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Our violin community of more than 100,000 unique readers a month explores the worlds of classical music and fiddle music for violinists of all levels - including symphony orchestra professionals and violin teachers, those who make and sell musical instruments, and students who want to learn the violin.

Violinist.com's exclusive interviews with top violin performers, teachers, pedagogues and luthiers, including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, and Anne-Sophie Mutter
Editor Laurie Niles' coverage of the biennial Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies at The Juilliard School in New York

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Recent Top Blogs

Carving a scroll - step by step - part XII

By LUIS CLAUDIO MANFIO
July 2, 2009 16:26

<p>I continue refinishing with my shaped scrapers. Now we have this:</p>

Violinist.com interview with Philippe Quint

By Laurie Niles
June 30, 2009 21:18

Apparently it is not possible for Philippe Quint to play the Violin Concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold enough.

"If I could play it three times during the concert – I would!" Philippe said, laughing. "It's one of those works that gives you an incredible amount of positive energy." He spoke to me on the phone from New York in early June, about his new recording of the Korngold, about Dorothy DeLay's uncanny ways, and about the day the Strad he plays went flying away in a taxi – without him.

Philippe Quint

"I instantly had something that's called 'love at first sight' with the Korngold concerto," Philippe said. "I heard Jascha Heifetz's recordings, and I think I heard Perlman's performance and I instantly knew, I literally ran right into the library and got the score and started learning it, right away."

Memorizing the Map

By Karen Allendoerfer
June 29, 2009 15:26

In this round of playing the violin and viola, I've been paying more attention to memorization of pieces. When I was growing up I did almost none of that. My teachers didn't require it and I think that lack was part of a larger educational philosophy of the time that was anti-"rote" memorization and "regurgitation" for many subjects, not just music. I partially agree with this school of thought, in that I don't think memorization is the be-all and end-all of learning a piece. I don't think it should stop there. But, I am starting to think that it should *start* there.

I played a viola recital in April, my first recital in more years than I want to think about, and my first public performance ever of a piece from memory, without music. It was a short piece, a little under 5 minutes long, Rebecca Clarke's "Passacaglia on an Old English Tune." Given what other people manage to memorize--whole concertos, entire symphonies, multiple instrumental parts of entire symphonies--this one little viola part seemed like it should have been a surmountable challenge. And, I perspired through it without memory glitches, sweaty hands and all. However, the fear of forgetting (if not actual forgetting) intensified the nerves that I normally feel anyway.