All Improve your playing articles – Page 9
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Focus8 ways to maximise your sound with minimum effort
Advice on how to increase your sound without any extra effort from The Strad Archive
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Focus10 views on the benefits of slow practice
Debate on how best to harness slow practice from The Strad Archive
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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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FocusFunctional Fingering
An article on ways to move around the fingerboard without upsetting your musical flow by Leo Phillips
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FocusHow 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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Premium ❘ FeatureAntonio 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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FocusAsk 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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VideoMasterclass 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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VideoLearning 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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DebateHow 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
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ArticleA cello quartet with one cello
Four members of the Wiener Cello Ensemble 5+1 perform Ravel's Bolero on a single instrument to great comic effect. Watch: Music teacher loses temper with violinist – with destructive results
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Premium ❘ FeatureMasterclass: Jian Wang on Brahms’s Cello Sonata No.2 in F Major, second and third movements
The Chinese cellist gives advice on how to play the middle movements of this colourful, passionate work, and calls on cellists’ capacity to play cantabile
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FocusSentimental work: Lynn Harrell on Bloch's Schelomo
For the US cellist, the singing qualities and narrative drive of Bloch’s Schelomo bring evocative memories and spiritual uplift. From the January 2017 issue
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DebateIs playing a concerto really the ultimate test of musicianship?
Performing a concerto has long been regarded as the highest test of a string player's musical prowess. But what exactly do they prove, asks Toby Deller
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FocusTechnique: Minna Rose Chung on double stopping and Tartini tones
Using ‘difference tones’ to perfect your intonation when tackling double stopping passagework
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DebateIs playing the viola a different art from playing the violin?
Not so, according to Philip Dukes, who argues that the technical requirements of the instruments overlap considerably and players benefit from studying both
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Premium ❘ FeatureMasterclass: Julian Rachlin on Brahms’s Viola Sonata in F minor
The Lithuanian-born violinist and violist discusses technical preparation, character and colour in the first and second movements of op.120 no.1
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Blogs9 ways for musicians to think like top athletes
Carole Talbot-Honeck earned her Masters degree from The University of Ottawa studying the psychological prerequisites for optimal musical performance. Here, she outlines a number of sporting attitudes, which are of equal value to musicians
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FocusTechnique: Two-octave scales and arpeggios
An essential way to improve tone and intonation by Michael Frischenschlager, professor emeritus of violin at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna
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FocusMasterclass: Christian Tetzlaff on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto – first movement
How to bring out the mystery and joy of one of classical music’s longest opening movements