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night. The other parts are teachable, and there are resources and basic
things that can help. When you are aware of these, you can manage
your own progress.
Vibrato
Let’s talk about vibrato. The components of vibrato are very simple:
it’s one part arm, one part wrist, one part the first joint of each finger.
The arm is basically a spark plug - it gets things moving. If you want
to talk about what controls the width and speed, it’s much more the
first joint of the fingers. Go on Youtube, watch Ivry Gitlis. There are
two videos of him playing the Rondo Capriccioso by Saint-Saens.
One recording is when he was about 35 years old and the other is
from when he was 88. Observe how his wrist is not straight but slightly
out when he vibrates. The reason for this is he keeps the weight of his
hand forward and he’s able to vibrate quite big with the joint without
taking his finger weight off the string. Ivry always got violinists to
think outside the box, and some people might take issue with his
interpretations; however, one thing you can’t argue with is that he has
the same vibrato across his entire career, 50 years later. How many
people do you know that can do that? Probably no one! You simply
can’t argue with the mechanics.
Left hand articulation
Watch Hilary Hahn’s performance of the final movement of the C
Major Bach Sonata and observe how she drops her fingers from the
base knuckles. Look at how every finger is independent within that
frame, how she gets a lot of finger weight from the acceleration of the
fingers into the string. There’s a reason she’s doing that, and it’s because
it is efficient. She’s getting all the weight that’s necessary to make the
string stop, but she gets most of it at those speeds from the acceleration
of the drop. You can see the same mechanic in Julia Fischer’s left hand.
Ruggiero Ricci used to say that a violinist is only as good as their
intonation. I disagree with that because I’ve heard people play in tune
and still be quite awful! I will admit that a violinist is only as good
as their left hand, though. If your left hand is not at a very high level
when it comes to using weight, using agility, using those gigantic
drops, intonation, frame of hand - it doesn’t matter if your bow arm is
fantastic, it’s not going to work. It’s very important to observe the great
violinists of today - they all share many similarities in their left hands.
Use videos as a resource to find what you need.
Bow grips
There are a lot of successful bow grips. You’ll see Franco-Belgian,
Galamian grips, Russian grips, and hybrids of these. Each one presents
certain advantages, especially if you look at the repertoire of the people
who exemplify these various bow holds. If you’re talking Russian,
basically Heifetz is the epitome. He was amazing for Romantic repertoire,
but he wasn’t as successful in Classical and Baroque repertoire. Why?
The Russian bow grip doesn’t lend itself to having a lot of “touch” -
your joints are quite fixed and there’s not a lot of movement in the
joints of the right hand. It makes it very difficult to produce a brush
stroke, and that’s why Heifetz didn’t excel at that repertoire. Find out
based on observation which grip you think is most effective. The
thing that all grips have in common is the control over contact point.
I challenge you to look at any violinist that’s good (any one of them!)
- Frank Peter Zimmerman, Leonidas Kavakos, Julia Fischer, Joshua
Bell, Gil Shaham - all of them have impeccable contact point control.
They have all discovered, either consciously or subconsciously, that
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