{"id":23285,"date":"2023-01-13T10:30:36","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T09:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/?p=178437"},"modified":"2023-01-14T21:33:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-14T20:33:42","slug":"how-has-violin-sound-developed-through-the-years","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/how-has-violin-sound-developed-through-the-years\/","title":{"rendered":"How has violin sound developed through the years?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Charlotte Smith\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Friday, 13 January 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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When you think of your ideal violin<\/a><\/strong> sound \u2013\u00a0one you would be happy to be stranded on a desert island with for all eternity \u2013 what comes to your mind\u2019s ear? I was brought up on the golden caramel of Itzhak Perlman and the brassy perfection of Jascha Heifetz. Later I discovered the more fragile beauty of Fritz Kreisler<\/a><\/strong> and Joseph Szigeti. In recent years, it seems that sound worlds have become more diverse and even extreme, with airier, delicate colours and textures at one end and sustained intensity at the other. How have these developments come about and what are the implications?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the greatest influence has been the period performance movement, as violinist and pedagogue Antje Weithaas explains: \u2018It started to change with historically informed players and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. You could hear how it was possible to play in a different way that was more fitting to the style. It gives us so many more colours and possibilities of expression. Every composer needs a different sound, a different approach. Our job is to be so flexible that we can adjust to the language of the composer.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There seems to be a more exploratory sense of what sound can be. Viktoria Mullova<\/a><\/strong>, who was brought up in the Russian school but now\u00a0crosses between Baroque<\/a><\/strong> and modern set-up says, \u2018There are so many nuances and subtleties in music making. It\u2019s about pressure, speed of the bow, how much vibrato you use, how fast vibrato is, how much you turn the bow, how much hair goes on the string. There are so many little things to play with. When I practise, I experiment and make the phrase alive and then I change my mind the next day. It\u2019s a constant change and it\u2019s much more interesting.\u2019<\/p>\n

The best period performance bands and players have brought a fresh sound to composers we thought we knew, through understanding how the original instruments were played. Inevitably, however, some people have taken it too far. Alfred Brendel describes the extreme version: \u2018It is distinguished by very little vibrato, if any, producing a painfully artificial, lifeless sound on long, sustained notes, averse to any cantabile. For quite a few players this has become standard practice in pianissimo <\/i>sections. The sound, instead of ominous or mysterious, becomes dead. What is lost in this kind of playing is a great deal of warmth, colour, character and nuance. Until the day before yesterday, string players as well as singers made use of various kinds of vibrato \u2013 faster and slower, wider and narrower. Fast vibrato seems to have become extinct.\u2019<\/p>\n

This style is not even historically accurate, as Robin Michael, cellist in period orchestra Les Si\u00e8cles, points out: \u2018People have this idea that period instrument specialists play with no vibrato, but it\u2019s not true. The most important document we have is the treatise from Leopold Mozart. He talks about vibrato as being first and foremost to help the resonance of stopped notes and says that it can also be used as an expressive tool. There\u2019s still this idea that when you play Bach, you shouldn\u2019t use vibrato. It\u2019s nonsense. Sound should never be dead unless it\u2019s a very specific effect that the composer\u00a0wants.\u2019<\/p>\n

At the other end of the sonic spectrum is a sound that can be too present. Violinist Levon Chilingirian, whose quartet celebrated 50 years in 2021, describes the trend in chamber music: \u2018There\u2019s a much more liberal use of the bow, and a sort of wall-to-wall legato, a sound that doesn\u2019t breathe, which has become more prevalent.\u2019 He relates this to the necessity of filling bigger halls, particularly for quartets who might be more at home in smaller venues: \u2018The more famous a group becomes the larger the halls they are\u00a0touring in, and they have to develop a bigger way of playing, which goes against the music of the great masters. It\u2019s not designed for these huge halls that we play in. If you\u2019re spending most of your time playing in halls that don\u2019t help you, perhaps you are forced to develop ways of playing which are almost unnatural.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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