Opinion: Intelligent approaches to the bow in orchestral playing

Bow distribution plays a crucial role in articulation, phrasing and dynamic control, and string players’ pursuit of effective bow distribution can often seem endless. In orchestral playing, we can often get stuck in the ‘whole bow, big sound’ mentality, this approach appearing to be the default as we are encouraged to achieve a full, projecting sound. However, proper bow management is fundamental in this environment, where, in reality, bow distribution should be varied and controlled, and focused primarily on the blending of sound within a section, rather than its projection…