June 13, 2005 at 2:07 AM

My lesson with Mr. Zukerman and Ms. Kopec this morning went well. I played about a page-and-a-half of the Beethoven Concerto, up to the trills, trying to move less and produce a good sound. Then we got right to work on the first two bars. Mr. Zukerman instructed me to play the octaves not with grace notes as two separate notes, but almost as a double-stop, with continuity and without stopping. He also repeated throughout the lesson that I should think of it as a Kreutzer etude, or something like Beethoven Op. 25 (simply making up an opus number to try to get me out of the sense of thinking of it as great music for the time being). So I am basically to practice the exposition like a technical study, trying to constantly have a good, consistent sound; straight bow direction ("out" or away from the body on the down bow, "in" or towards the body on the up bow); good posture with the violin high; only horizontal movement (again, a sort of movement to the left or out on the down bow to help the sound's resonance and vice versa for the up bow); curled fingers on the bow hand (I tend to lock my ring finger)...the list goes on! I can definitely tell that when I practice in this way and feel much more grounded and stable, the sound is much more even, and so divorcing technique from artistry at the moment is very useful for me right now. I still have trouble figuring out how to integrate it fully into my regular playing, for example once I leave the program and again start performing a lot in the fall. My teacher has always recommended practicing these technical things during the less interesting parts of orchestra rehearsal, which is a great idea--to decide to challenge yourself to vibrate every note in a lyrical slow movement, or to concentrate on bow direction over a long passage.

Another part of the program is listening to recordings of a 10-part radio program called "The Concerto According to Pinchas." We listened to the first installment, on the concertos of Vivaldi, Bach, and Mozart, last night. It included some excerpts from some of his recordings and his general musings on the music; some bonus tracks are available on the website. He is particularly opinionated about the early/period performance movement and feels that vibrato is absolutely vital to sound--that the vibrato of a plucked open string is the vibrato that we should imitate and transfer to the left hand, all the time. Another common saying, which also answers the question of a recent post: the hardest thing to do on the violin? To play in tune with a beautiful sound.

June 13, 2005 at 2:07 AM

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