All Playing articles
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FocusPlayers of tomorrow: Shannon Lee
The 27-year-old Canadian violinist, 2nd prize winner at this year’s Sendai International Violin Competition, talks about ambition, motivation and her fear of wardrobe mishaps
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Blogs
Tomás Cotik: How I interpret Bach
Ahead of his 2020 album release of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, the violinist presents a new blog series, in which he discusses the contradictions between the opposing trends and traditions in Bach interpretation, and his personal solutions to them
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Focus
Spiccato and sautillé - two important bow strokes which are often confused
Making the bow come off the string is a delicate art. Rok Klopčič looks at various approaches
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Focus
Conductor Manfred Honeck on achieving his orchestral string sound
Music director Manfred Honeck has brought a distinctly European flavour to the Pittsburgh Symphony. Gavin Dixon asked him how his time as a violist in the Vienna Philharmonic helped him to become the conductor he is today
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From the Archive: December 1909
The pseudonymous ‘L.H.W.’ gives his thoughts on teaching, in an article he might himself call ‘profuse and extravagant in expression’
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Sentimental Work: Linus Roth
Weinberg’s Violin Concerto is a work of passionate intensity, as the German violinist found – even though he hadn’t encountered the composer until eight years ago
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Leila Josefowicz on Berg Violin Concerto Second Movement - part 1
ln the first of two articles, Leila Josefowicz explores ideas of feverishness, hallucination, death and resurrection in the second movement of a great 20th-century concerto
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Lights, Camera, Action
As the founder of Music in Vision, Kathleen Ross has built a business from supplying professional musicians for on-camera roles. Introducing instrumentalists to the world of film and TV can be challenging, but, she writes, ensuring that musicians in background parts are convincingly portrayed is well worth the effort
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Feature
Witnesses to the fall
First published in the March 2014 issue to mark 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, nine string players and makers from the East and West sides here reveal the stark contrast between life on either side of the divide
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Focus
Performing entirely by reflex, by cellist Leonid Gorokhov
The Russian musician and Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover professor describes how he trains himself to transcend the physical restraints of playing
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Blogs
Recording Bach’s Violin Concertos with John Eliot Gardiner
Kati Debretzeni, leader of the English Baroque Soloists, explains the thought processes behind her recent Bach recording
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Feature
Behind the scenes with the New York String Orchestra
The New York String Orchestra Seminar, one of America’s first orchestral training programmes for young musicians, celebrated its 50th anniversary in December 2018. Bruce Hodges attended rehearsals and concerts of the landmark season
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Blogs
11 ways to be a better chamber musician
Violinist, composer and chamber music festival founder Natalie Klouda writes the advice she would like to have been given when she was starting out
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A Treasury of Sound
The Royal Danish Orchestra has been adding to its collection of fine stringed instruments for centuries – but there is revolution as well as evolution behind its distinctive string sound, which is unmistakable whatever the repertoire and whoever the conductor, finds Andrew Mellor
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Into the Light
Rebecca Clarke’s 1923 Rhapsody for cello and piano was never publicly performed during the composer’s lifetime, and has only recently received proper attention in the hands of champions of British music Raphael Wallfisch and John York - who makes the case for the forgotten masterpiece as its score is ...
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A Conductor’s Tale
Music director Manfred Honeck has brought a distinctly European flavour to the Pittsburgh Symphony. Gavin Dixon spoke to him at his summer festival in Wolfegg, Germany, as he prepared to embark on a tour of Europe with his Pittsburgh forces – and discovered how his time as a violist in ...
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Blogs
Violinist Jack Liebeck and composer Stuart Hancock interview each other
Having just worked together on recording a new violin concerto, the composer and soloist sit down to discuss the challenges and rewards of the process
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Is repetitive practice a good or a bad thing?
A prolonged, sickening and monotonous repetition of a section of music or the legitimate means of mastering a difficult passage? Joseph O'Doherty weighs up the two sides.
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Focus
Beyond Villa-Lobos: the music of Brazil
For many classical enthusiasts Brazilian music can be summed up in the folk-inspired compositions of Villa-Lobos. Naxos’s multivolume series The Music of Brazil is set to broaden awareness, writes Peter Quantrill
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