STAMITZ FIRST VIOLA CONCERTO

MASTERCLASS

Teaching & Playing

From Stamitz Viola Concerto no.1 in D major. Urtext edition, piano reduction, paperbound with marked and unmarked string parts. Editors Annemarie Weibezahn, Norbert Gertsch; pf reduction Johannes Umbreit, va fingering Jürgen Weber, cadenzas Robert Levin. Order no. HN 758, ISMN 979-0-2018-0758-4, €16.50. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, Munich © 2003

I don’t have fond memories of this concerto from my time as a student: it was stressful, particularly because being able to play it well at auditions could make the difference between getting a job or not. I remember very clearly the first time I performed it, without any worries, at a class concert when I was 18 years old. Afterwards, the other students came up to me and said, ‘Oh my goodness, you managed the octaves – well done!’ When I came to play it in my first ever competition, I had to wait backstage beforehand and listen to a couple of people who were ahead of me. They both messed up that passage, so I was extremely freaked out about it myself by the time I was on stage.

That is one of the things about the Stamitz Concerto: there are a few spots that everyone is really afraid of, even though you will probably be fine if you don’t think about them too much. It’s a concerto that requires very good bow control – it can be difficult to make it sing – so players often choose the Hoffmeister for auditions instead, because they think it’s easier. Many people struggle with the Stamitz, but it’s a popular audition piece and I think it’s one of the most important pieces of repertoire for students to work on.

Stay calm

Before any difficult passage it is always a good idea to ground yourself and breathe. Keep your shoulders down, stand steadily on both feet, breathe out and play without hesitating. Don’t panic, pull up your shoulders, gasp for air or, worse, stop breathing completely! If you don’t play a passage well, so be it, but don’t anticipate making a mistake before you have actually made one. Psychologically that is very important.

Swinging chords

The first challenge is in bar 72: the opening chords can be squeaky, out of tune and rough. To make them ring freely and sound fresh and energetic, play with a banana-shaped movement in your bow arm. This helps to give a swinging feeling to every note, to counterbalance any heaviness and help the phrase to move along by itself, as though you’re sitting on a swing pulled by a gravitational force that you can’t stop. Move your elbow sideways rather than downwards for each of the chords, and play with clear articulation. This does not mean to play each note with a hard attack, but to enunciate the beginning of each sound, as though it is a P, a B, or an M. For each slur, articulate the first note but play the others without impulse, allowing for just a hair of air at the end of each bow.

THE SOLOIST

IRÈNE ZANDEL

’There are a few spots that everyone is afraid of, even though you will probably be fine if you don’t think about them too much

Nils Mönkemeyer will be on tour with violinist Julia Fischer and the Berlin Baroque Soloists this December. For more information see bit.ly/2lT02OY

There are many ways to interpret this piece, and you have to make a decision about how you are going to shape every bar. For example, you could play the first two notes in the same, swinging character, but then use a more singing sound for the triplets leading into bar 73, without lifting the bow as much, before returning to the swinging character in bar 74. The chords should grow through the line, so don’t make the mistake of starting too loudly.

Overcoming the octaves

Bar 88 is the most dreaded part of the whole concerto. When you arrive on the first octave D, use an open string and a second finger, then move your thumb quickly so that you are in position for the F sharp 1–4. Don’t stay with your hand stuck in first position and move with your wrist, or you won’t be able to play the D and F sharp within one movement. After that, move the first finger closer to the fourth, to keep the fourth finger stable and pointing towards your nose when you shift.

To make sure that you are pushing down the strings without pinching, hang a shopping bag in your wardrobe. Using it to support the weight of the scroll, practise playing your octaves without the thumb, so that all the pressure is applied from the fingers with the help of the arm and elbow. If you think in quaver (e) double-stops rather than semiquavers (s), this passage won’t seem so fast. To catch your breath, play bars 89–90 with a strong impulse, before the change of character in bar 91.

Doctoring the drones

Bars 91–94, 120–126 and 234–237 are idyllic, pastoral moments, in big contrast to the rhythmic and virtuosic passages elsewhere. These drones are particularly challenging if you have small hands. Many people position themselves correctly to play the first-finger 5ths, without thinking about what comes next, then find that the fourth finger can’t reach high enough. Place the fourth finger before you place the first, to help you find the best hand position.

These passages are repetitive, so vary them to avoid sounding boring. For example, don’t play the grace note in bar 120 as an ordinary quaver: play it irregularly or with emphasis, so that you don’t always accentuate the first beat of the bar. This will make your playing sound more refined.

Scales and arpeggios

Another place that makes players freeze is bar 134. These arpeggio triplets aren’t difficult, but they are exposed and people will judge you if you don’t play them well – especially in an audition. Practise your scales and arpeggios daily, and when you practise this bar, pause after the shift to check that your fingers are in position over the right strings, ready to put down. To work on coordination, move the left hand slightly earlier than the bow. Use separate bow strokes, but play with one slur-like movement, to avoid impulses on each note. In bar 183 you have to play in quite an awkward position to keep the A string clear. Bring your left arm around so that the thumb is under the neck, the first-finger base moves away from it and the fourth finger is aligned with the C string. Work out how to play the other notes from there.

Spontaneous dynamics

There are no dynamic markings in the viola part, so you can decide on your own. It’s important that they are spontaneous: viola players don’t have a huge repertoire, so this is likely to be a piece that you play often over a lifetime. If you plan your dynamics too carefully, you might find yourself doing the same thing in several years without knowing why, and it won’t sound fresh or inspired any more.

Historical context

I like to play this concerto in a historically informed style. Reading Stamitz’s books has forced me to listen to myself differently, to open my mind to new ways of thinking, and articulating and colouring the sound with the bow rather than the left hand. Vibrato should be used only as a support, never to form and shape the whole sound.

I recommend reading Das Tempo in der Musik von Barock und Vorklassik, an interesting book by Klaus Miehling, who collected together a range of pre-1800 sources about tempo and character in particular movements. In Baroque and Classical times we often think musicians played far more slowly than we do today, to cope with echoey acoustics, but this book suggests that many things were actually much faster.

Tempo and pulse

Carl Stamitz and his brother Anton were viola virtuosos famous for their fantastic playing, so I think the tempo here should be quite fresh. Play the semiquaver passages virtuosically, with clear articulation, as though they are something extraordinary, and keep a consistent pulse or you will lose its Classical nobility. There is some freedom to vary the faster notes within that, but remember that if the composer has written an accompaniment in a strict rhythm, it means that the solo part should be rhythmical and in time too.

Cadenzas

In bar 258, to end the viola solo before the final orchestral tutti (not printed here), almost everyone plays the same cadenza, by Franz Beyer. It’s not bad, but I think that a cadenza should show a player’s personal take on a piece, rather than being a repeat of someone else’s ideas. Writing your own cadenza is a very interesting thing to do, because everyone does it differently, and because it will give you more creative ideas for your overall interpretation.

First develop an outline of keys, for example by following the structure of the concerto. Then play around within that: introduce an ornamented version of the main theme, or improvise around some of the orchestral material. Don’t judge what you create too much to begin with – just record your ideas so that you don’t lose them. INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

KONZERT