hand are of the same importance as vertical or horizontal ones. This fact is rarely, if ever acknowledged by leading authorities. They usually consider one or two of the most obvious ones in a few cursory words only, never assembling all the lateral movements in one complete picture. The adjective ‘lateral’ depends on the point of observation; the figure below clarifies the different directions:

In every lateral movement there is a more or less pronounced steering motion of the left hand, from the shoulder, to the left or right (according to Ion Voicu and Konstantin Mostras). This movement is the smallest in the lateral half-movement, where a finger moves from two strings to one string, strin g, as in this exercise by Henry Schradieck:

It is greatest in this exercise by Flesch:

 

In the past, lateral movements were acknowledged only as the means to forming chords. Flesch published what he called chord exercises, in his Urstudien Urstudien (1900),  (1900), which are still the best and serve as the most appropriate gymnastic introduction to lateral chord movement. In his magnum opus The Art of Violin Playing  (1923)  (1923) he changes the of this movement to Streck   –  and Beugebewegungen and  Beugebewegungen, , stretching anddescription bending exercises, but still mentions its  use in chords only. At approximately the same time, 1921, Dounis, in his work The The Artist’s  Artist’s Technique of Violin Playing , describes ‘the movement from the right to the left and vice versa’ and, like Flesch, limits its  use to ‘chords in three or four  notes’ only.  The ideal way of preparing chords is described by b y Mostras: all the necessar necessary y fingers should be placed simultaneously on the strings. This is not often achieved, though, and it is usually better to follow the advice of Francesco Sfilio, who recommends that the setting of the chords should always start with the first finger with the other fingers following in natural order –  second,  second, third and fourth –  irrespective  irrespective of the string. The time taken between finger landings should be so short that they appear and sound simultaneous. Another obvious type of lateral movement is the repeated crossing of fingers over two or three strings. It is used a great deal in different sstudies tudies and compositions, attention usually directed to the problems of the right hand. The most difficult examples can be found in Paganini’s Caprice no.2. Similar but simpler exercises in one position are given in Ševčík’s op.1, while Rodolfo Lipizer offers more complicated versions under the title Salti Salti (jumps)  (jumps) in nos.19 and 31 of the second part of his La his La tecnica  superiore del violino. violino. When connecting some doublestops there can be a small lateral movement, a’crossing of the strings’, as Galamian calls it. However, he does not describe it as lateral, but finds in pairs of sixths and fourths a ‘horizontal type of sliding motion without completely lifting the fingers from the fingerboard’. f ingerboard’. Clearly, the word ‘lateral’ instead of ‘horizontal’ in the previous sentence would be more accurate. In connecting doublestops we must frequently decide between horizontal and lateral movements. good illustration of this is a passage from Glazunov’s Violin  Concerto (example 1)Aas fingered by two eminent Russians, David Oistrakh and Yuri Yankelevich whose fingerings are shown above and below the stave respectively. respectivel y. Oistrakh makes a small lateral movement in the shift to the double-stop on the third beat of the second bar, whereas Yankelevich shifts horizontally.

 

The interval of the fifth over the string st ring could be considered as a ‘ frozen’ lateral movement although some violinists try to avoid playing fifths across strings with the same finger. Example 2 is illuminating Flesch (top fingering) avoids the two D-G fifth lateral movements by using two changes of position on the same string, whereas Stern (bottom fingering) shifts for the first one but plays the second one across the strings, appropriately changing the expression.

The following Menuhin exercise is a good preparation for such a realisation realis ation of fifths:

The interval of the fifth is linked to another movement which could be called a lateral half-movement. In the literature it appears very rarely and often sounds unclean. An example from the Bach Chaconne shows the problem, in the second beat, where the third finger must move from holding the D-A fifth chord across two strings, to t o just  playing the A of the B-A chord:

Technical exercises for such movements are practically non-existent –  it  it is only in Schradieck’s School of Violin- Technics that Technics that we can find at least one exercise of this sort, as shown earlier. In investigating lateral movements it helps to examine them in different  passages, recognising that no passage over more than one string is possible without a lateral movement. Flesch doesn’t see the link  between  between what he called ‘chord movement’ and ‘change of strings’. Nevertheless he recommends small lateral movements for different scales and chordal passages, for example in the Bruch Concerto, where the square notes show how you can make the lateral movement before the note is played:

 

  The same technique is advocated by Harold Berkley in his Modern Technique of Violin Bowing, who calls it ‘advance ‘ advance fingering’.  Some quick passages over many strings and positions can be telescoped into a basic mixture of lateral movements and changes of position as a method of practising the fundamental movements. Abram Yampolsky recommends practising the first passage from Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole in a telescoped version (example 3, where the second se cond line is the telescoped version).

The importance of quick, precise lateral movements of the fingers in brilliant passages is recognised by Mostras in his excellent Esquisse excellent Esquisse no.2,  no.2, which should presumably be  played without preparing the fifth, so that both both fingers are changing strings on each

note: Significantly this study was included by the best Soviet experts, Yampolsky, Y.I. Rabinovich and M.B. Pitkus, in their collection of studies, Strengthening of the Fingers and Development of Velocity.

 

6 ways to improve left-hand flexibility flexibility Tips from The Strad’s archive on increasing suppleness of movement and reducing tension One of the hallmarks of any good left hand is that the main movement of the fingers is from the base knuckle joints. Heifetz is a wonderful example of this: his fingersofhad extraordinary, spongy liquidity of movement that was completely independent thean hand, which remained quite still.The arms, legs and fingers all have three levers: the upper sections of the leg, arm and finger are the strongest, and the large, main movements originate from them. Violinists and violists must avoid the danger of dropping and raising the fingers partly with a movement of the hand, rather than moving from the base joints. This is like trying to walk by replacing part of the upper-leg movement by rotating the back with each step. Simon Fischer, The Strad, December 2008  The left hand should be loose. To fight tension you must have a sense that air can pass through your hand; it should feel open. I use a slightly slanted position in the cello left l eft hand –  not  not too square –  with  with my palm slightly facing the floor. This way the hand h and remains in the same shape in all positions, which is very efficient. I am careful using extensions; they can freeze freez e the left hand. My opinion is that extensions are practicable as long as you release the tension caused by stre stretching tching the hand. Once a note has sounded I stop pressing down on the string, releasing the  pressure. Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, The Strad, December 2003   The wrist must be flexible at all times and the hand free for the vibrato vibrato motion. Your left elbow must be well under the violin and the left l eft hand fingers held high to give the finger tips the flexibility to rotate. Ideally, the thumb should not protrude above the fingerboard. It should be placed, preferably, on the fleshy portion and positioned slightly behind the index finger. Aaron Rosand, the Strad, January 2014   The fingers thecomplicated. string and theThe roles of different the arm handplacing during of thisthe action areon very dropping of themuscles fingers in should be and done with ‘a live springing action,’ according to Paul Rolland. The authorities warn

against using too much force in this action. Ivan Galamian warns that ‘banging and  pressing is apt apt to build tensions that aare re dangerous,’ aagainst gainst which Ro Rolland lland suggests: ‘After an articulate impact, relax the finger and allow  to vibrate’.  Rok Klopčič, The Strad, February 2005  2005   You do not need to try to develop flexibility in your hands and fingers. You already have it most of the time. Away from the violin, whenever you are engaged in everyday e veryday activities, your hands are relaxed and soft. You must keep that softness and flexibilit flexibility y when you play the violin. Athletes and musicians alike must guard against tensing up in the fraction of a second before performing an action, in preparation for it. Consider this sequence: 1. Your hands are soft and pliable before you pick up the instrument; keep them like that as you go to pick up the violin and bow; then keep them soft and pliable as you

 

move your fingers around the fingerboard. 2. Before you play any note, release the hand and fingers and keep them soft, balanced and free of any sort of pressing or counter-pressing. counter-pressi ng. Simon Fischer, The Strad, April 2005  The thumb must be free. Its position is entirely entirel y dedicated by the action of the hand and fingers as they go up and down the fingerboard; it simply goes along for the ride. ri de. Often, due to poor instrument balance, students use the left hand to support and steady the instrument. This, combined with a resultant insecurity in fingering and shifting and concern about vibrato speed, leads to squeezing the neck of the instrument. While this reaction is understandable, it stifles sensation, responsiveness and the ability to move.

Shifting and the vibrato impulse i mpulse suffer, and the sound loses ‘roundness’ because the  pads of the fingers are compressed into the strings. Dr Robert Drew and Karen Tuttle, The Strad, October 1995 

 

How to develop left-hand finger strength Up and down movement is the basis of left-hand technique and many pedagogues have invented fiendish exercises to improve it. Rok takes a look at some of them

To play vertical even thefinger most motion simple melody we element must stop string in order to t o define pitch,it making the central ofthe left-hand technique. As a result has received much attention, many different kinds of exercises and more than the usual amount of incorrect advice. This includes the recommendation, made by Flesch, Dounis and Menuhin, that every finger should fall with its natural weight. S. Mittelmann and František Ond?í?ek disagree with this idea in their 1909 violin method. They argue that finger movements are made with the fine-control muscles of the arm, hand and fingers. Natural weight, therefore, cannot play any role; even if the fingers could function without muscles, using their own weight, this would not involve enough force. To stop a string the necessary weight is approximately between 170 and 360 grams, depending on the string and the point of contact of the left-hand finger, as Otto Szende observes. Any suggestion of the influence of gravity on fingers is equally equall y invalid. The placing of the fingers on the string and the roles of different muscles in the arm and hand during this action are very complicated. The two aspects of the vertical movement have been given different names: what Do unis describes as the ‘down’ impulse is also

called ‘finger fall’ by Galamian or ‘finger drop’ by Rolland; Dounis’s corresponding ‘up’ impulse is termed ‘lifting’ by both Galamian G alamian and Rolland, who also calls it the ‘release of the string’. All these terms are clearly not in accordance with the physiology of this movement. Nevertheless the terms ‘dropping’ and ‘lifting’ are generally used: hopefully they will not obscure understanding of the real action.

The dropping of the fingers should be done with ‘a live, springlike action’, according to Rolland. The authorities warn against using too much force in this action. Galamian

warns that ‘banging and pressing is apt to build tensions that are dangerous,’ against mpact, relax the finger and allow it to which Rolland an articulate vibrate.’ Dounissuggests: offers the‘After following way of ijudging whether the movement is relaxed enough:

‘A free vibrato [is] the t he only real test of using… fingers in a correct way.’   Dounis also recommends that the lifting off sh ould be done in

the same ‘energetic manner’ as dropping the finger on to the string. Along with Rolland, he also recommends practising with exaggerated action, although Galamian disagrees with this. The most practical advice is that t hat of Ricci, who urges practising oft-neglected lleft-hand eft-hand  pizzicato. The trill is the most elaborate form of vertical finger movement. With its many variants it is a sparkling element of virtuoso playing and provides a valuable area of violin exercise. Short trills are a frequent and characteristic ornament from Tartini to

contemporary times, with Kreisler’s cadenza for Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ being one of

the most tricky examples. Among the most difficult types t ypes of trills are those on a pedal,

 

either above or below the melody, while thematic material materi al is played on one of the

adjacent strings, for example in Wieniawski’s Wi eniawski’s Souvenir de Moscou. Even harder and more expressive is the tremolo trill in different intervals above or under the melody. There are countless exercises for vertical movement, the best of which aim at improving the actual movement and the trill as well as the general mechanics. The works of Henry Schradieck and Otakar Šev?ík recognise the importance of the vertical movement, abounding with different approaches to the problems. Successors had dissenting opinions of Šev?ík’s works: Flesch praised them, while Yankelevich rarely used them.  In his Urstudien, Carl Flesch presents some exercises without the bow; among them are some for vertical finger motion. Heifetz acclaimed these exercises, saying: ‘Perhaps the

 best studies for the trill and those I use myself are written by Carl Flesch.’ According to Ricci: ‘Short trills develop strength, but with elasticity,’ and he considers Study no.6 from Dont’s op.35 as ‘perhaps the best’ for this purpose. He has transcribed it for left-hand pizzicato

Dounis wrote his work The Absolute Independence Independence of the Fingers as a ‘lifeti ‘lifetime me study companion’ for developing what he describes as ‘strength, solidity, surety, suret y, pliability and individuality of the fingers… in a phenomenal degree of perfection’.   is one one of his exercises in which there is a different type of movement happening on every string. On the E string a note is held with the fourth finger; on the A string there is the vertical movement of the third finger; on the D string the second finger moves horizontally; and on the G string the first finger is engaged in lifting for the pizzicato. Dounis describes this as ‘combining all four f our movements’, saying that it ‘demands constant mental activity and the utmost concentration of the brain’.  It is important to practise all the variations of movement, and Mittelmann and Ond?í?ek

assert that ‘exercises in the high positions deserve special attention. They strengthen the small muscles in the hand.’ Konstantin Mostras invented exercises which bring ‘simultaneous metrorhythmic joining of notes with different values’. He claims that these exercises strengthen the fingers more than any other exercise, helping to attain

‘rhythmic discipline’ For Henryk Szeryng, in the quest for excellent intonation it is not enough to practise dropping the fingers in the right place. With small intervals inter vals one must be able to draw the fingers close to each other, and to strengthen st rengthen the appropriate muscles he recommends practising thirds in the harmonic minor.

Harold Berkley recommends Paganini’s Caprice no.6, saying that: ‘Probably no finer etude has ever been written for developing strength, independence and flexibility of the fingers.’ In this piece tremolo illuminates t he melody, but this exquisite beauty is created by some sadistic combinations of concurrent vertical, horizontal and lateral movements. Further left-hand pizzicato can be found in i n Ševcík’s op.1 no.4 and in many compositions by Paganini and Sarasate, which can be used as an energising element for vertical movement of the fingers and therefore one’s whole technique. 

 

8 ways to vary your vibrato Tips from The Strad’s archive for varying vibrato speed, width, pressure and direction to produce an infinite range of colour contrasts

The two main aspects of vibrato are speed and width. Both vary constantly with the character and expression of each note. It is rare that even two consecutive notes have the same proportions of speed and width. The most natural proportions are wide and slow, narrow and fast, but, like an artist mixing mi xing primary colours to obtain an infinite range of different shades, the musician’s range of different vibratos extends all the way to wide and fast, and slow and narrow.Simon Fischer, The Strad, April 2004  Vibrato is created through variations in width, speed and pressure and varying points of emanation (finger, hand, arm). In classical repertory, repertor y, pressure is supposedly not a factor,  but many string players use far too much finger pressure pressure down into the fingerboard. Excessive pressure precludes variations in vibrato and blocks ease in left-hand articulation, inviting reciprocal pressure from the right hand. As you practise playing scales or melodies without vibrato, take the opportunity to learn how to control finger  pressure. Think of placing each finger on the surface surface of the string and using gravity to allow the finger to sink down to the surface of the fingerboard, only going as far as you need to create a whole tone, and no more. Julie Lyonn Lieberman, The Strad, January 2006  For a more advanced player, changing a well-established well-esta blished habit of always playing with a fast narrow vibrato to a wider one can be extremely difficult and frustrating because the muscles in the arm and hand usually tense up. The reverse, however, is comparatively easy. Try shaking a small can of fruit juice  –  either  either real or imaginary –  changing  changing from wide to narrow movements and vice versa and note how much easier it is to go from big to small. Usually the solution for changing an old, undesirable vibrato is to stop st op vibrating completely and take a new, vastly different approach. Phyllis Young, The Strad, September 1999  Change in vibrato is easy to achieve since everything about vibrato is based on only a few factors. An adjustment in any one of them will entirely entir ely change the overall quality of vibrato: 1. The part of the fingertip you use –  change  change between a position nearer the tip t ip and one that’s more on the pad. 2. The heaviness of the finger on the string –  change  change between releasing more and releasing less during the backward movement 3. The width of the movement –  change  change between wider and narrower widths 4. The speed of the movement –  change  change between faster and slower movements 5. The direction of the movement –  change  change between a dotted rhythm (pulsing to the

 

upper pitch of the vibrato) and a more even rhythm in the vibrato movement. Simon Fischer, The Strad, July 2007  The vexed question of when to use vibrato is a point only to be decided by each one listening to the individual effect of his own playing. pla ying. I see no harm in its presence at all times if the player has such a perfect control that he can reduce it at will to such a slight movement as to be inconspicuous and emotionless. On the other hand the owner of only one vibrato effect must use his ears discriminate. An enthusiastic and passionate vibrato at uneventful moments is asand seamless as a recitation of the alphabet with intense emotion would be, and equally nauseous. Percival Hodgson, The Strad, September 1916  Saturated with an artistic sense s ense for the really beautiful, mastered b by y the controlling mind, vibrato becomes a powerful means of expression in the hands of the skilful and  patient, well apt to impart the emotions of the player into the tone. It It is a matter of taste how much and how often vibrato should s hould be applied. Those who condemn it entirely only admit that they do not feel the music as deeply deepl y as those who use it to ennoble the sensuous power of the tone in order to render its message more effective  –  more  more convincing. Emil Krall, The Strad, May 1912   If the period players were serious about their calling they would have a different armoury of vibrato effects for every national style, if not for each composer. Hungarian music would be played with the Hubay school’s wide wah-wah vibrato, for instance, while French music would have quite a silvery finger vibrato, with now and then a spot of right-hand vibrato produced solely with the bow, as Capet used to do. But I am happy if each player come before me on the concert platform with his or her own painstakingly developed range of vibrato styles. I am also at ease with constant vibrato. Tully Potter, The Strad, October 2009  

‘Heinrich Schif f taught me that non-vibrato can be a wonderful addition to our tonal  palette. The ethereal ethereal first phrase of Beethoven’s Beethoven’s Cello Sonata Sonata no.4 should be played with absolutely no vibrato. According to Schiff, ‘Vibrato on every note is like putting ketchup all over the music.’  Alban Gerhardt, The Strad, February 2011 

 

7 tips for playing fast passages Guidance from The Strad’s archive on increasing left -hand finger speed and minimising tension

Correct finger action is also important for facility. You will often hear me preach to my

students; ‘Avoid hitting the fingerboard or merely placing the fingers: drop them.’ Fingers should follow Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation, beginning slowly and speeding up as gravity causes them to accelerate accelerat e towards the fingerboard. The speed at impact is the highest: thisIgives clarity to the Instead of lifting theplucking fingers vertically between notes, pull my fingers offsound. sideways, making a little sound.Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, The Strad, December 2003  

‘Fast fingers’ refers to the speed of the left -hand fingers towards or away from the string, not the speed of the notes. In other words, you can play with fast fingers in slow  passages as well as in fast ones. Playing with fast fingers involves a sort of waiting  before moving a finger, then a fast movement of that that finger. *The faster the finger drops on to the string or lifts from it, the later the dropping or lifting must begin. *The later the finger drops or lifts, the longer the time between each finger action. *The longer the time between each finger action, the slower the passage feels So fast passages feel slower sl ower to a player with faster faster-moving -moving fingers than they do to someone with slower-moving fingers, even if both players use exactly the same tempo. Simon Fischer, The Strad, July 2010  At the beginning of the lesson I confessed that with fast fas t pieces like the Wieniawski I expected myself to fail, but with unerring patience Burton Kaplan showed me how to work on tidying it up, using rhythms and a metronome. This was not particularly original in itself, but the specifics were more detailed and systematic, and the emphasis was on maintaining the musical content and sound, and a consistent bow, even under tempo. After a couple of days of doing this, my fingers were zinging away awa y on the fingerboard. Ariane Todes, The Strad, September 2014   Avoid all exaggerated, and especially all superfluous movements of the fingers. This rule must be specified into two laws supplementing each other if we wish speedily to obtain certainty of intonation, independence action, strength and endurance: (a) aNo finger should leave the string unless obliged of to do so; (b) Wherever and whenever

 

finger can take its place, before the bow has to play its tone, it should do so. Carl Courvoisier, The Strad, March 1893  

Passages that we worry about don’t need more practice time, but rather more relaxation as we execute them. Now, how to practise to be more relaxed? r elaxed? Certainly not by repeating the passage over and over again, hundreds of times, in every possible way. Rather, by distracting our mind exactly in the instant of execution. One possibility be, asinyou approach the scary slowlyway. start In moving head in a circle, can possibly a nonrhythmical and bit, ‘nonyou -musical’ doing your this you are forced to concentrate on the circle circl e your head is drawing instead of worrying about the passage you are about to play. The result is very often astonishing –  you  you just may have played your most hated passage perfectly and with great ease! eas e! The next step is to succeed in the same way on stage. There I suggest you do the same –  but  but this time make it look natural and beautiful and with an inner smile! smile ! Still move your head slightly, but rather THINK you’re drawing a circle and you will again feel ease while you play.  Thomas Demenga, The Strad website, February 2014  The Russian cellist Daniil Shafran was totally totall y unconscious of the cello. I saw him in rehearsal playing the most devilishly difficult music and talking at the same time! He no longer had to control his body. He was free to sense real, powerful emotion not just text. When your mind is liberated you can become creative. Leonid Gorokhov, The Strad, March 2004  

A common image for the right degree of muscle involvement is of a spectrum with complete relaxation at one end, tension at the other end and a balance point somewhere in the middle, where you have enough muscle involvement to be able to hold and manipulate things. However, this image does not suit the light, li ght, quick action of violin playing: a middle  point between the two extremes is already too far towards tension or over-concentration over-concentration in the muscles. Instead, think of the amount of muscle strength st rength required to hold and move the bow, to move the fingers up and down on the violin, change position, stop the strings, vibrate and so on, as being only just past the point of floppiness. This immediately produces a wonderful sensation of lightness and ease. An extraordinary new aliveness immediately comes into every action. Simon Fischer, The Strad, April 2005 

 

How to master bow speed and distribution Physicists think of time and space as aspects of the same thing. Gerald Fischbach applies the same theory to bow division

It was about a hundred years ago that a Swiss patent-office clerk turned our perception of reality inside-out by proving that space and time were not distinct disti nct forms of measurement, but two ways of looking at the same thing: the space-time continuum, as it has come to be called. It takes some doing to wrap our minds around Einstein’s revolutionary insight, but string players have an easier time than most, because we constantly live with our own double-perspective phenomenon: the bow-distributionspeed continuum.

The analogy isn’t perfect, but it i t is useful. When managing the bow, time is space and vice versa. It’s risky to keep track of only one and ignore the other. Continuous awareness of bow placement, distribution, stroke duration and speed are hallmarks of the highest levels of bow control. Bow division and bow speed should be part of even the first year of study. Consider the simple folk song Long, Long Ago. With bow speed as a constant, if we use a whole  bow on the crotchets the quavers take up half a bow. bow. Or, if the amount of bow is the constant and the speed of the crotchet whole bow is, say, 20mph, the quavers will be twice as fast: 40mph.

Which plan is musically better? The bow-division plan seems better suited than the  bow-speed plan to the flowing nature nature of the music. Its constant bow speed facilitates smooth connection of bow strokes; that also enables a constant bow pressure and contact point, ensuring continuity of dynamics and tone colour. Our standard terms for discussing bow division are rather limited: upper/ lower, middle,

frog, tip. They’ve served our needs so far, but in several of the ensuing examples, it will  be useful to talk about eighths of a bow, as indicated below. In the music examples where these are used, the symbol indicates where the bow is at the beginning of a stroke.

 

  Manipulation of bow speed and distribution is an endless skill. Early on the player swishes back and forth like a windscreen wiper, until trouble raises its inelegant head. More thoughtful approaches involve either symmetry or asymmetry. Symmetrical bow distribution plans are the easiest, spending the same time on down and up bows, requiring little planning to get right, often using hooked bowings. A passage from Bach’s A minor Concerto features hooked bowings i n almost all editions, as indicated above the stave.

Asymmetric bow distribution plans, where successive bow strokes last uneven lengths of time, require more attention from the performer but can be more eloquent. I prefer to  play the Bach passage with the composer’s ooriginal riginal markings, as indicated under the  stave. With these, the passage dances lightly on its feet in a way that the more

militaristic, hooked bowing can’t emulate.  The opening of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto is usually performed with hooked  bowings, as indicated above the stave. But the original original markings, shown below the stave, help to shape an undulating phrase of considerable beauty and interest: interest :

This from approach calls on more complicated subtracting a down  bow the previous up bow, bow, adding thebow-stroke subsequentarithmetic, up bow; being in control of where the bow is at any moment. During the planning stage, this maths is combined with a kind of bow-stroke time travel. One skips mentally mentall y to a future moment when the  bow needs to be at a particular point, and then works backwards to the present, calculating the bow-stroke arithmetic to get there. In the Mendelssohn example we look ahead to the soaring five- note down bow, where it’s clear we want a whole bow and therefore must start at the t he frog. Working backwards yields the bow-division plan indicated. The first bow stroke, minus the second, plus the third, minus the fourth, plus the fifth equals a whole bow. Asymmetric bow-distribution plans can lead to interesting musical shapes and conversations. Asymmetric accidents, however, can cause unmusical lumps in a phrase. The opening of the Bach Chaconne contains a classic example of this. The tendency is to use almost a whole bow on the dotted crotchet chords, followed by a quaver bow ‘belch’ as it comes all the way back to the frog, creating an inadvertent accent on the

 

lightest metric moment of the bar. We’ll return to the Chaconne later to propose a couple of solutions. Alternatively, when a long bow stroke, inadequately planned for, causes a player to run out of bow the result may be to play the next stroke s troke early. The technical term for this is

‘rushing’. From the teacher, the advice ‘slow bow’ is usually more useful than ‘don’t rush’.  String players go to considerable lengths to organise longer note values on down bows. My theory is that we are less embarrassed about running out of bow on a down than an up bow: few things are worse than running out of bow when moving towards the frog! This has led to some of the more serious sins of past editions and some unmusical traditions. Consider the o pening phrase phrase of the solo violin in M Mozar’s ozar’s G major Con Concerto: certo: 

If we sing the melody, we naturally put an energetic emphasis on the down-beat note and sing the second note lightly. However, most standard editions suggest either two down bows or up-down. Both of these de-emphasise the downbeat and inspire an ungainly stress on the second beat. Bowing these down-up puts our power stroke on the down beat –  the  the chord (evidence that Mozart intended a stronger down-beat than second  beat), and works beautifully with Mozart’s slurring of the following six semi -quavers.

Many editors ‘correct’ this to three slurred couplets, in spite of the fact that Mozart slurs them two plus four in every solo appearance.

Bow strokes have musical ‘temperatures’ and sound density, depending on these variables. It can be useful to t o think in the following terms: Bow stroke temperature: slow bow = warm; fast bow = cool Bow stroke density: slow = opaque; fast = transparent

It’s a little more complicated than that. For a warm sound, the slow bow stroke is also relatively close to the bridge and deep into the string, while a cool sound finds the fast  bow stroke further from the bridge and more more on the surface of the string. The same goes for opaque (close, deep) and transparent (further, lighter). lighter) . Bow speed when considered alone seems to have a linear relationship r elationship to dynamics: faster = louder; slower = softer. But dynamic changes often imply colour changes and therefore unexpected solutions can yield the most effective effecti ve results. For instance,  pianissimo is not piano with something subtracted; subtracted; it is an intensification of the piano gesture. I usually think of piano as a warm dynamic and pianissimo as cool. Therefore, I usually play pianissimo with a faster (and lighter li ghter and further-from-bridge) bow stroke than piano.

At the higher levels of artistic control, bow speed is a ‘variable variable’: for expressive or tactical reasons, even within a single bow stroke, one might start at one speed and

 

change speeds en route. In the demonic opening theme of the Franck Sonata’s second movement, each of the first three bow strokes might have three distinct speeds: a fast  beginning, a slower middle and a re-energised end, bringing bringing to life the pickups to the next bow stroke:

The dark side to this capability is demonstrated by the unskilled player who starts a long  bow stroke too fast, and runs out of bow bow towards the end of the stroke. Bow cchanges hanges are smoothest when the speed of the beginning of a new stroke matches that of the end of the previous one. The player should organise a bow speed for the end of a stroke s troke that  best serves the expressive needs of the moment and must take care to start the next stroke with the same speed. An unskilled player may compound the lumpiness of a  phrase with a stroke that starts too fast and slows down at the end followed by one that shoots in the other direction with a burst of speed. A retake can sometimes be like li ke a space-time warp, the bow magicall magically y relocating almost instantaneously to another place, or in effect making the bow longer or shorter than it actually is. The eminent 20th-century pedagogue Paul Rolland used to recommend a retake solution for the quaver in the opening bars of the Bach Chaconne, as indicated i ndicated above the stave. This is an example of using usi ng a retake to effectively shorten the bow. My  preference has come to be an asymmetric plan, as shown below the stave:

Bow speed has a relationship to string stri ng thickness and length. The thicker, lower-pitched strings prefer a relatively relativel y slow bow; the thinner, higher-pitched strings, faster. As you climb up any given string with the left hand, thus shortening the vibrating string length, the shorter string cries out for a faster bow stroke. You can literally hear the string calling for a change of bow speed! Its call cal l will be a pressed groan when too slow on the higher strings in higher positions, or a kind of whistly pitch-deficient sound when the  bow is too fast on the lower strings in lower positions. positions. For happiest tonal results, the sounding point is relatively farther from the bridge for lower strings strin gs and pitches, closer for higher. Likewise, long, thick strings prefer more pressure than short, thin ones. Chords are classic examples of this relationship between bow speed and string thickness. In an arpeggiated chord, the lower note or notes in most cases c ases should be  played with a slower bow speed, the upper upper notes faster. Harmonics require special attention regarding bow speed, as well as sound point and  pressure. The image we have of harmonics tends to be that of something requiring lightness of touch. In fact, only one factor is appropriately appropriatel y described as light  –  the  the

 

fourth-finger pressure (or sometimes that of the t he third finger). When the harmonic is a strong gesture, then even that should be strong. The bow stroke should be authoritative rather than light, with a markedly faster bow speed and correspondingly more bow than

for a stopped note. The bow’s sounding point should be four times as close to the bridge as that of a firmly stopped finger. Once you open the floodgates of awareness of bow speed and division, the endless expressive possibilities wash over you and your universe of artistry artistr y is changed forever.

 

Violinist Hilary Hahn on practice and interpretation In June 2012 violinist Hilary Hahn was guest editor of The Strad’s ‘Conversations’ special. The following five quotations on performance and interpretation are extracted extract ed from that issue.

Hilary Hahn on…  on…  Practice and performing rituals  I used to have intentional rituals, but with the travelling I do, they went by the wayside.

Every day is different, but I do things habitually without realising. For practice, it’s more that I’m trying to get into a mindset. A routine doesn’t come naturally. I like to have a different setting almost every day; I think better if I’m in a different place. On concert days I try to take a nap before getting ready. That’s definitely become a ritual. It tells me something’s coming.  Reaching a personal interpretation interpretation  What I focus on with set pieces is creating the interpretation, the meaning that I want to convey. Of course the piece has meaning, but it can be turned in many different ways. You have to think, ‘What am I saying?’ I graduated at 19 and when I started working on my own it took a while to understand my instincts. Now when I approach a piece I go through the score, I listen to recordings, I talk to people about their experiences and impressions, and try to build my interpretation from the ground up. When I perform the

work for the first concert], it changes unpredictable ways. the any firstkind  performance I feeltime like[in I finally know what theinpiece is. It could haveAfter become of piece on stage, but it’s determined to show how it really wants to be, and it does. Mental versus physical practice  When I was at school I practised up to five fi ve or six hours a day. Now I can practise for eight hours but can be playing for less. The proportions have shifted. I play a little, l ittle, I write something in the music, I do some stretching stretc hing exercises, I think about it, I come  back to it. I do a lot, but the amount amount of actual playing probably n never ever exceeds four hours. That’s about all I can do physically.  Where to feel the music   Expression is in the hands –   the the emotional tools for conveying interpretation are there.

But for me it’s also in the legs. People don’t see this because I usually wear a long gown, but when I play standing, I move my legs with the music. The core and the back are also important for allowing that feeling to go into the arms.

 

Finding a balance between work and rest   I have to remember to keep on top of all aspects of playing the instrument. The biggest challenge for me these days is to t o find a consistent working mindset in the midst of the constant changes of travelling life. It’s weird –  on  on the one hand I try to keep a logical  balance of work and rest, and on the other, other, I constantly have work at the back of my

mind. Something I see or hear reminds me of something I’ve been working on, or gives   me a new idea for a project. I love that push and pull.  Photo: Patrick O’Leary  O’Leary 

 

How I warm up: violist Maxim Rysanov The Russian-born viola player gives an insight into his detailed warm-up regimen

My full warm-up routine usually takes about 30 – 40 40 minutes. Normally I warm up with a four-octave scale, four octaves of arpeggios, and two octaves of double-stops. The scale I choose is always alwa ys dictated by the work I have to learn or perform on that  particular day. If time allows, I also do some vibrato and shifting exercises. First, I play a full scale in a very slow tempo –  one  one bow per note. I play each note for around five or six seconds, trying to play piano, without pressure, and concentrating on the equality of the sound of each note  –  there  there should be no sudden crescendos or diminuendos in any part of the bow. I also make sure that there are no unnecessary movements in the right hand, not only during the note itself but also between notes. I need to be able to make bow changes very smoothly: it allows me to make any sort of  phrase I want by freely changing the bow bow up or down withou withoutt feeling dependent on the  bow changes. Then I increase the tempo, while while still playing just one note per full bow. Then I practise détaché strokes in the middle of the bow. (I use very little of the bow for this.) At first I go slowly, then faster and faster. I try to listen to the connections  between the notes, so that the left-hand fingers fall in place along with the change of  bow direction. The whole thing should sound as legato as possible. After that I play long spiccato, three times ti mes for each note, at the frog. I ttry ry to make each note exactly the same length, as the common difficulty is that the bow is harder to lift after a down bow. Again, I practise the exercise slowly at first, then faste faster. r. Then I return to the middle of the bow: four notes détaché on the string, followed by four notes spiccato. The sequence is to be practised in slow, medium and fast tempos, and then very fast, using only spiccato. Spiccato should be a controlled stroke: it should s hould not be understood as a freely jumping bow. In very slow motion, spiccato is détaché with a lift of the bow after each note.

The next thing I do is the ‘dotted rhythm’ rh ythm’ exercise. For this I use the full bow and start in forte, gradually varying the dynamic and pressure but letting the bow rest on the string –   not not lifting it from the string. Before I get to the up bow, I hook the short note of the dotted rhythm in at the tip of the bow. Then I start the up bow forte and repeat the  process. I then practise portato: four and eight notes per bow, concentrating on the elbow movement –   open open and closed, not stopping between notes. After that, I play legato  –   four, eight, sixteen and twenty-four notes per bow.

 

Then I continue with arpeggios. I play four notes in each bow, concentrating on shifting and my left-hand position. I try to relax my left elbow, so that it i t can turn towards my chest to feel comfortable in the t he high positions. The thumb can come out from under the neck and lightly touch the side of the fingerboard when moving into a high position. For violists to reach the higher positions freely, we can help ourselves by turning the elbow and moving the thumb out, so that the left hand almost keeps the shape it has in third

 position. On the shifts, shifts, I try to relax the pressure pressure of the finge fingerr I’m sliding on, to achieve achieve the feeling of playing a harmonic. I start the arpeggios from the same note and vary them harmonically (for example: minor; major; first and second inversions; dominant 7th). I finish with two octaves of double-stops, in 3rds, 6ths and octaves. I find that practising double-stops is a good exercise to keep the left hand in position, so that my fingers are not being lifted too far from the string without a reason.

 

Ask the Experts: how to encourage students to trust their ears Strad readers submit their problems and queries about string playing, teaching or making to our experts

In the 15th of the series, a reader asks what can be done to help young students trust their ears and develop their inner sense of tuning? Three teachers give their views.

str uggling with learning ABRSM Grade 6 The dilemma I have two students who are struggling and scales. Both are attempting to commit alltheir the sharps memory as –  ‘high’ and 7 ‘low’ finger positions rather than trusting ears toand hearflats the to scale pattern  be it  be harmonic or melodic minor, dominant or diminished 7th –  7th  –  and  and place their fingers accordingly. This seems to be part of a wider problem for both students, who try to  place their fingers in a mathemati cal way, rather than allowing their ears to listen for intonation issues and adjust their fingers to compensate. How do I get them to trust their innate sense of tuning, and is there an easy system for learning scale patterns?   SYED MANZOOR, DOHA, QATAR  QATAR  CECILY MENDELSSOHN I agree that it would be beneficial to your students if you could help them play their scales by ear. It will mean you can also put away the scale  book for the next term!

First of all, can you get them to sing? They may be reluctant as young teenagers if

they’re not used to doing so, in which case you could try teaching them together. This would also be more fun for them and for you.

Here are some ideas to build up their aural skills progressively, with scales in mind. Start on the first finger for each of the following exercises: *Play the first half of a major scale. Ask your pupils to play it back to you. You can vary the rhythm to make it more interesting, and you can start anywhere on the instrument as they improve –  some  some sliding around to find the notes is quite acceptable! Then show them how the finger pattern of the first half matches that of the second half  –   it’s just on the next string.  *When your pupils are ready, repeat with the first half of a minor scale. In time, you can repeat this idea with the second half of the minor scales, one at a time –  but  but be prepared for this to take longer because the finger pattern is different.

 

Your students may not quite realise that they only have three scale tunes to learn! They should soon be ready to sing and play a whole octave of any of the three (still starting on the first finger each time), anywhere on the violin. The next stage is to start on a specific note, playing each octave separ separately, ately, and only  joining up the second or third octave octave when each one is known thoro thoroughly. ughly. The same applies when it comes to adding slurs. Although starting each octave on a first finger is a simple pattern learn, it may not Also, be thestarting most useful scales; to pitch the notestoon the way down. on a one first for finger is noand useitatcan allbe forhard diminished 7ths, so once the tune of the first octave is sung and played, it will be helpful to have a finger chart to memorise. However, the good news is that starting on a first finger works very well for major and minor arpeggios and dominant 7ths, so when you next see your students, perhaps that’s where you could begin!  YVONNE FRYE Any string player must be able to imagine the note they’re about to

 play before putting their bow on the string. string. A good way to improve one’s abilities abilities in this regard is to sing the notes with the help of sol fa notation: before students sta start rt to  play a note, see if they can sing it out loud. Begin by giving them one-octave scales at a singable pitch. pitc h. Then extend the range to three octaves, letting the students sing an octave higher or lower depending on their natural voice. You should find that their fingers will start st art to follow the ear and not the eye. To help with intonation, you could let the students play the whole scale with just one finger. This prevents them from thinking in terms of finger patterns, and forces them to follow the sound they’re making instead. In addition, while your students play a scale, you can support the intonation by playing your own instrument an octave lower at the same time. At a later stage, you could ask the student to play one note of the scale and sing the next one before moving on. Continue in this way through the whole scale. This exercise is not as easy as the others, but it is very helpful when it comes to ear-training. ear -training. If the student sings the next note out of tune, the teacher can sing the correct one for them as a guide.

‘Inner hearing’ skills should be taught from the very beginning. A great method that  provides this in a unique way is Colourstrings, Colourstrings, for which there are many books to help  beginner violinists develop their inner hearing skills in addition to improving improving their technique. TERI EINFELDT There are three steps to this answer. The first is to make sure the student truly understands intervals, whole tones, semitones and ringing tones. The second is for the student to understand how each scale is constructed in terms of whole tones, semitones and/or augmented 2nds. The third is for the student to be able to sing or hum each of the aforementioned tones and intervals. If they t hey can think of the distance  between each note of the scale (humming it beforehand) and know which notes of the scale will ring if they the y are in tune, they will be successful. As wit with h all new tasks, many repetitions are required before it becomes a natural part of the process.

 

When putting together three octaves, always repeat the tonic note. This gives the ear a chance to hear the scale from the beginning note, showing that the first time the tonic is  played, it is the last note of the first octave; and the second time, it serves as the first note of the next octave. Once the second octave is i s secure, add the third. When all three octaves are secure, remove the repeated tonic notes. You can ask the student to st stop op  before the last note of the octave, then have them hum the pitch pitch and after that play the tonic as the first note of the next octave. I know too well how easy it is for my m y students to rely on their ear alone to play their scales. It is my job to ensure they t hey understand what they are playing as they utilise all the advantages of their well-trained hearing. If there is a combination of intellectual and aural understanding, it will be much easier to apply this knowledge to all other ot her repertoire they will encounter on their musical journey.  After a varied career of tutoring and playing, Cecily Mendelssohn Mendelssohn teaches privately and helps to run Stringwise children’s courses in the UK   Yvonne Frye has taught at the East Helsinki Music Institute since 2007, and teaches violin pedagogy at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland   Teri Einfeldt is chair of the Suzuki department at the Hartt School Community Division of the University of Hartford in Connecticut, US  

 

6 ways to improve your string crossing Tips for even and seamless string crossing from fr om The Strad’s archive 

One of the secrets of a smooth bow arm, and of seamless, legato string-crossings, is to  bow between the levels of the four strings. A good good way to make string-crossings rounded is to practise them as double-stops or to leave le ave out the left hand and just play the  bowing pattern on open strings. Simon Fischer, The Strad, December 2009  The whole arm from the shoulder should be used, and not the wrist, except in certain exceptional cases. A flapping wrist is no help in crossing strings, but will cause irregularity in tone and time. A supple wrist need not move to prove its suppleness, as some enthusiastic players seem to think. The sound will tell everything and must be the chief consideration. Joy Calvert, The Strad, September 1948   For continual change of two strings, choose that elevation of the elbow which would suit the stroke on both strings together, so that the hair will lie full on the farther (thicker) string, but with its edge only on the nearer (thinner) one. Should you choose choose the elevation according to any one string among the two, you would either roll the bow over backwards on the far string, or overdo the bend of the hand on the nearer one. Carl Courvoisier, The Strad, September 1893   When moving from G to C string on the cello, the wrist movement required for this  purpose is greater than on the other strings. But it must be remembered remembered that the wrist must never sink below the level with the forearm; nor should the movements of the wrist be sudden or self-intentional. E. Van Der Straeten, The Strad, November 1895  To cross smoothly from one string to another, the bow has to start moving towards the new string while it is still sti ll playing the old string. This is a good example of technical timing as opposed to musical timing. Musical timing is when you want the note to sound; technical timing is always before the sound. If the string s tring crossing movement is made too late, so that the technical timing is almost the same as the musical timing, fast  passages may feel unnecessarily awkward; slow, legato passages may contain unwanted accents. You can easily improve string crossing passages passa ges by deliberately crossing too early. Play the note before the string crossing and the note after it as a double stop. Simon Fischer, The Strad, January 1997 

 

In crossing strings the wrist will be raised in crossing from a higher (or front) to a lower (or back) string and reversely dip or bend downwards when crossing from a lower to a higher string, and this whether up or down bow. John Dunn, The Strad, March 1897 

 

‘Every bow movement should be calculated,’ says violinist Aaron Rosand The American maestro discusses the need for relaxation and finesse for good tone  production

Auer stated that no hard-and-fast rule existed for how the second, third and fourth fingers grasp the bow. I hold the violin as directly directl y centred as possible. Someone with a longer arm might have to move the violin over a couple of inches in order to t o always  play parallel to the bridge. I hold the bow with my third finger on the ey eyee of the frog

and I usually keep it there. The hand is rounded, I’m using all the fingers. The little finger is always resting on the bow behind the third finger; it doesn’t exert pressure but  balances the bow. The thumb is bent and presses on to the frog, where it rests all the time. Much of the secret of good tone comes from control of the bow. The obsession today is with big tone. Too often the tendency is to press harder, but all that happens is that the  player works harder and achieves less. The arm should not play a part in the production

of tone. Sometimes I tell my students: ‘Look, you’re not ironing a shirt; you’re trying to draw the sound out of the instrument, not press the tone into it.’ Something has to be sacrificed when you are pressing hard like that. Pressure actually decreases the t he sound. When you go past the centre of the bow and  press, the bow will begin to quiver. People People who bow that way are afraid of losing control of their bow and will often move rapidly away from the centre of it because

they’re afraid that it will or thatthethey it when sustaining note. They also compensate byshake tightening bowwill hairdrop so much that there’s noa long longer any vibration of the stick. If the t he bow doesn’t vibrate it will not produce the individual sound that every fine bow can. Suddenly, the sound becomes smaller because about a third t hird of it is being lost. Every move of the bow has to be calculated. I often compare bowing to a game of

 billiards. It’s not about about knocking the ball ball into the pocket; it’s aabout bout where you set the cue ball for the next shot. Not enough thought is given to where the bow should be for the note after the one you’re playing now.  There should be no break in the sound with the bow change. Drawing the bow to the tip,

there is a light turn that t hat corresponds to a similar turn at the frog, so it’s it ’s like a figure of eight. The result is seamless, lyric sound. People who haven’t learnt how to move the  bow to the frog never quite reach the frog or the tip and play in effect with two-thirds of the bow.

 

Correct posture can significantly improve your playing, writes Aaron Rosand Good standing and sitting positions, and avoiding using a shoulder rest, are all important for optimum performance, says the American violin virtuoso

Have you ever stopped to think that if it looks good it will sound better? Appearance is an important part of the complete package, and more attention should be given to this integral factor. Whether you play an audition or give a

 performance, your appearance and deportment has a lot to do with your success. When you look like you know what you are doing, the playing will exude confidence. This may well be the key to succeeding in your endeavor.

For standing position, a good stance may be achieved by bearing in mind that your  body weight rests primarily on your your left leg. Remember that the violin rests on your left side and is the reason for the principal weight on that side for balance. Do not sspread pread your legs too far apart. Twelve to fourteen inches is enough to give you proper balance. Keep your knees flexed, do not stiffen, and your right leg must be relaxed. When shifting your weight, your right leg may move forward; always return to the normal  position with the right leg and do not start walking. Moving aroun around d is not a good habit. Think of Jascha Heifetz whose legs were like li ke a tree trunk. Focus all of your movement on your hands and keep your mind solely focused on the music.

For sitting position, keep your back straight. Keep Kee p your violin in proper playing  position with scroll pointed to the music and not not to the brass section. Do not slouch or cross your legs or spread your legs too far apart. Make M ake sure that you have enough space to bow properly and get to the tip staying parallel to the bridge.

How do you hold the violin? This is a question that I frequently ask and most young  players cannot answer. They point to the shoulder shoulder rest which is a sorry excuse for holding the violin. Heifetz’s reply to a young student who said that he could not play

without one was ‘Take up the cello!’ Yehudi Menuhin in his book states that it should rest on the collar bone. Most of the great players that I have known are in total agreement with this, and not one ever used the shoulder rest. When the violin is on the collar bone, the left shoulder moves slightly under the violin. Your left elbow el bow should

 

move inward and well under the back of the violin. This will put your left-hand fingers in the ideal position for intonation and controlled vibrato. The violin is sometimes held leaning on the fleshy part of the left thumb and at times with chin down for rapid  passage work or descending passages from higher positions. There is a constant interplay of these parts and they must always be relaxed. Do not clutch the neck of the violin with your left hand. The thumb must remain free to glide easily. easil y. You must remember that the violin is an instrument inst rument that must be held. Your shoulders must be bent slightly inward, and in this way the natural weight of your bow will  produce a beautiful sound without additional additional pressure. With a shoulder rest your right arm is more extended. You have to put more pressure on the bow forcing the sound. More and more violinists of today are obsessed with a big sound and pressing the bow constantly, devoid of attention to dynamics. The nuances, subtleties, and textures are neglected as a result of the position and angle of the violin when a shoulder rest is used.

Always stand straight and keep your head high. Avoid crouching and keep your neck relaxed at all times. Tension in your neck will create problems. Breathe naturally while  playing, and do not not hold your breath as it will cause grunting and unnecessary sounds while you play.

The best solution to improve playing is to remember to be as comfortable as possible at all times. If you have pain in your your arms, neck, or back, stop what y you ou are doing. Try to analyse what the problem may be and experiment with other positions. Being comfortable will help you achieve more gratification from your work and certainly  provide more enjoyment.

 

6 tips for improve improved d coordination Guidance from The Strad’s archive for greater synchronisation between left-hand fingers and bow

Whenever we articulate with the left hand, there can be an almost imperceptible portato in the bow: the right hand moves as we lift a left-hand l eft-hand finger, or as we put one down. It’s very hard to separate the two, and so we form bad habits. You can improve your coordination by using almost any piece ever written. Begin by playing the piece you are learning using just the right hand, doing all the bowings and string-crossings on open strings.Julie Albers, The Strad, January 2015  In many cases it is easier e asier for the bow to be ready to pla play y a note than it is for the left

hand fingers to be ready on the string. The bow must always ‘wait’ for the finger to be down before the bow sounds the note. The left hand fingers always lead. If the finger is not ready, a moment of ‘fuzz’ is caused by bowing the half -stopped -stopped string. A simple way to demonstrate perfect coordination is to play pizzicato: pizzi cato: the difference in timing  between putting the finger down and and plucking is then automatic. Simon Fischer, The Strad , October 1993   The performance of a perfect messa perfect  messa di voce  voce  –   swelling and diminishing a long note –   –  swelling requires an interplay of tensions and relaxations that exists only in a perfectly balanced, dextrous technique. To master the messe di voce, voce, then, is to conquer technique and coordinate yourself ideally at the instrument. The string, str ing, the bow stick and hair, and the

 player’s arm are all all flexible and resilient. Together Together they create create a system ooff springs that not only withstand pressure but thrive under it. Pedro de Alcantara, the Strad, June 2004   Dont study op.35 no.6 Allegretto scherzoso concentrates on two main aspects of technique: coordination, and speed and mobility of fingers when executing trills. The more frequent mistake made by pupils working on coordination is found in the almost automatic accent placed by the bow on the last note of each group. To avoid this I recommend playing the figuration by isolating each first note. Then try to continue the  bowing in a similar way, irrespective of what the left hand is doing. doing. Zakhar Bron, The Strad, April 1999  The bow may easily get ahead of the fingers in fast passages because bowing actions are often more straightforward than finger action. The bow may simply be moving up and down on the same string while the left fingers have hav e many complex actions to perform –   changing shape from note to note, dropping from different heights, some being pla placed ced early on the string, some being placed after shifts, shifts , and so on. Simon Fischer, The Strad, October 1996   Avoid all exaggerated, and especially all superfluous movements of the fingers: (a) No finger should leave the string unless obliged to do so; (b) Wherever and whenever a

 

finger can take its place, before the bow has to play its tone, it sshould hould do so. The  practice of deliberate anticipation and delay does not favour a want of precision in the feeling of the fingers. On the contrary, it drills them into a far finer feeling for accuracy of time then the habit of placing the fingers for the duration of their notes only; for it compels them not merely to watch the moments of coming and going for their own sake, but also to keep in conscious communication with the other fingers and with the  bow as to precision in time. Carl Courvoisier, The Strad, March 1893  

 

10 views on the benefits of slow practice Debate on how best to harness slow practice from The Strad Archive

One of the most important considerations is the choice of tempo at which to practise. Teachers with a more or less pronounced streak of sadism have forced students to  practise long segments almost exclusively at an extremely slow tempo –  the  the slower, the  better. Aside from being extremely tiring such an approach does not bring the desired results. The most appropriate policy is to take a best-fit approach to practising  –  divide  divide it according to the purpose of the exercise and then assign the most suitable tempo for it. For example, work on intonation, due to the control required, should be attempted in small segments and at a rather rat her slow tempo. Larger segments should be practised at a tempo that ideally allows all the positive attributes of slow and normal tempos  –   maximum control with right movements. The Russian professor M.M. Beljakov named such a tempo ‘working allegro’.Rok Klopčič, T he Stra Str ad , October 2006  Doing slow, analytical practice and studying orchestral scores and piano accompaniments are essential. At the moment I am preparing for a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London, where I am performing John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil . When I practise, I have to concentrate on a particular kind of long and sustained sound in the highest register of the A string. In order to prepare I practise rregular egular scales and arpeggios with very slow and long bows, always listening to the quality of sound. Raphael Wallfisch, T he Stra Str ad , November 2014  Play slowly and practise short sections. If too t oo much happens too fast, the brain cannot notice small differences. Learning needs to happen in manageable chunks, and slowly enough for the brain to notice critical bits of information. The greater the detail that can  be noticed, the richer the feedback loop of learning. If we cannot manage manage the learning  process, it is simply because we have bitten off more than we can chew. By working one step at a time, slowly slowl y enough, we ensure a successful process of achieving outcomes. Piet Koornhof, T he Stra Str ad , September 2002  The most important reason for practising with a metronome is to keep you slow. As string players, we are always alwa ys engaged in multitasking and if you leave out any of these tasks, the music and technique both suffer. Being able to think of as many tasks as  possible is one of the main reasons why it’s important to practise slowly. It is i s a proven fact that the more tasks you are able to perform at the same ttime, ime, the quicker you will  benefit from the process of osmosis. Because we all have the tendency to play too fast, we need an outside influence to keep us slow. Gary Karr, The Strad , July 2010 

 

In his excellent book Practicing book Practicing for Artistic Success: The Musician’s Guide to Self  Empowerment, Burton  Empowerment,  Burton Kaplan urges the necessity of finding the Tempo of Consistent Control. To find your Tempo of Consistent Control, you will need a metronome. Then try this process: *Set the metronome to the tempo at which you think you can play the passage *Begin playing *Stop when you make a mistake –  even  even a small one –  and  and set the metronome 5-10bpm slower Repeat this process until you can play through the passage with no mistakes. After trying this a few times, you will begin to recognise what a Tempo of Consistent Consiste nt Control feels like –  it  it is a calm, centered feeling that is entirely devoid of anxiety. Stay with your Tempo of Consistent Control for at least four days, before moving on to the next comfortable place –  you  you will be surprised how much more secure you feel at the next stop on the metronome now that your foundation is strong. Strad , October 2011  Shelly Trampoosh , The Strad  I play each section slowly, working on intonation, character and building up my tempo. I push myself gradually. Some passages will take longer than others to play pla y at a faster tempo, but I don’t move on the overall speed of any section of the piece until I am ready to play the whole thing at that speed. For me, this makes the learning process much faster; it helps to make sure that there are no sections of the piece that I fear. If I move the whole piece on, then slow down for one difficult section secti on until I can play it properly, I am more likely to dread that section s ection when I have to play it up to speed in performance. Natalia Lomeiko, The Stra Str ad , February 2016 On breaking up the piece into short segments I can carefully care fully address particular technical challenges, such as intonation and coordination, without trying to be particularly musical. This might include practising in rhythms, trying different bowings, very slow  practice and so on. When I try to go through the piece and bring it up to tempo, I record myself and put tick-marks by the spots that are still not perfect. When I start my next session I go to those particular spots, and when I feel completely secure I erase the ticks. When there are no more ticks I feel pretty good. Almita Vamos, The Stra Str ad , July 2015 

At the moment I’m practising the Kodály Solo Sonata for a concert. In some of the  perpetual motion sections, the metronome marking is ♩ = 160. I start at ♩ = 120 and run the section through at that tempo before breaking it down. Where there are semiquavers and four beats to the bar, I start by holding the first note for one beat and playing the other notes as written. Then I increase the speed to ♩ = 126 holding the second note of each group, then to ♩ = 132 holding the third, ♩ = 128 holding the fourth, then t hen ♩ = 144 for a group of eight. I gradually work up to ♩ = 160. Alisa Weilerstein, T he Stra Str ad , June 2015  Generally for Bach, tempo has to be built up with time. I have a week to practise the Sixth Suite, so I start off playing the Prelude slowly, and only after three days, when my  body has had a chance to get get used to each position, I start speeding up little by little. By the sixth day I’m finally playing at the correct tempo. That said, there’s always a certain degree of freedom in the Bach Suites  –  I’m more concerned with retaining the t he dancing

 

mood and the colours of the piece. Str ad , January 2014  Maxim Rysanov, T he Stra In difficult passages, I find it helps to tackle a two-minute excerpt by playing it through at a moderate pace. Then evaluate and pick several smaller sections from that same excerpt, and work on them, as slowly as necessary, until you understand what is wrong, why, and what the solutions are. Build up speed, phrasing, dynamics and then try the original excerpt again. You could try pretending you are giving yourself a lesson. What

would you tell the ‘student you’ about the passage that isn’t working? More often than not, you’ll have a pretty pr etty good idea of where the answer lies. Yevgeny Kutik, T he Stra Str ad , December 2015 

 

Never practise for more than five hours per day, says violinist Itzhak Perlman When you put a sponge in the water, after a while it i t reaches saturation point, just like our brains… 

What are the pitfalls of practising? Well, if you don’t practise thoroughly thoroughly you can get yourself into a situation where not only do you fail to accomplish what you set out to achieve, but you can make the situation worse! A lot of practising practi sing involves repetition, and if you repeat something out of tune for five hours a day, your brain will remember that repetition. Thereafter, every time you play that passage, it will be out of tune. The same goes, sometimes, for works you performed as a kid. If you played something at six or seven years old, 10 or 20 years later, the mistakes mi stakes of childhood will come back to haunt you.

When kids ask me for an autograph, I always sign my name and then write, ‘Practise slowly!’ That’s my message to them. If you practise slowly, you forget slowly. If you  practise very quickly, maybe it will work for a day or or two and then it will go away,

 because it has not been absorbed absorbed by your your brain. It’s like putting a sponge in the water. water. If you let it stay there it retains a lot of water.  just as needed. By now I have enough experience I don’t more needs –  to knowpractice when aregularly particularany passage work. I don’t do scales and exercises –  but  but young people should not copy me in this! I did my scales due diligence when I was growing up –   especially especially with my first teacher, who was a scale fiend. I would practise an hour of scales every day and an hour of etudes every ever y day. These really helps when you study new pieces with basic technical challenges. I tell my students, ‘If you do your scales properly it will save you a lot of time.’  There are a lot of people who believe that the more you practise the greater the

improvement, but I don’t believe that. Again I cite the sponge example. When you put a sponge in the water, after a while it reaches saturation saturat ion point. Keeping it in there for any

longer won’t help, as it’s absorbed as much as it can. That’s the way our brain works. Generally speaking, I never practise more than about three hours a day –  sometimes  sometimes in the summers I might practice an extra extr a hour. I would say five hours is the absolute maximum. After that it can cause physical problems.

 

Violinist Itzhak Perlman on conquering performance nerves ‘Know your enemy,’ says The Strad’s August 2015 issue cover star  

 Nerves ar e part of what we do

and the thing is to be familiar with them. It’s not about getting rid of them; it’s having h aving the ability to say, ‘OK I’m feeling nervous, so my  playing will be affected, affected, but not in any way that I haven’t dealt dealt with before’. You want to know your enemy so there are no surprises. But nerves are a funny thing and they often appear when you least expect it. I still suffer from them –  I  I can play a small concert in a small town and all of a sudden I will become nervous for absolutely no reason, whereas the big concert in an ‘important’ place will be absolutely fine. If you assume that you will be nervous and then you aren’t, it will be the icing on the cake. You must always play for your audience. Trying to figure out what the composer wants may be a personal process but ultimately ultimatel y you want to share this with your listeners and to invite their involvement in your interpretation. The one thing you must not do is to say, ‘This is none of your business; I’m going to play in my m y own little cubicle and you

 just happen to be be there’. You hav havee to communicate communicate to the audience, audience, ‘Listen, this is what I feel about this t his piece.’ If you can do that, despite the nerves, you have succeeded succeeded..  

 

‘Children must develop early independence in learning,’ says violinist Pinchas Zukerman The veteran violinist and violist speaks to Charlotte Gardner about how personal experience informs his teaching

‘A former student of my wife Amanda Forsyth decided to start a morning cello class for two, three and four-year-olds. This wasn’t Suzuki –  it  it was about real music. She asked me if I would play to the kids, so as an experiment I performed a three-and-a-half minute Sarabande by Bach  –  no  no nursery rhymes this time  –  and  and when I finished there

was a silence that you wouldn’t believe. Then is sweet little blond guy of about three said, “I’M ON FIRE!!!” It was absolutely beautiful!  

This isn’t to say that Suzuki can’t be a good start, but it doesn’t help with the next stages of development, when the child is six or seven s even and they have to start learning

how to read and spell. You can’t just learn by rote or by ear. And especially if the child doesn’t have a natural ea r –  if  if they require aural training  –  Suzuki  Suzuki is really not going to help at all. Of course, it is a good system for establishing a musical relationship between  parent and child because they can learn the steps together, but after six or eight months, months, that’s enough and the child has to learn to think for him or herself. I would definitely rather teach a child without a parent in the room –  although  although

sometimes it’s very difficult to convince the parents of that! I want to t o be able to treat the student in a matur e way, and to establish a relationship, and that’s very difficult with the  parent present. When I first started learning the violin, my father came with me, but my

teacher asked him to leave. Although my father couldn’t believe it, I came on my own to the next lesson –  walked on my own to the teacher’s house –  and  and it established independence. This is why we have schools. The parents don’t sit in the classroom, do they? The first time I left home when I was 13, I flew all the wa way y from Tel Aviv to New York.

For the first six months, maybe se seven ven or so, I was a mi miserable serable little boy. I didn’t know what had happened to me. But at the same time I learned l earned so much of what I still put into  practice today –   especially especially about relationships. It was only when I hit the bottom  psychologically and emotionally, that I developed developed a true understanding of life.  Nowadays when my students speak to me, they do so as a teacher, but also as someone that really understands why, and what it is you have to do to become a better player, a  better musician, a better person.’ 

 

How should string teachers deal with naturally unmusical children? It may be sad to say, but some pupils have no gift for playing pla ying at all, says Royal  Northern College of Music senior lecturer in education, Philippa Bunting

Some pupils find playing a stringed instrument really difficult. Physically, aurally and tonally, and despite the best efforts of teachers, pupil and probably parent, they really  just don’t get it. 

I’m not talking here about the ‘don’t want to’ type of pupil. Any amount of resistance can prevent a child from accepting instruction, and there can be any number of reasons for it. Nor am I questioning the value of learning an instrument inst rument per se, as every child has the right to learn music and discover the th e rich benefits it can bring. And I could not

deny that I have learnt more as a teacher from those pupils than any others. I’m talking about the children who want to improve their musicianship and are prepared to work steadfastly at it, but who just genu inely can’t get the hang of it. Some might inch forward with such a tiny amount of progress that others around  –  though  though not usually the child –  lose  lose patience. Our relationship to pupils is somewhat different from that of a teacher of a compulsory curriculum subject. Where there is an element of choice, especially if that choice has implications in terms of time and money, the question of whether learning an instrument

is ‘worthwhile’ becomes not only one of the quality of the experience itself, but of the likely end result. People are used to getting concrete things in return for their money, and parents or schools purchasing lessons for children are no different. diff erent. There was one pupil of mine who apparently had no elbows. He genuinely used his arms as one unarticulated whole, making playing really difficult. Together we went through what seemed like the entire available repertoire rep ertoire for beginner violinists. The

 parents were supportive, supportive, we ke kept pt trying, eventually that elbow found its bend, bend, and he’s still playing the violin today.

As we know, it’s not always like that. The parents of children who struggle can often be those who are keenest on external marks of success, such as grades and scholarships. This means that we, as teachers, are potentially caught in rather a n nasty asty morass of guilt and deception. How do you explain that, despite learning for three years, your pupil is  just not ready to be measured by even the tiniest external yardstick? You can engineer  positive performance opportunities right from the start of their lessons, but at some

 point the fact that a pupil can’t play a recognisable recognisable tune with any reliability is ggoing oing to get noticed.

 

We can blame it on lack of practice, and indeed sometimes that is the root ccause, ause, but there’s something else at play too . Look at drawing. Abstract splotches are all very well,

 but if animals, houses houses and vaguely vaguely recognisab recognisable le people don’t sstart tart appearing soo soon, n,  parents worry. Only Only they won’t usually have a teach teacher er to blame.  Have I advised a pupil to give up? Yes, once, but sh e was a ‘don’t want to’ and a teenager to boot. She came to my lesson with her mother  –  the  the only part of the week when they spent any time together. The two of them would almost always arrive on the doorstep barely speaking and simmering with rage. The argument was always about the same thing: mum wants daughter to learn the violin and take part in the family string quartet; daughter is utterly determined to play the guitar, preferably plugged into something very loud. Her lessons with me were like pulling teeth, every scratch, scrape and infelicity of tone a reproach to her mother. For the sake of their relationship, relati onship, and perhaps my own sanity as well, I suggested she give it up, or at the very least, take t ake lessons in guitar too. Her violin playing improved markedly just from the fact of having her voice heard. But she still stopped at the end of that term.

Otherwise I have never asked a pupil to give up, on the basis that it’s it’ s not for me to decide. Some children develop less quickly than others, and as long as they want to continue playing, my job is to facilitate that the best be st way I can. Even if I might be hoping that they don’t tell too many people they learn with me. Not with wit h that  bow hold. As teachers in the 21st century, centur y, we often shy away from talking about achievement.

There was no such squeamishness in earlier times. To quote Arthur Broadley’s Chats to Cello Students from 1915: ‘I do not know of a more pathetic sight than to see a youth with no musical gifts whatever wasting the best years of his life and his  –  or his parents’  –   money money in the study of an instrument for which he has no natural capabilities. capabilit ies.

 

Music teachers must learn to correctly respond to student mistakes Students learn most from making mistakes in their playing, and it’s up to the teacher to find the right way of dealing with them, says Royal Northern College of Music senior lecturer in music education Philippa Bunting

Have you ever made any teaching mistakes, I wonder? If so, how did you recover? Do they still sit on your conscience, a terrible ter rible blot, or have you assimilated them? Learnt something? Moved on? And what about your pupils? Have they ever misplayed, mispitched, miscounted, miscommunicated or just downright misunderstood something? All of us learn best from our mistakes. Painful as they may be to make, and agonising to reflect upon, these are the moments when we grow the most. And the attitude we take to the mistakes our pupils make will say sa y a lot about us as teachers. Do we la laugh, ugh, encouragingly or otherwise? Do we wince visibly, emitting sharp little intakes of breath every time a note is not perfectly perfectl y in tune? Or, as I once observed in a ver very y eminent teaching studio, drop our collective head into our hands, collapse on to the desk and mutter, barely audibly: ‘Oh my God, how ghastly –  I can’t listen to a note more.’   We always tell our pupils that we would much rather they the y give a committed, communicative performance with mistakes than a robotic, technically perfect one, and they rarely ever believe us. Is there something in the culture they are picking up that we could work on eliminating? Given that they are drinking in every detail of how we are as people as well as musicians, are we ourselves modelling an approach to error that is helpful, or pandering to the perfectionist that lurks so close to the surface? Of course, standards and quality are key to our whole enterprise. And they are there all along, not just in the heady upper ether, where the clinical perfection of the recording studio provides yet another layer of criticality criticalit y for our aspiring young musicians to negotiate. But is the most healthy way to guard those standards always alwa ys striving for, and only tolerating, perfection? Are the best musicians necessarily those who make fewest mistakes? Recently, the question has been raised of  whether teachers are too kind. kind. Another question –  whether  whether criticism automatically makes better players than encouragement  –   has not. For me, that particular argument seems to suggest that there is only one kind of teacher that suits everybody, ever ybody, and only only one kind of teacher is best at all stages of development. Both of those ideas are surely nonsense. Although undeserved praise is of course fatuous, its opposite can leave scars.

 

There is a particularly sterile ste rile school of teaching, which goes something like this: pupil starts playing a piece prepared at home, and plays pla ys through until the point at which teacher identif ies ies a mistake. Teacher stops pupil: ‘No. That’s wrong. It should be X. Try again.’  Pupil sighs inwardly, returns to the beginning and makes a second attempt, this time aware of the potential wrongness and anticipating it. One of two things happens: pupil  passes the point safely and continues until the next problem problem is identified, or, mired in anxiety, slips again. All the energy of the lesson focuses on that point of negativity, and all phrasing is lost. The interaction between teacher and student stems wholly from this central cause, a

kind of depressing and too frequent f requent cadence point. The ‘problem’ becomes the lesson. And often not just the problem in toto, but localised to a particular point in a particular  piece of repertoire. It takes years of experience to be able to apply a solution developed for one circumstance to other, similar ones, and that experience is exactly what our pupils (in most cases not having lived as long as us) lack. Logically speaking, the terminus of that idea is that the pupil needs to perform the entire repertoire in front of the teacher until it is performed perfectly, the teacher is no longer  long years needed, and the pupil is free to go. That’s an awful lot of learning time –  long indeed, and potentially rather tedious ones.

‘Eighty per cent of what we teach is who we are,’ says Eric Booth, author of The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible. How we handle mistakes, our own and those of our pupils, is an important part of that 80 per cent. Do we focus on being good, or on getting better? By striving for perfection, are we pretty much guaranteeing failure? In trying to avoid mistakes, are we missing a whole lot of wonderful things along the way? As musicians, we are human beings speaking to one another through art, and part of that, surely, is allowing our vulnerability to show.

 

Why are string players today so afraid to use portam portamento? ento? Composers expected it and the music itself seems to demand it. Tully Potter argues for a return to swoops and scoops

Two of the most basic characteristics characteristi cs of both singing and string playing are legato and  portamento. They are intimately connected –  indeed,  indeed, connection is what portamento is all about –   but but for the past 50 or 60 years, many string players have misguidedly mis guidedly tried to avoid any kind of slide. W.S. Gilbert would call this kind of idiocy ‘good taste misplaced’.  Certainly, any string music written in the hundred years up to 1945 requires the use of  portamento such violist ‘modern’ composers as Ravel and Bartók would have encountered – a even violinist, or cellist who did not practise it. Had they never realised  performers who wholly misunderstood their music would would come along, these two  pernickety characters would no doubt have marked their their scores even more meticulously. Much of the time, when we speak of portamento we are thinking of the downward slide or swoop. But the upward slide, or scoop, is often valuable as a means of giving a lift to the rhythm, as vital in slow music as in fast. Portamento or glissando can even be used as an embellishment –  listen  listen to the way the cellist Emanuel Feuermann plays the finale of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. Is it not exhilarating? We have become so po -faced in  both our execution and our our appreciation of music that no one would d dare are to do anything like it today. I cannot believe that portamento was not in use even before the Romantic era. Would Mozart have played the Adagio of his G major Violin Concerto without slides? The  phrases positively positively demand them, and in Leonid Kogan’s beautiful beautiful recordings we ca cann  hear perfect execution of both downward and upward portamento. There are similar

 passages in Bach, Hande Handell and the Baroqu Baroquee Italians. The beg beginning inning of Beethove Beethoven’s n’s B flat major Quartet op.130 sounds so much more convincing if the phrases are joined up, as they are by the Busch Quartet.

When I play friends the 1928 recording of Nedbal’s beautiful Valse triste by the Ševcík Quartet, in the arrangement by the group’s second violinist, laughter is often the response. I must admit that the players’ left hands are so constantly on the move that they are hardly in one place for more than a millisecond; mill isecond; yet the tuning is lovely, and the overall effect is uniquely evocative of its period. Less extreme but equally valuable lessons in portamento can be heard on the Music al Art Quartet’s disc of Annie Laurie,

arranged by the violist friend Lillian Fuchs,byand two violinist. Christmas carols recorded by the players’ Flonzaley Quartet in arrangements its the second

 

As I see it, the great players of the past used downward portamento in three ways: for transport from one note to another; for joining up the notes into a coherent phrase, as a

singer would do (hence the expression ‘breath glide’); and for expressing spontaneous emotion. I suppose it is this expressive portamento that attracts the most opprobrium today, and I have to concede that Huberman sometimes executed it in i n an ugly way. Tertis at times went too far on the viola, Sammons on the violin  –  although  although I love them  both dearly. For my taste, Kreisler, Busch, Thibaud, Thibaud, Szigeti, Morini and Casals all managed it pretty well. The old-timers often avoided the even-numbered positions and

worked on the principle of ‘one phrase, one colour, one string’, a maxim that still has

validity. String playing has undeniably progressed since the dawn of recording, yet we should not throw out the connective-portamento baby with the expressive-portamento  bathwater. I would be happy to rest my case on three violinists. Fritz Kreisler had a sublime feeling for portamento, through which he contrived to transport us straight to the heart of Vienna. David Oistrakh played with such expansive generosity that it was inevitable  portamento would form part of his armoury, armoury, yet his playing always had a kind o off nobility. Perhaps the finest master of portamento, however, was Jascha Heifetz, and the  better he knew the music he was playing, the more more portamento he employed (try his solo Bach –  the  the D minor Partita, which he performed most often, ofte n, features the most slides). You do not have to go along with everything that Heifetz did, and I do not. But when it comes to portamento, he led the way.

 

Why can’t players get vibrato right?   Vibrating need not compromise purity of tone if it’s done tastefully, says Tully Potter, who takes to task those who overplay, misplay or completely disown it

We live in an age of too many certainties, and string playing has not escaped the attentions of the fundamentalists. If I had a pound for every ever y word of nonsense that has  been vented on the subject of vibrato, especially by Roger Roger Norrington, I would be a rich man. I hesitate to add to the stream of vibrato- guff, but at a time when ‘modern’

orchestras are prohibited from playing ‘old’ music, while the period bri brigades gades move their entrenchments forward to encompass Elgar, Mahler and the like, perhaps a mere listener may have his say. I do not like hearing Mozart, whose style is founded on singing, without vibrato,

although Haydn’s more bracing, contrapuntal style can take it. Nor do I enjoy Beethoven’s music without vibrato: some passages can be effective when played senza vibrato, and the greatest of all Beethoven players, pla yers, Adolf Busch, employed that device.

But he told his students: ‘If you play without vibrato, you could be feeling things as deeply as anything, and no one would know it.’  If the period players were serious about their calling they would have a different armoury of vibrato effects for every national style, if not for each composer. Hungarian music would be played with the Hubay school’s wide wah-wah vibrato, for instance, while French music would have quite a silvery finger vibrato, with now and then a spot of right-hand vibrato produced solely with the bow, as Capet used to do. But I am happy if each player comes before me on the concert platform with his or her own  painstakingly developed range of vibrato vibrato styles. I am also at ease with constant vibrato. What I cannot stand, either musically musicall y or aesthetically, is the modern habit of beginning a note ‘straight’ and then starting to wobble in the middle of the note. It seems to have started with the cellists  –  Daniil  Daniil Shafran being the most vulgar exponent –  but  but it has spread to violists and violinists. When a player does it, I hear the note twice, as a sort of ‘uh-huh’ effect. It is jarring in a very tasteless way. If continuous vibrato is employed, it

should be continuous. As Lionel Tertis put it, ‘The finger must remain and vibrate on the string you are about to leave until you have actually actuall y begun to play the note on the next string –   and and this second note must immediately take up the vibrato of the note you are just leaving.’  String playing goes hand in hand with singing, although one discipline will be ahead of the other at any given time. When modern orchestras began to play pla y more and more loudly, partly through the use of string vibrato, singers found they could compete better

if they too used vibrato. This use of vibrations to ‘throw’ the sound evolved because

musicians had to play or sing in bigger and bigger auditoria, especially especiall y in America. I

 

dislike the later playing of Piatigorsky for this reason; and I can usually identify one of his pupils within seconds. Let us, by all means, encourage purity of tone in string playing. But that purity need not rule out a tasteful use of vibrato, where the player really listens to himself or herself when preparing and performing the music.