How to Deal with Limitation

A couple days ago I was checking out a posting on a well known violin site. It seems a young person has been working the ‘Rondo Capriccioso’ of Saints-Saens and has reached the upper limit of her up bow staccato. Only problem is, it aint fast enough to fit into the piece. Now, she seems to have done her up bow staccato homework – it just isn’t there.

Fact is, all of us have a limitation(s) in one violinistic department or another. The question is; how is it impacting our ability to create and deliver a message.

Years ago, at one of my coaching sessions with Nathan Milstein, I brought the 24th Caprice of Paganini. The 6th variation has some scales in tenths in it, and I was having a devil of a time with them.

You see, the only way I thought of the variation was ‘lickity-split’ (thats ‘fast’, in case you didn’t know). After listening to my wildly inconsistent rendition of them several times, he put his hand on my bow arm to calm my growing frustration.

He then proceeded to tell me some facts of violin life. ‘While certain fundamental skills are essential,’ he said, ‘an artist must know how to interpret music and create effects that also suit his or her physical realities.’ He turned me on to the way Josef Szigeti played that variation, slow and melodious. Now I find it rather uninspiring any other way.

So, let that be a lesson to you all. Play your music so that you really CAN play it. Then put something in it to create magic.

And to put some magic into your fundamentals come let me show you the Kreutzer etudes like you have never experienced them before.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Even Milstein had a limitation. He played that very passage in the ‘Rondo’ as a series of broken thirds instead of up bow staccato scales. Now go over and turbo-charge your fundamentals.