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Whether you're a maker or a player, or just worried about getting old, you should see the Matisse cut-outs exhibition The Matisse cut-outs exhibition at London’s Tate Modern finishes this weekend, and if you haven’t already seen it, I urge you to go forthwith. You will have to pay £16 (when did art get so expensive?) and you’ll be rammed into the exhibition rooms like sheep (when did art get so popular?) but it’ll be worth it. I went this week and was overwhelmed. The inventiveness, vibrancy, variety and sheer colour are astonishing. Matisse started cutting out coloured paper as a technique in his 60s, as ill health made it hard for him to paint, and he continued right up until his death at the age of 84, in 1954. These works go right up to the end of his life, but you wouldn’t know it for the energy he channels, whether he’s creating geometric shapes, imaginary plant forms, scenes from his Jazz or Dancers series, or reworking his Blue Nude paintings. You see him experimenting with his techniques and learning quickly how to master the physical aspect of cutting the paper to the right shape and laying it on to the paper. In the Blue Nude room, for example, you see the first time he tried to make the nude shape work – a patchwork of many little pieces of the painted paper. By the next version, he’s entirely confident in the technique and brings the nude to life in minimal number of pieces and cuts. At this age, he is still learning steeply, driven and adaptable. I had in mind something that Natalie Clein told me when I interviewed her a few weeks back. She plays the ‘Simpson’ Guadagnini of 1777, from relatively late in the maker’s career and she said: ‘I love it because it’s a late work, and in the way of late Brahms or late Beethoven, they don’t care any more about fancy edges. They want the substance of the thing to be told and they don’t have much time to tell it – you can see the chisel marks in the scroll, for example. There’s the semblance of a late, great master.’ There may also be a parallel with Stradivari, who well into advancing years and past his golden period, was still experimenting and synthesising his accumulated knowledge, even if there are signs of deteriorating dexterity. Indeed, with the Matisse cut-outs, if you go up close you see the nicks and the imperfect edges and the way the colour has been painted on to the paper. But step back and that one single scissor stroke completely signifies the substance of what Matisse has in mind, whether it’s a dancer straining or a horse rearing or a naked lady languishing. Substance, power, efficiency, creative vitality: maybe there are benefits to ageing after all. UPDATE The Matisse exhibition runs at New York's MoMA gallery from 12 October to 8 February. #matisse #lutherie #guadagnini #blog

There are many different tribes of violin makers, in my experience. Conservatives, Futurists, Archivists, Geometrists, Philosophers, Luddites, Artists, Storytellers, Archaeologists, Forensic Scientists, Cosmetologists, Chemists, Radiographers, Botanists – among others. Most makers have some specific passion that drives them and defines their style, although they may also work closely with other tribes. The best luthiers are often the mavens who flit between them all, collecting the most important information from each and synthesising it in their instruments. Yesterday, I spent the morning in Cambridge with the Acousticians, sitting in on some sessions of a group of makers and scientists who gather every summer to share their thoughts and research on violin acoustics. The event is organised by Jim Woodhouse, professor of Engineering at Cambridge University, and was set up a few years ago as a sister event to the summer acoustics workshops in Oberlin, with a few people going to both. This is the rational tribe, which takes nothing about violin sound at face value. They believe what they can measure scientifically, but only if they can repeat it. In this way they seek to understand every detail of how a violin works and how each detail impacts on the other, and ultimately the sound. Having heard many such presentations during my time at The Strad, and armed with an antique A Level in Physics, I would say I understand some of it superficially, although my mind often boggles and I won’t try to explain what I heard (you can see a few of the slides). Much, though, is made beautifully simple by the diagrams that are created by the data, with their violin shapes with colour patches or graphs with vivid peaks doing the job of a thousand words. There are an infinite number of variables when understanding violin sound, ranging from the materials to the shape to the psychology of how people listen. But these researchers have the patience to pick them apart and to focus on the measurables to try to understand them. For example, in his talk Colin Gough, professor of Physics at Birmingham University, described some of his findings from his ‘finite element analysis’, whereby he creates a model violin with which he can test the effect of f-hole and soundpost positions, arching, shape. One of the reasons the group was set up was as a networking forum. Violin maker George Stoppani told me about the importance of this: ‘A lot of us who are involved in violin research don’t want to be entirely on our own. It doesn’t work to be in this field as a loner. It’s important to have people to bounce ideas off and to tell you if you’re doing something stupid, or they might be supportive and tell you to keep going, or have a suggestion.’ He described the long-term benefits of such research: ‘It’s going towards a much deeper understanding of how violins work, and that’s useful to a lot of people, to people who play them and of course to makers who are making high-quality instruments.’ It’s not about finding quick solutions, though, as he says: ‘One of the things that goes wrong when trying to bridge the gap with less technical makers is that they want a formula. They don’t want to know the fancy stuff, they just want the answer. You have to invest the time in getting an in-depth understanding of how violins work, the basic elementary point of view. Makers need to take this stuff on board, to incorporate measurement into their working steps. They will eventually build up a database that will help them avoid mistakes they’ve previously made, and to get to a place they’re intending to get to. That will affect wood choice, design, and particularly arching and graduations. It’s not a quick fix.’ The aim is certainly not to copy Strads, though, unlike for many makers. Stoppani says, ‘Originally we imagined we wanted to clone the best old Italian instruments. That’s not entirely gone, but we don’t want to say that just because it sounds like an old Italian violin we’ve succeeded in making something excellent. We’re saying there are good, bad and medium violins, as well as excellent violins, and those are not uniquely Italian. It happens that among the old Italians there are some good ones. They still serve as a model of at least part of what violins do. We’re not trying to replicate what they are, we’re saying, “Let’s make use of this enormous legacy of design information and make instruments that incorporate some of those features, using our modern expertise to make them more practical for players today." We’re creating a product that rivals the old Italians but isn’t’ necessarily the same thing.’ Icelandic maker Hans Johannsson is also a regular, and has found the research beneficial to his whole concept of violin making: ‘The measurement and analysis part of making has become really important for me. I started going to the Oberlin group around 2005 and I’ve been hanging on to these groups and trying to go as often as I can. It’s improved my making. It’s changed the way I visualise the function of instruments. In some ways it has allowed me to make more calculated guesses. Violin making is and always will be an intuitive job – it’s never going to be pure science – but if you spice that up with some objective knowledge then you’re in a better position to make logical decisions about the construction.’ Johannsson says that not all violin makers see things this way: ‘A lot of my colleagues are sceptical about scientific approaches to violin making. They say that the finest instruments in the world were made by people who knew nothing about science. This is true, but I believe that any increase in knowledge can never hurt. Any student of violin making should know some of the things that these people are discovering – basic things like how the instrument behaves at certain frequencies. When I studied in Newark in the 70s they said, “Just make it properly and it’ll work.” Some of my colleagues say, “I don’t know anything about sound, I just create violins,” and I think that’s really limiting.’ Standards of new instruments are incredibly high these days – possibly the highest they’ve been since the old Cremonese days. There may be several factors contributing to this golden age, and many tribes involved in furthering their own respective skills and knowledge, as well as those of the violin community at large. But whether or not the entire violin community buys into such acoustical investigation, this quest for scientific knowledge must surely be a huge factor in this golden age. #lutherie #science #blog #view

Musical timing and closure, hearing and thinking for ourselves – just some of the things that teaching often fails to help us with, according to Burton Kaplan This summer I spent two weeks at the Magic Mountain Music Farm Practice Retreat, run by Burton Kaplan. My article about the experience is out now in the September issue of The Strad, and I've written a blog about the experience of being offered such a learning opportunity as an amateur. But in the two weeks of twice-daily masterclasses I ended up with 20,000 words of notes, and a brain brimming with new musical concepts. So here are some of the things that Burton talked about in class that I haven't been able to fit in anywhere else. You might find some of them quite provocative! 'There are two ways to do anything. One is to do it; the other is to let it happen.' 'Historically, if you could wow people with your playing, people would applaud. That doesn’t work any more: there are lots of amazing players. People’s ears used to be tuned to virtuosity but they’re not any more.' 'One of the major problems in developing is that musical time isn’t considered the primary factor. Without timing musical sense doesn’t exist. Music is organised first in time, then in sound, and pitch is only part of the sound. It’s a tragedy that this mistake has been made for four centuries of recorded pedagogy. Since metre came into existence, music has organised according to metre, but people are not trained enough to know that. Music isn’t about right pitches. Pitch is more like Impressionist painting marks – you can’t look too close up, you have to look from a distance. The trick is to play patterns of notes so that the notes that matter are in tune enough. Timing and tone quality and character distracts from pitch. It’s the pattern of pitch relationships that have to be right.' 'We do too much rather than listening for what we want. Listening is what gets us what we want. Doing gets in the way.' 'In lessons you only have an hour and it’s expensive. One of the mistakes is that a teacher will say, ‘Did you hear how the tone in bar three didn’t match the music?’ You say, ‘Uh-huh.’ You don’t even think. You didn’t hear it. They heard it but you didn’t. They’re trying to impart a value system but it doesn’t work. That’s why it takes so long for people to learn things. It’s your perception that matters, not the teacher’s.' 'Music is the art of illusion. We manipulate the ear of the listener.' 'If you act confident you’re going to appear confident. Mask is an important part of theatre. This is theatre, too.' 'There is something such as resistance to change – some people will avoid things. When people can’t remember, there’s something in the way of their memory.' 'If you can’t define the problem, you can’t fix it.' 'One thing you end up doing unconsciously in your practice is to set up breathing patterns. It’s hard to observe what your breathing is doing in relationship to starts of pieces. Some people start with a breath but then stop. The only place your breath can be manipulated is the beginning of the phrase.' 'You can’t play the Bruch Concerto opening G as a static note. You have to change the sound every instant – a low grade of change, but our ears are sensitive. As uniform as note may seem, you can change bow speed and pressure, listening and modulating. When you hear a sound that has change in it you immediately set up a pulse in your body. Entrainment becomes a form of anticipation, so can lead to disappointment.' 'You can’t shut off attention to anything but you can fill it with something else. Space to be conscious is limited so you can crowd it out until you’re no longer aware for what you didn’t want to be aware of.' 'You can’t fix something until you know what it is. We’re corrupted by lessons – we have so much to learn that it becomes easier to do what our teacher says. Your ‘observer’ becomes your teacher’s ‘observer’. It’s not that we’re not imaginative, it’s that we’re scared out of our wits to use our own brains.' 'It’s important to correct any sense that music is what’s on the page – it can only emerge when we react to it. This is a freedom that most musicians aren’t offered when they study. If only everyone could be liberated to find the power of their own interpretation.' 'Most of us have spent so much time learning to play that we haven’t learnt to trust that what we feel we hear is the truth. We have to cause our bodies to make a sound that when we hear it makes us want to listen to it. That should be the main preoccupation.' 'With any tempo or dynamic marking, the seed of it must be in you before it happens, unless it’s abrupt on purpose.' 'Technique gets better when there’s a musical idea.' 'If you’ve done something well stop while you’re ahead because nothing that endures takes a day to acquire. You’re developing skill. You’re developing neural circuits – setting up the firing of neurons. They don’t just keep doing that because you want them to. Stop while you’re ahead. Tomorrow do it again and see if you’re still there. Day four you will have got further than you dreamed.' 'Practice isn’t just moving your body. It’s anything you do: listening to recordings, analysing performances, getting inside music.' 'To make great music you need to be able to feel and think at the same time. To guide yourself well you need to know about yourself. It’s a complex process.' 'There are not many musicians who are articulate about musicians. Flesch was, though. Thinkers don’t usually make good musicians, but Flesch was a thinker.' 'There are too many talented people. Now they conduct (they can’t, but they do because they’re famous, which is part of a manipulation of administration and of the public) and they play chamber music, and pretend they can produce a great performance every week.' 'The mind is the body: you can’t separate them. Music is an opportunity to put the two together. Everything else is taught so that thought and feeling are separate, but in music they’re never separate when they succeed.' 'Conservatory is about conserving the tradition – which is rigid. We have to have constancy in order to refine interesting things, so education conserves. Music is taught like ballet. You go to the class and learn a plié, then you spend your whole life trying to remember to lift your elbow like that and one day you think, ‘Gee, it’s no fun any more.’ The paradigm that gets lost is that what you’re trying to do is to develop a mouth that talks.' 'We’re so preoccupied by ‘this moment’, ‘this detail’ that people are dumb about how to create closure in a phrase, and it’s not taught. We can do it in language and everyone gets it. We have to know the end at the beginning.' 'People playing music tend to get trapped by smaller pieces that have meaning but don’t add up to a bigger picture.' 'We have to train ourselves by how we speak. We don’t think about breath or how we move our mouth. The connection from what you want to hear has to govern all your actions so you don’t think about the actions. Hearing it makes it happen.' 'The metronome is an informer, not a director.' 'If you play a good piece of music in a bland way, it doesn’t mean anything – you have a million opportunities to make meaning.' 'The way you create closure is you elongate and increase the expectation of the penultimate, most tense, moment. That makes us need the end so when you produce the end we feel fulfillment, but you need to generate the need for closure. Do it with time and tone – picking the pitches. We like a struggle. We experience the contradiction of expecting one thing and getting another and feel fulfilled at the end.' 'We can control closure by taking the notes that are capable of creating the greatest suspense and prolonging them.' 'One of the things we love is continued flow. When it says sostenuto if you literally try to sustain the energy, you’ll get weaker. So you have to keep adding energy and to increase the energy in the suspensions.' 'Each decision you make at the start of the phrase will cause all the things it will cause – don’t keep making it mean something. It’s all there.' 'Music is dots – a lot of people don’t hear what they see as music until they play it, because that’s what we were taught. We see the pitch first instead of the rhythm – so we experience music the way it isn’t supposed to be. Most people see pitch and hook on to it with the rhythm in the background, which makes no musical sense.' 'When we’re taught rhythm we’re not taught to perceive patterns. We’re taught around the barline. There are patterns and sub-patterns that are not there for the eyes, but as a sub-experience, which is a sense of motion, and not static.' 'Syncopation is the struggle for dominance between two beats. If you feel that struggle in your body you’ll do it. Syncopation depends on both notes fighting for prominence.' 'As a player, doing something right evokes a response in your body that makes it sound right and feel right.' 'In a harmonic progression if you stop at any point you can ask yourself to what degree is there suspense. As long as there’s suspense we need resolution. Stopping at any point you can decide how unfulfilled you are.' 'This is not music theory: this is performance reality – your heart, your body and a sense of wholeness and when it comes together it feels wonderful and if it doesn’t feel wonderful it’s not good enough.' 'I want you to be engaged to find out whether if you played this way would you be happy. Is this always uniformly attractive to listen to or not? See if you can become fussy like I am. This is fusspot art. It’s sad that they take this fussy quality and impose it on intonation. You should listen for, ‘Do I want to hear the rest of the story?’' #pedagogy #practice #magicmountain #article #people #violin #teaching #playing #view

Last night's Proms concert with the Budapest Festival Orchestra was ravishing, but raised an uncomfortable question I have a friend who travels to Budapest annually specially to hear the Budapest Festival Orchestra and conductor Iván Fischer. I always thought it was a little obsessional, but after last night’s BBC Proms concert, I understand why. What I listened to was possibly the finest orchestral playing I’ve ever heard. They played two Brahms symphonies – nos. 3 and 4 – with extreme finesse and clarity. Rather than the massive sound wall and aggressive edges you sometimes get with Brahms, there was texture and detail, tenderness and charm, but plenty of power when required: the range and control of dynamics was astonishing. The string sections performed as one person, with players in the back of the section playing as if they were right at the centre, creating a real sense of intimacy and chamber music. And so the players are able, with just a micro-breath of Fischer’s elegant beat, to take time, without taking time, to create a gypsy swing in fast passages or gently tease a melody to its conclusion. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the folk characteristics of both symphonies brought out so strongly. But maybe it’s not surprising, as Fischer had fascinating things to say about setting Brahms in the context of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which he told Richard Morrison in The Times recently: ‘If you listen to the New Year’s day concert played by the Vienna Philharmonic you hear only one side of the empire: the beautiful, aristocratic music of the Viennese court. Yet the empire was full of Serbs, Croats, Jews, Bohemians, Hungarians and gypsies and they all had their different musical styles.’ It also raised a quandary. The orchestral discipline and collective musical understanding was extraordinary and is undoubtedly connected to the Hungarian music education tradition, which is based on the Kodály Method. The results are there for all to hear. But they must also rely on the fact that, judging by the orchestra listing, all the players are Hungarian, as well as the fact that Fischer seems to focus almost entirely on them rather than working with many other orchestras. There may be many reasons for why there aren’t any foreigners in the group – the language, the pay, the political climate – but there is something a little uncomfortable about such mono-culturalism in this day and age. And yet it keeps this wonderful performing tradition and unique sound alive, so does that justify the exclusivity? A tricky question at a time like this. The Kodály Method is heavily based on singing, and maybe that’s why the orchestral members felt so comfortable standing up to perform their a cappella encore, Brahms’s Abendständchen. Can you imagine any UK orchestra being game for that? It was sublime: not a big choral sound, but pure and clear, impeccably in tune, and very moving. It’s a truism one often hears in masterclasses that the best way to learn how to play a piece is to sing it. It also seems that an orchestra that sings together plays together. I couldn’t find the orchestra playing Brahms, but here is the first movement of Mahler no.1. #proms #budapestfestivalorchestra #blog #review #brahms #playing #reviews #view

Two weeks at a violin practice retreat were life-changing for me, but left me wondering why there aren't enough places for amateur players to fulfil their musical aspirations For two weeks this summer I was taken seriously as a violin player. I was staying at the Magic Mountain Music Farm Practice Retreat in beautiful upstate New York, a course run by Burton Kaplan, and my article about my experience has just come out in the September issue of The Strad. By way of background, I’d describe myself as an erstwhile violinist. I studied on the post-graduate course at the Royal Academy of Music 20 years ago but realised I wasn’t going to make it in the profession so found other things to do. These included editing The Strad magazine for eight years, where I learnt incredible amounts about music and string playing from the greatest players and teachers around the world. I have also played in amateur orchestras and quartets and have been in a world music band, Los Desterrados, for nearly 15 years. But I don’t really practise much, apart from having the occasional whim to prepare for a lesson. So I arrived at Magic Mountain full of hope but some fear. These days my mind is so corrupted by technology that my attention span is pitiful and I feared I wouldn’t be able to concentrate and that I would get bored with myself. But I was also excited by the prospect of having absolutely nothing to think about other than the violin. The structure at Magic Mountain is simple: two group classes a day, morning and evening, based on the practice techniques that Burton Kaplan expounds in his book Practicing for Artistic Success: The Musician's Guide to Self-Empowerment, and on his search for musical meaning; three lessons each a week (that’s more than a whole term’s worth of lessons in two weeks); and two scheduled meals a day – you help yourself to breakfast. Apart from that, your day is your own and you’re allowed to practise from 8am to 11pm. No one forces you to practise, but you want to, and I found myself doing about five hours a day. I’m almost embarrassed to admit I left the farm twice in two weeks – by the end my feet were actually flatter than when I arrived. What makes practice attractive all of a sudden? Well, everything. Firstly, unlike real life, there are no impediments (or excuses). Nothing else you have to do, nowhere to go, no one else to be responsible for other than yourself. And everyone else is practising – eleven other people all striving towards something at the same time, individually – and you hear them all, which is a powerful motivation. As are the lessons – normally I’d give myself at least two days after a violin to relax and recover, but at Magic Mountain you know you will be back in Burton’s study two days later, and you need and want to show progress. I’d also forgotten the joy of pure, unadulterated mental focus – concentrating on one thing and finding creative ways to make it better. I suppose it’s what people call ‘flow’; it certainly has a spiritual dimension. But one of the most potent reasons to practise lies at the heart of what Burton is trying to achieve, I believe. For me – and I’m sure I’m not the only one – practise has always been something negative: you are constantly criticising yourself, finding fault, not measuring up to something in your ear. After all, which of us ever learnt or was taught how to practise effectively, and being kind to ourselves? Burton’s teachings turn this around. For the detail of it, you’ll have to read the article, or look at his book. But I’ll share one of the most mind-altering exercises with you. It’s called the ‘Pie Strategy’ and the aim is to make you more objective in your practice, developing what Burton calls your ‘Conscious Observer’. He defines four key elements to observe while you play – intonation, rhythm, expression and tone. When you are about to practise a specific section, you define to yourself what you’re going to play, and say out loud that you’re going to decide by the end which are the weakest and strongest elements of the performance. When you have finished the segment, you immediately say what the strongest was and then the weakest. It takes some practice in itself, and Burton requires a vocalisation of it that most of us were pretty uncomfortable about. However, it works, and in mysterious ways. When I did this exercise in class first, using a section of Wieniawski’s Etude-Caprice no.3, my instinct was always to focus on the bad stuff first, which was always intonation. I don’t think I was the only one to think like that, and who had a hard time finding the strengths in our playing. But with Burton’s coaching to help me step back, it became obvious that my rhythm was actually the weakest, and when I realised that, and when I was simultaneously looking for good things in my playing, all of a sudden everything got better – even the arpeggios that weeks before I didn’t think I would ever perfect. The moral being that when you can see the big picture, and trust your mind and the music, things often work themselves out. This approach made my subsequent practice time all the more productive and enjoyable. There were two weeks full of such insights, as well as lateral stimulations – we watched videos of Carlos Kleiber, and I had a powerful throwback to my youthful obsession with Torvill and Dean when we watched a documentary about them, as a metaphorical example of great chamber musicians. All, again, to demonstrate the importance of the big picture. At the end of the two weeks, we all performed for ten minutes, and our preparation involved another mind shift. At the last lunch before the concert, each of us had to share what our goals for our performances were. These were not to be ‘play brilliantly’ or ‘be perfect’ but much more tangible, testable goals – mine were to feel physically relaxed for 90 percent of the time, to make a beautiful sound 80 percent of the time, to enjoy hearing Bach’s language, and to listen for the beauty of the first bar of the Sarabande I was playing (I’d had problems making a nice sound in the first chords). And lo and behold, I achieved all of them, and actually felt quite proud and pleased with myself, despite my deeply rooted inner critic (which even now makes me feel awkward saying something positive about my playing). And I wasn’t the only one – the concert was a lovely way of rounding off two weeks of getting to know people and their playing and their challenges, and I think everyone there achieved their goals. That shows the importance of setting good goals. It also proves that amateurs like myself can achieve something important and worthwhile, even in the space of two weeks. And yet the amateur market is woefully under-catered to, I believe, certainly in the UK and Europe, although possibly less so in the US. There are many amateur chamber music courses around the world – I myself have been to the Verbier Festival and Manhattan School ones and had fantastic chamber music learning experiences in both places. But for the player who wants to improve their technique and work on solo repertoire, there’s absolutely nothing, as far as I know. It’s hard even to find teachers who are willing to take on amateurs, or even to know where to begin to look – I wouldn’t. Why is this? There’s a certain snobbery among professional musicians and teachers towards amateurs. Indeed there are some weak players among the crowd, but there are also some phenomenal ones. Look at the personnel of London’s amateur orchestral scene and you will find many players who could easily have gone on to be professional; you’ll also discover that most of them are classical music agents, PRs and music journalists! Amateurs have the time, money, wisdom and passion to devote to music – often in greater abundance than young virtuosos; they also often have fantastic instruments. To me this is a no-brainer. Most music colleges these days have junior departments. So why don’t they have amateur departments, where amateurs can come together for individual lessons, masterclasses, orchestral and chamber music training and music studies. As an added benefit, you could have budding young pedagogues coach them, thereby learning the craft of teaching, as well as making some cash. Maybe some of the students might even learn from the wisdom and passion of their elders, both in music and in the realities of the outside world. The schools would serve larger communities, and who knows, might even ultimately benefit from the legacies of some of the grateful students. I did speak to one principal once about the subject but it fell on deaf ears, so I won’t hold my breath. I can, however, be truly grateful for the experience I had at Magic Mountain, and hold close the many important things I learnt there. Has my practice since then measured up to my time there? Of course not – how could it? But at least I know what is possible now, and that I can take myself seriously. #amateur #magicmountain #blog #playing #teaching #view

I had a lovely morning yesterday talking to cellist Natalie Clein for two forthcoming articles – about her new Saint-Saëns disc, for Sinfini Music and about the beautiful 'Simpson' Guadagnini she plays, for Cozio. So the subjects ranged all over the place, but towards the end we got to talking about modern instruments. Natalie is extremely positive about the benefits of playing them, saying, 'What I love about modern instruments is that they’re like fountain pens. They allow you to mould your way of playing on to a blank canvas, whereas old instruments have had other players to play them in.' What I'd never heard before is how it's possible to gauge the way an instrument has been played without even witnessing it directly, as she explains: 'I play a lot of new cellos when I’m teaching, because many of my students have them. If a pupil has a problem with vibrato you can feel it in the instrument – you can feel that they haven’t done vibrato properly, enough, on the instrument.' Furthermore, she says, 'I can feel if someone good or bad has played my cello even for five minutes. If someone good has played the instrument it feels fresh.' The interesting corollary of this is that great players have a role in making instruments better, as she says: 'Part of the reason the great old instruments are so great is that great players have played them throughout history. Their in-tune notes and beautiful vibrato have moulded themselves into the soundscape and the soundwaves over the years. I'm not the only person to have said this.' For those still longing to discover the 'secret' of Stradivarius, could there be something in this? That the genius of the performers who have played his instruments down the years has at least something to do with how they sound now, in a way making the legend of Stradivari self-fulfilling. What do you think? And for a preview of the 1777 'Simpson' Guadagnini, here are some pretty bad pictures which I took! There will be better ones online and more information about the cello with the Cozio article, due up next month. #clein #cello #stradivarius #lutherie #blog #people #interview

While we're on the subject of Leopold Auer, it's not possible to mention his roll-call of students without referencing this wonderful song by the Gershwins, sung by the Funnyboners: Auer even gets a reference: We really think you ought to know That we were born right in the middle Of darkest Russia. When we were three years old or so, We all began to play the fiddle In darkest Russia. When we began, Our notes were sour Until a man (Professor Auer) Set out to show us, one and all, How we could pack them in, In old Albert Hall. And Kreisler also gets a mention: Temperamental Oriental Gentlemen are we: Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha, Fiddle-lee, diddle-lee, dee. We give credit when it's due, But then you must agree That outside of dear old Fritz, All the fiddle-concert hits Are Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha Fiddle-lee, diddle-lee, dee #auer #heifetz #violin #playing #blog

Responses to my post about Menuhin's vibrato drew a mixture of responses. I’d remarked on it being ‘perfectly shaped’ and ‘fluid’ and many loved it, but some people disagreed, saying it was too tight and fast, and hated it. I wasn’t sure what to think, so I went to the magical library that is the internet to find out. Where better place to learn about vibrato than from Leopold Auer, the legendary teacher of Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein, Jascha Heifetz and Toscha Zeidel, among others. Auer wrote down his thoughts and teaching techniques in 1920 in his book, Violin Playing as I Teach It, which is essential reading for any aspiring violinist. Auer is plenty forthright, lambasting those who use vibrato to cover bad intonation or tone (‘an ostrich-like endeavour’), lack musical taste and use continuous vibrato (‘a physical evil’), or use just vibrato excessively (‘a habit for which I have no tolerance’). He recommends really listening to oneself, and even denying oneself vibrato for 'weeks and months' until one has learnt full control, although he admits it’s not so easy to change his students’ habits. What light does this shed on Menuhin’s performance? I suppose it could fall foul of Auer’s comment about ‘a precipitate oscillation of the hand and all the fingers as well’, although I assumed this continuous vibrato was intentional in a romantically-inclined performance of a slow Bach movement. Anyway, Auer’s writing and opinions are a delight – no wonder he had such success as a teacher – so I leave you with his section on vibrato. You can read the whole book here. ‘The purpose of the vibrato, the wavering effect of tone secured by rapid oscillation of a finger on the string which it stops, is to lend more expressive quality to a musical phrase, and even to a single note of a phrase. Like the portamento, the vibrato is primarily a means used to heighten effect, to embellish and beautify a singing passage or tone. Unfortunately, both singers and players of string instruments frequently abuse this effect just as they do the portamento, and by so doing they have called into being a plague of the most inartistic nature, one to which ninety out of every hundred vocal and instrumental soloists fall victim. Some of the performers who habitually make use of the vibrato are under the impression that they are making their playing more effective, and some of them find the vibrato a very convenient device for hiding bad intonation or bad tone production. But such an artifice is worse than useless. That student is wise who listens intelligently to his own playing, admits to himself that his intonation or tone production is bad, and then undertakes to improve it. Resorting to the vibrato in an ostrich-like endeavour 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. But the other class of violinists who habitually make use of the device – those who are convinced that an eternal vibrato is the secret of soulful playing, of piquancy in performance – are pitifully misguided in their belief. In some cases, no doubt, they are, perhaps against their own better instincts, conscientiously carrying out the instructions of unmusical teachers. But their own appreciation of musical values ought to tell them how false is the notion that vibration whether in good or bad taste, adds spice and flavour to their playing. If they attempted to eat a meal in which the soup were too salty, the entrée deluged with a garlic-sauce, the roast too highly peppered with cayenne, the salad-dressing all mustard, and the dessert over-sweet, their palates would not fail to let them know that the entire dinner was overspiced. But their musical taste (or what does service for them in place of it) does not tell them that they can reduce a program of the most dissimilar pieces to the same dead level of monotony by peppering them all with the Tabasco of continuous vibrato. No, the vibrato is an effect, an embellishment; it can lend a touch of divine pathos to the climax of a phrase or the course of a passage, but only if the player has cultivated a delicate sense of proportion in the use of it. With certain violinists, this undue and painful vibrato is represented by a slow and continuous oscillation of the entire hand, and sometimes by a precipitate oscillation of the hand and all the fingers as well, even those fingers which may be unoccupied for the time being. But this curious habit of oscillating and vibrating on each and every tone amounts to an actual physical defect, whose existence those who are cursed with it do not in most cases even suspect. The source of this physical evil generally may be traced to a group of sick or ailing nerves, hitherto undiscovered. And this belief of mine is based on the fact that I cannot otherwise account for certain pupils of mine, who in spite of their earnest determination to the contrary, and innumerable corrections on my part, have been unable to rid themselves of this vicious habit, and have continued to vibrate on every note, long or short, playing even the driest scale passages and exercises in constant vibrato. There is only one remedy which may be depended upon to counteract this ailing nervous condition, vicious habit, or lack of good taste – and that is to deny oneself the use of the vibrato altogether. Observe and follow your playing with all the mental concentration at your disposal. As soon as you notice the slightest vibration of hand or finger, stop playing, rest for a few minutes, and then begin once more, continuing to observe yourself. For weeks and months you must continually guard yourself in this fashion until you are confident that you have mastered your vibrato absolutely, that it is entirely within your control. You may then put it to proper artistic, use, as your servant, not your master. In any case, remember that only the most sparing use of the vibrato is desirable; the too generous employment of the device defeats the purpose for which you use it. The excessive vibrato is a habit for which I have no tolerance, and I always fight against it when I observe it in my pupils – though often, I must admit, without success. As a rule I forbid my students using the vibrato at all on notes which are not sustained and I earnestly advise them not to abuse it even in the case of sustained notes which succeed each other in a phrase.’ #auer #people #menuhin #blog #playing #teaching #view

I came across this footage of Menuhin playing Bach's 'Air on the G String'. Just look at his left hand – is that not the most perfectly shaped hand, the most fluid, beautiful vibrato you have ever seen? To quote Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot: 'It's like Jell-O on springs!' No comment on his right arm and bow changes, though – maybe that's why he's not looking very happy! #menuhin #bach #vibrato #violin #playing #view

I came across this lovely film while on my research into classical artists who have explored other genres. It's beautiful to watch the interaction as Perlman meets these klezmer musicians for the first time. At this point he's only been learning about klezmer for a couple of weeks, and at first he makes awkward jokes about playing classical repertoire, including a joke about his Strad ('When he made this fiddle did he ever imagine it would play klezmer?'). He looks pretty uncomfortable as he tries to understand the harmony and structure of the music. But as soon as he puts bow to string he's completely at home and strings out beautiful phrases, completely catches the idiom, and becomes integral to the group. What a natural! #perlman #klezmer #video #playing #violin #blog

I'm currently researching an article for Sinfini Music about violin stars who branch out into other styles, and came across this wonderful footage of a concert at the Verbier Festival, which I was actually lucky enough to go to back in 2007. Joshua Bell teamed up with sitar player Anoushkar Shankar, and the results were mesmerising. Maybe the inflections and language aren't quite how someone born in the tradition might speak them, but you can't deny Bell's commitment to the music and the real sense of communication and music making. What do you think? #bell #video #indian #playing #blog

My latest interview for Cozio, with violinist James Ehnes, has just gone live, so please go and visit. He had so much to say about his experience playing some of the finest violins ever made that I couldn’t fit all of it into the interview there, so I saved some of the more philosophical questions for here. I’ve previously made the point that I don’t think everyone deserves to play a Strad and that in my experience there are many people playing them who definitely don't. How this should be decided is a tricky matter – I hypothesised on some of the possibilities in this blog. I didn’t come to a conclusion, but I did write that there is no doubt in my mind that someone like James Ehnes deserves to play any instrument he wants, such is his talent, and his quest for colour and sound, which takes him into the furthest possibilities of any instrument he plays. One of the surprising points he made is that this quest is actually quite exhausting. For him, a good Strad has so many possibilities that he feels it constantly challenges him to be a better player. The down side of this is that it brings players up against the limits of their own capacities. He explained: ‘At a certain point certain instruments have limitations and for some players that’s fine. I’ve spoken to friends and colleagues who enjoy having parameters. They know how far they can go in certain directions, in terms of colours or dynamic range, and where, if you push too far, the instrument won’t take it any more. They are happy to know where those boundaries are and to work within them because psychologically it can be liberating. It’s not easy constantly to be wondering if you can be playing better than you are.’ It never occurred to me that a good violin can be the cause of an existential crisis! Indeed, ultimately, the possibilities of a violin are inextricably tied up with the player’s own imagination, although a great instrument allows them to make their ideas real. Ehnes explained, ‘The sound is only ever going to be what the player wants. If the player can’t come up with that sonic ideal then the violin’s never going to make it happen. That’s the mark of a great instrument: when a player looks for a sound, or a million different sounds, sooner or later with a great instrument they’re going to find a way to work it out. It might be difficult and awkward, but it’ll be there. There are some things that are more difficult to do on my violin, but I’ve yet to have an idea in my mind of what sound I’m trying to make that I haven’t sooner or later figured out how to make.’ Ehnes admitted to being obsessed with trying instruments, but described the educational value of this process – which is advice that must surely hold true, whatever level of instrument you’re looking for, classic or modern: ‘I made friends with various people in the business and I was always going in and out of the shops seeing what people had, what was new. Someone would put in a new bass bar and I’d hack away on it for a week to break it in. It was a real education and that turned out to be very valuable in that by the time an instrument like the “Marsick” came along I knew what I was looking for. I know people who find a violin when they’re 20 and fall in love with it and 10 years later they say, “This isn’t the right violin for me, but it was right at the time”. I’m proud that all these years later I know why I gravitated to this violin and feel confident that it’s the right one for me.’ Although I’d be interested to now how violin dealers and luthiers feel about players constantly doing this. I imagine that it can be a positive thing for both, but may be seen by some as quite time-consuming. I’d be interested to know what experience people here have with this. Ehnes also described beautifully one of the special qualities of the best violins, by reference to a favourite opera star: ‘There’s a certain facet of projection that is difficult to define. It’s not necessarily volume. I remember going to the Met Opera when I was 15. My mother had bought tickets in the last aisle of the last balcony, as far away from Der Rosenkavalier as you’re ever going to be. It was beautiful but for a lot of it the singers seemed to be shouting as loud as they could and it was still inaudible. Then Luciano Pavarotti came on and it was the most amazing thing. It didn’t sound like he was singing louder, but he sounded close, as if he was just speaking to you. I also remember as a little boy hearing Dmitry Sitkovetsky playing the Beethoven Concerto on his Strad. We were sitting near the back of the hall and he had a similar effect: at the end of the cadenza in the first movement he was playing very softly but the sound spoke and carried like a clear whisper. It’s a quality that’s hard to find and hard to define.’ Photo credit: Benjamin Ealovega #ehnes #lutherie #strad #blindtests #playing #blog #people #interview