Over the past 100 years, string playing style and technique has gone through significant changes; Ariane Todes reviews the current trends
The sound of strings
When you think of your ideal violin sound – one you would be happy to be stranded on a desert island with for all eternity – what comes to your mind’s 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 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?
Perhaps the greatest influence has been the period performance movement, as violinist and pedagogue Antje Weithaas explains: ‘It 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.’
There seems to be a more exploratory sense of what sound can be. Viktoria Mullova, who was brought up in the Russian school but now crosses between Baroque and modern set-up says, ‘There are so many nuances and subtleties in music making. It’s 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’s a constant change and it’s much more interesting.’
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: ‘It 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 sections. The sound, instead of ominous or mysterious, becomes dead. What is lost in this kind of playing is a great deal of war
