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Originally Posted by Marcus Johnson  Yeah... Hal took 'em all out to dinner afterwards. How helpful can you get?  |
Most of his work was around the Koussevitzky Concerto but he did talk about general technique and posture as well.
1) Vibrato. He was very against the idea of continuous vibrato on every note, he much prefers the more musical approach where you pick and choose vibrato based on various stresses. For example, the intro. B, A#,C. Hal demonstrated that he likes to play it: B (thick vibrato), A# (no vibrato, bring out the dissonance), then a tiny slide/tenuto to C, and the rest of the "cadenza" is played in time and fast without vibrato, except for the last two notes (B, F#.)
2) Posture. This generally applied to French Bow Technique, but there was one German bow player, so he did definitely help him as well. Hal talked for a while about the advantages/disadvantages over sitting and standing. For Solo he always plays standing, using the Laborie end-pin, he has one on his orchestral, solo and french bass. For Orchestra he always plays sitting on a fairly low stool (he is not a tall man, maybe 5'6"-5'7") with one leg up on the rung. He also rotates the bass depending on where the majority of the notes are to be played...For beethoven where you're mainly playing on the low strings he'll position the bass slightly more like a cello, whereas for works that require mainly the upper strings he turns the bass slightly inwards. He then discussed that weight relationships should always be equal, ie. you should never have it turned so far in ward that your bow arm has no weight on the E-string.
3) Hand Position: Hal discussed how he likes to flatten the fingers out (left hand) for slow works that require a lot of vibrato, especially in thumb position. For fast, clean playing he advocates curved fingers, playing roughly on your tips.
4) French Bow, and sound production: Drawing the bow across the string, especially on an up bow when you're at the tip. Hal talked about raising your elbow outwards, forearm, so you could have more torque/weight applied to upbow. You could actually see that on long strokes, where he plays upbow, he elbow actually moves to the right/slightly up to give the bow change more weight at the tip.
I have to go to rehearsal now but I will try and complete this later. He's overall a great guy with amazing things to say.
Did you find anything particularly helpful that he said? Any approaches on technique or music that you found to be interesting or helpful?
