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« Reply #240 on: 19:54:33, 01-01-2008 » |
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Strina... Happy New Year... I have been playing my 'Baroque strung violin + bow' and I wonder... should it feel so physically hard to get a good note? I press hard with the left fingers, and bow as well as I can etc but the sound still feels a bit 'hissy' (the only word I can think of!) What am I doing wrong? Could it be that because of a very painful foot I have not been playing ... weird I know, but sitting or standing still has been uncomfortable!! ..... and I just need more practice? A  |
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #241 on: 00:35:39, 02-01-2008 » |
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Hi A, happy new year to you too!
Hmm, no, it shouldn't be so hard. Let's see. Gut can take a lot of pressure, but it should be relaxed pressure. My teacher would encourage me to think of the weight of my arm sinking into the string. It may sound like new-agey bowl-locks, but she said to imagine the bow hair going through the string rather than pressing onto it. Also, don't forget to release the pressure through the stroke, to encourage the resonance of the instrument. Too much pressure will strangle it. My teacher would talk about creating "saucer-shaped" notes, tapered at each end and with the most depth in the middle.
Above all, it's important to relax. Try identifying where you may harbour some tension - likely danger spots are just as they are with modern playing, in the right shoulder or wrist. Make sure your right wrist isn't getting locked, and the fingers strong without getting stiff. If you've taken off your chinrest and shoulderpad, there may be tension in your neck and jaw as well.
Also try experimenting with your sounding point. Maybe you're a bit too near the bridge, or too far from it?
I hope this helps - and please do come back with more questions if it's not!
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A
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« Reply #242 on: 09:23:15, 02-01-2008 » |
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Hi strina, Thanks for your reply. I tink the problem may be in the pressure and the tension that I am feeling trying to get this right! I will try later today and take note of the releasing of pressure during the progress of the note- I think this may be it. I haven't taken off the chin rest but I am using a shallower shoulder rest than usual, I can't quite cope with the idea of no security there yet!! I will continue to experiment... thanks a lot , I will return with any future 'progress' !!! (Don't forget to tell us about your 'Seasons' concert.... please?') A |
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« Last Edit: 18:50:48, 02-01-2008 by A »
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #243 on: 20:31:36, 06-01-2008 » |
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I think this picture needs to have a home here:  *sigh* |
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autoharp
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« Reply #244 on: 16:28:13, 13-01-2008 » |
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A question from a non-string player. Nikos Skalkottas (1904-49) was a composer who renounced a potentially promising career as a virtuoso violinist for composition. I've encountered a couple of comments about his playing which I posted on the Skalkottas thread. Is/was his approach as unusual as the author suggests? It's been interesting comparing the BIS recording of the violin concerto (with Georgios Demertzis) with the recording of an early performance by Yfrah Neaman in 1965. Neaman does well, but it's a bit of a struggle, especially in the first movement. Demertzis is most impressive, the violin part sounding even more difficult than it does in Nieman's performance. I don't have any sleeve notes to hand, but the writing seems absolutely consistent with some comments made by John Papaioannou about Skalkottas's own playing:-
"His most unusual way of playing the violin was characterized by an exceptionally pure and disembodied sound, with almost no vibrato. Yet it was exceptionally warm and always mathematically precise, even in the wildest passages in his own work".
And from another source, the same writer, who accompanied him in a performance of the 4th Sonatina at a private gathering in 1942:-
"His technique was unusual; vibrato was almost non-existent, or extremely slow; the sound had the purity of a flute, yet was deeply expressive; the technique was breathtaking: the rapid passages gave the impression of lightning . . ."
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« Last Edit: 17:48:46, 13-01-2008 by autoharp »
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strinasacchi
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« Reply #245 on: 17:52:31, 13-01-2008 » |
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It's only recently that a constant vibrato is accepted and even encouraged in violinists (non-period instrument violinists, I hasten to add). In 1921 Leopold Auer wrote the following: Unfortunately, both singers and players of string instruments frequently abuse this effect [vibrato] just as they do the portamento, and by so doing they have called into being a plague of the most inartistic nature... Resorting to the vibrato in an ostrich-like endeavor to conceal bad tone production and intonation from oneself and from others not only halts progress in the improvement of one's fault, but is out and out dishonest artistically. ... those who are convinced that an eternal vibrato is the secret of soulful playing, of piquancy in performance are pitifully misguided in their belief. Of course the fact that he was so eloquent in complaining about constant vibrato implies that a lot of people, including his own students, were doing it. But he was a tremendously influential teacher, and his ideals of warm, pure, beautiful tone production and expressive playing would have been known and aspired to, if not necessarily achieved, by many violinists. It sounds like Skalkottas was one of the few to actually do what the great pedagogues taught. When would he have been playing, and when did he decide to stop? |
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autoharp
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« Reply #246 on: 18:06:18, 13-01-2008 » |
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When would he have been playing, and when did he decide to stop?
He studied with Tony Schulze at the Athens Conservatory, graduating (1st prize, Gold medal) in 1920 with the Beethoven concerto. He then studied with Willy Hess (Joachim pupil) at the Berlin Hochschule from 1921 and gave up the idea of a solo career in 1923/4 or 1925. He earned a living playing in cafe and cinema orchestras and after returning to Athens in 1933, became a back-desk violinist in the Athens State Orchestra. |
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« Last Edit: 18:09:24, 13-01-2008 by autoharp »
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martle
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« Reply #248 on: 22:42:56, 13-01-2008 » |
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My word, those are good, Ollie.  |
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Green. Always green.
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time_is_now
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« Reply #249 on: 22:51:24, 13-01-2008 » |
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He studied with Tony Schulze at the Athens Conservatory, graduating (1st prize, Gold medal) in 1920 with the Beethoven concerto. He then studied with Willy Hess (Joachim pupil) at the Berlin Hochschule from 1921 and gave up the idea of a solo career in 1923/4 or 1925. He earned a living playing in cafe and cinema orchestras and after returning to Athens in 1933, became a back-desk violinist in the Athens State Orchestra.
If his teacher was a Joachim pupil, that makes Auer Skalkottas's 'uncle' in pedagogic terms. Not sure how relevant that is, but if Auer got his anti-vibrato stance from Joachim then it might well be ... Incidentally, why did he become a back-desk violinist, if he'd given up such a potential career as a soloist? Just to have more time for composing? (But wouldn't he have had as much time if he'd become, say, leader of the second violins?) |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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thompson1780
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« Reply #250 on: 22:53:04, 13-01-2008 » |
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Wow indeed. Reminds me to get out my old Pearl CDs of the history of the violin. I'm fairly sure I remember an Auer recording somewhere.....
Really good to notice the almost complete lack of vibrato (in this recording from 1904?) and the subtle portamenti.
Tommo
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #251 on: 23:02:26, 13-01-2008 » |
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...let's not forget:
And also the grandfather of Mischa Auer. Mischa fled the USSR and moved to America, where he played bit-parts before appearing in MY MAN GODFREY, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor nomination. This shaped his career thereafter for playing fast-talking zany comedy characters and emigre Russians (notably in HELLZAPOPPIN where he played a down-on-his-luck Grand Duke, compelled to take up work on the show-within-a-show as a ballet dancer opposite Martha Raye, "the Bronx Ballerina"). He also succeeded in appearing in lead roles in French and Italian movies - here he is as "the thief" in PEPINO E IL LADRO: http://youtube.com/watch?v=rwdmlUB4Gi8 |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #252 on: 10:24:34, 14-01-2008 » |
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Hope it's OK to crash this thread with a question about double bass playing.
I was at the LSO/Gergiev Mahler 1 last night, and I noticed for the first time that the bowing in the bass part at the start of the second movement was not at all what I would have expected. Imagine the first five notes: minim A followed by E A A E crotchets, in 3/4 time. I would have expected to see down-bows on the first beat of each bar, i.e. down-up-down-up-up or something of the sort. What the bassists were actually doing was down-up-up-down-up (so the second down-bow is on the second beat of the second bar), as if it were one 3/2 bar rather than two 3/4 bars. This surprised me, given how heavily accented the 3/4 is at that point.
I know almost nothing about bass playing, and was wondering why this might be. Is it usual to have up-bowing on strong beats? Is it scored this way? And if so, why?
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #253 on: 10:27:13, 14-01-2008 » |
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Goodness me. Were the cellos doing the same, Ruth?
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Ruth Elleson
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« Reply #254 on: 10:33:55, 14-01-2008 » |
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I should have looked, shouldn't I - but I didn't, on account of being too busy looking at the basses and thinking "That's weird!"
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Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
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