Last night I went to a violin concert by a young NZ player called Julia McCarthy who is about to fly to London to commence a Masters degree in violin performance at the Guildhall School of Music.
The piece that I was amazed at was Bach - the Chaconne from Partita in Dminor. How ever did she get it sounding as though all those different tunes were intermingling at once?? I play a lot of Bach on the piano and obviously understand how you bring out the various melodies etc .. but then you have 10 fingers to do it with.
This was the first violin concert I have been to, she played ( among other things) a Violin Concerto by Samuel Barber and also a Sonata in A by Franck which I really liked too.
Can someone tell me how she was making all the different melodies sound at once as I am totally intrigued.

Hiya!

I heard a violin concerto this summer where one part sounded like the soloist was 3 violins at once! The secret seems to be a high level of skill at double-stopping, which means playing more than one string at once. You can play 2 together and it can sound like more than one instrument is playing. Amazing!

No doubt the others here will have more experience and can comment further.

Elisabeth

In Bach, and indeed many other works for that matter, there are often triple or quadruple stops.

The playing of chords and underlying melodies on the violin is only achieved by having VERY independent fingers. If you tend to find all your fingers wanting to move in the same direction at the same, then it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to play two lines of music with only four fingers and across four strings all at the same time.

Glad to hear you were impressed - a lot of pianists think the violin must be easy to play because we've only got four strings and one line of music to read

Wow! I didn't know that was possible! Aren't strings amazing??

Elisabeth

I'm always impressed when contrapuntal music is played well on violins, 'celli etc.: too often I've heard renditions that 'miss the point' entirely; it takes real skill to bring out the part writing. I remember Viktoria Mullova commenting on learning the Bach Partitas for Solo Violin back when she was a student - the approach they were taught to Bach was the same as that for anything else. One day, she had a eureka moment and realised that it was a completely different approach and her Bach playing took off from there - now, her recording of the partitas is one of best available. For sheer contrapuntal brilliance, though, I think it's hard to beat Andrew Manze - well, Rachel Podger comes close, but his recording of the Corelli Violin Sonatæ is stunning.

But what is she actually doing to do it???

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking!

What "completely different approach" - what did she SAY she did to achieve the playing of say, triple and quadruple stops at speed with her music, other than practise them TO death?

Vik is reportedly reserved so maybe she didn't elaborate?

Not that I stand a chance of playing the Chaconne (yet ), but with the contrapuntal Bach I believe it is about understanding (and being able to hear) the different lines of music happening at the same time and being able to bring out the separate threads in your playing. Letting some strings ring out for longer and cutting some of the others shorter will help in this illusion. I think I heard that in one part of the Chaconne there are actually 7 threads of music at the same time, and each of these has to be brought out.

So that is the theory and the end result, how it is actually done technically is about the independent fingers Amanda spoke about. And loads of practice!

I have my own favourites, and Bach I tend to be very particular about (and indeed the baroque specialists such as Andrew Manze and Rachel Podger are among the best Bach interpreters...also Sigiswald Kuijken). At the grave risk of being struck down by a thunderbolt I don't believe Heifetz could do it (but he could do many other amazing things with the violin). And there is one recording of the Partita no 2 I have that lives in my car and is very special (soz not available commercially!)