Improve your playing continued
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Focus10 ways to avoid tension in your playing
Advice on how to be flexible and relaxed as a string player from 120 years of The Strad
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Focus
Functional Fingering
An article on ways to move around the fingerboard without upsetting your musical flow by Leo Phillips
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Focus
How do you get into a conservatoire?
Mark Messenger, head of strings at the Royal College of Music, reveals what conservatoire audition panels are looking for
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Focus
Antonio Pappano: What conductors want from their string sections
A regular, nice, beautiful sound doesn’t interest the music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, he told The Strad in this interview from 2008
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Focus
Ask the Experts: minimising excessive body movements
We asked four string pedagogues to give their thoughts on eliminating or cutting down on excessive body movements when playing
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Article
Masterclass: Jan Vogler on Beethoven Cello Sonata op.69
Cellist Jan Vogler explores the first movement of the first-ever sonata to give equal weight to both piano and cello
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Video
Masterclass with Violinist Gábor Takács-Nagy
Violinist Gábor Takács-Nagy coaches Sirena Huang on Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata as part of a masterclass for the Classical Bridge Music Festival.
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Video
Learning Beethoven with Maxim Vengerov
Three students at the Royal College of Music reveal what it’s like to work with Maxim Vengerov, ‘one of the big legends of the violin’ on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
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Focus
Staccato - one of the most controversial elements of right-hand technique
Rok Klopčič examines the different types of staccato plus the various and sometimes strange approaches to perfecting the technique
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Debate
How to find time to practise as a busy music teacher
Performance coach Travis Baird recommends three key strategies for effective practice when everyday commitments seem to leave little time
