Playing with expression

TECHNIQUE

DANIEL LEVITOV

Coordinator of cello and chamber music at the Peabody Preparatory of Johns Hopkins University, and director of strings at the Bryn Mawr School, Baltimore, US

BORN

Lincoln, Nebraska, US

STUDIED WITH

Peter Rejto, David Geber,

Julia Lichten, Carol Work

TEACHES

Pre-college students aged 5-18

EXERCISES

•To begin, warm up with a normal scale. en isolate one octave, to experiment with your sound:

•Crescendo and diminuendo, following the shapes in exercise 1, both forwards and in reverse

•What did you do to play each shape? Did you change bow speed, contact point or weight?

•As you change dynamic, imagine adjusting two vibrato dials: one for speed and one for width. Turn the dials independently, to find out how the hands can work together to create new colours.

BOW WEIGHT, CONTACT POINT AND SPEED

PAUL SCHRAUB

Now choose one note to bow freely, and listen to_how it sounds when you use different bow weights, contact points and speeds. Try this in different positions, on every string, on each finger and at varied tempos.

•Imagine your bow is a submarine floating in the sea. Now let it sink into the string, as though the submarine’s tanks are filling up with water. Feel the resistance change as the bow sinks and rises again.

•Change the contact point, using a crooked bow to move between the bridge and the fingerboard

•Try different bow speeds. Imagine pushing your foot down slowly, then quickly, on a car accelerator or brake. Move from slow to fast, then fast to slow, suddenly, gradually, and everywhere in between.

Now work on exercise 2, not until your sound is perfectly even, but until you are skilled enough to make expressive musical shapes at will:

Play with a whole bow to each bar, using only weight and contact point to change dynamic

•Try again, this time using less bow for the softer dynamics and more for the louder ones

•Explore different areas of the bow and build new expressive shapes within each dynamic

Practise each element independently and combined, until you can produce a consistently beautiful sound that is always developing, never_static.This is will give you much more expressive possibility on your instrument.

REPERTOIRE

In the following examples, experiment with different colours and effects, really exaggerating every gesture to make sure that it comes across. Developing these expressive tools will help you to play all of your repertoire more musically and with greater spontaneity.

You may find it helpful to map out the musical shapes that you want to create here and in any pieces that you are learning. If you do this on an iPad, you can write everything down and then wipe it away again each time you want to try something new.

IN YOUR PRACTICE

It is important to practise proactively rather than reactively: don’t wait until something goes wrong before you try to fix it. Instead, decide what you want to achieve in advance, then work out how you are going to do it. Keep a list of the things that you want to improve and focus on one at a time - such as vibrato or bow speed - alongside your regular scale practice.

You can break your pieces down into focus segments too. For example, you could spend five minutes working on intonation, five on phrase shape and then five recording yourself, listening back and taking notes. Choose your goal and finish working towards it, even if you hear something else that you don’t like along the way. Once you have completed that goal, plan the next section of your practice to address any new problems that have arisen.

I recommend finishing every practice session by recording what you’ve been working on that day, then listening back immediately and taking notes. Use those notes to plan what you are going to work on the next day.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

I believe that we need the ability to be different teachers for different students, and even for the same students in different phases of their lives. At times we may have to encourage them to open up and play out; at others we will have to focus on nuance and refinement. Helping them to build an expressive technique is important at every stage.They should always be thinking about how to make musical shapes, even in technical work. I demonstrate different interpretations to them often, to give them new ideas.

Sometimes I ask students to sing or speak with expression, or to describe a musical character and translate that into technical cello language: what does it mean for the bow, for vibrato, for breathing and timing? Students who play intuitively in a very expressive way can find this difficult and resist analysis, but it is essential that they learn how to manipulate their sound in new ways too. If they want to pursue careers as musicians, to play in a quartet or an orchestra, or to teach, they will have to be flexible and know how to adapt. They won’t always be able to do things their way!,

FURTHER MATERIALS

Sevcik’s 40 Variationsop.3, edited by Feuillard, are useful to explore how to play expressively and with nuance within a controlled technical framework.

Different bowing patterns in all keys in Susan Brown’s Two Octave Scales and Bowings(of which I am an editor) give opportunities to introduce variety and expressivity into scale practice.

NEXT MONTH

Violinist William Herzog on mental practice and musical memory