Cello warm-ups: the left hand

Exercises and advice to help string players develop a left hand that is strong, balanced and agile

MATS LIDSTRÖM 

Honorary associate and professor of cello at the Royal Academy of Music in London, UK

BORN Stockholm, Sweden

STUDIED WITH Maja Vogl, Leonard Rose, Channing Robbins, Lynn Harrell, Pierre Fournier

TEACHES Conservatoire students (junior and senior)

Last month I discussed how to warm up the right hand, to maximise efficiency in any practice session. This month, my focus is the left hand, which, if it is weak and unbalanced, wastes time, damages our fluency and intonation, and affects the quality of our sound and lyricism of our vibrato. The following exercises warm up the hand while building strength, balance and agility. For the best result, they should be alternated with warm-ups for the right hand, as outlined in my book (see box, page 79).

EXERCISES

Once, after a concert, an amateur cellist told me that he’d been doing ‘pumping exercises’: in a low position, he pushed the string down, then lifted his finger into a harmonic and pushed it down again, without leaving the string. This is a fantastic way to warm up the fingertips, so now I do it all the time.

It is also important to work on controlling our vibrato, by developing the balance of the hand. Vibrato is an important expressive tool that helps us to bring out the power and poetry of music, in pieces like Bloch’s Schelomo, Strauss’s Don Quixote or Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise. To enhance every phrase and dynamic, we should be able to vibrate at different speeds on every note, not only the easy ones! This requires strength. In exercise 1:

• Use perpetual motion to play the widest vibrato possible, increasing in speed bar by bar

• Build an awareness of how the two components of vibrato – width and speed – influence the sound

 The fingers’ centre of power is the palm, so use exercise 2 that to warm up that feeling of strength:

• Keep the fingers close to the string, to minimise effort, improve efficiency and maximise endurance

• Play evenly, at a moderate tempo. If the rhythm is uneven, work on building up more finger strength

Next, play exercise 3 to warm the hand into its strongest, most balanced position. Again, focus on evenness, using minimal effort, and keeping the fingers close to the string. Think of the bow as the engine, always producing a healthy sound, with clear impulses in the bow changes. This is fantastic preparation for Tchaikovsky’s Pezzo Capriccioso, or the second movement of the Prokofiev Concerto.

OCTAVE DOUBLE-STOPS

Octave double-stops are critical for warming up the left hand. They improve balance and strength,

EXERCISE 1 Use the maximum breadth of vibrato by swinging your finger around the axle of the original note. Prioritise the rhythm: lower the tempo slightly if you find it too fast to play the sextuplets. The arrows are reminders to use gravity to start the vibrato, with a first impulse that points up the fingerboard improving intonation and vibrato. They also serve as a reference point for scales and double-stops that lie within the octave frame. Use exercise 4 to build muscle memory for octaves in any context:

• To avoid getting stuck, use plenty of bow at a good speed 

• Focus on the distance between the thumb and third finger, and on how that corresponds to the fingerboard, irrespective of pitch

• Pay close attention to intonation throughout. As you go up the fingerboard, notice how the third finger has to move more slowly than the thumb, because of the different registers

Use that same feeling in exercises 5 and 6, thinking in terms of distances rather than notes, before practising in different keys.

Now comes the big test: can we still nail our octaves when we remove the sliding option, when no other notes precede them? Use exercise 7 to play ‘blindfolded’, without that support. This warm-up can save a lot of time in the finales of Haydn’s D major Concerto, Saint-Saëns’s Concerto no.1 and the Dvořák Concerto.

SCALES TO FINISH 

To complete a warm-up, I play two-octave major scales in the low registers, to check that I feel comfortable with my sound, bow distribution and the balance of my left hand. In exercise 8, breathe vigorously through your nose, to fill the blood with oxygen and give more power to your muscles. I love to do that in any fast passages, such as in the finale of Haydn’s C major Concerto.

IN YOUR PRACTICE

If you’re in good shape, I would warm up for around 20 minutes; if you need more time, I’d do 45 to 50 minutes for both hands. However long you take, focus on bow contact, vibrato, uninhibited use of the bow, agility of the left hand, octaves and scales. By warming up these elements of our playing every day, we will find our repertoire practice far easier and more efficient. It’s important to do this regularly so that what we achieve in each practice session isn’t lost. It can also be useful to add exercises to work on volume and depth of sound, to support intonation and general security.

My teacher, Leonard Rose, used to tell his students that we would learn as much from our talented violin friends as we would from him. That is because, in terms of their technique, violinists are ahead of cellists by a hundred years or more. Their pieces are harder than ours, so they’ve reached greater technical heights and I don’t know if we will ever be able to catch up. Rose urged us to study how they manoeuvre around the instrument and to copy that in our practice, for instance in terms of shifting and dynamics. This is an idea that we can all use when we warm up or play our pieces.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

I take my students through my warm-ups book (see box) chapter by chapter over several weeks, until they have it in their heads completely, along with a good understanding of why it is important, and how it relates to their work on the repertoire. It’s so important to work with them in a way that is joyful and totally constructive, without ever being patronising. There is no need for such primitive methods. Instead, we may treat our students as colleagues – although in my experience it is not the ones who ask the most questions, but those who listen, then go home and practise, who usually progress the fastest!

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

FURTHER MATERIALS

In my book The Essential Warm-Up Routine for Cellists, I give detailed suggestions and exercises to warm up every element of cello playing. See www.cellolid.com.

Bernhard Cossmann wrote some wonderful exercises for strength and balance of the left hand in his book Studies for developing agility, strength of fingers and purity of intonation.

NEXT MONTH Ariadne Daskalakis on early bowing techniques for modern violinists