The Russian School of the Violin

ABCs of the violinist in an hour

Since the first fiddlers, violinists and strolling players of the tenth through the fourteenth centuries, the Russian School of the Violin traversed an immense way in order to find, at last, one of its founding fathers, the composer and interpreter Ivan Khandochkine (1747-1804). Developed constantly afterward by his brilliant successors of the nineteenth century, such as Nikolaï Afanasieff and Henryk Wieniawski, this School perpetuated itself until such emblematic faces at the beginning of the twentieth century as Piotr Stoliarski and Léopold Auer. The school of Stoliarski presented masterful interpreters such as David Oïstrakh and Nathan Milstein; the one of Auer was able to form Heifetz, Elman, Milstein and Zimbalist... The class of Mostras, which then all taught at the conservatory of Moscow in the early twentieth century, extended itself by another branch of the Russian School that fully blossomed in the United States with the school of Ivan Galamian. This tradition was perpetuated by Yuri Yankelevitch and Leonid Kogan, themselves both students of Abram Yampolsky, and generated an equally great group of violinists. Thus new generations of artists appearing today extend this tradition and translate its principles in their lives, perpetuating to the world the wonderful musical inheritance of the Russian School of the violin.

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What is the secret of this Russian School that knew how to give to the musical world these generations of great soloists, orchestral and chamber musicians, professors? What are its major principles? What therefore is its particular characteristic?

This last doubtless resides, firstly, in an eminently scientific approach. In fact, it allows a very precise study of the nature of the violin’s sound production through aspects of its different and very physical parameters and in its most minute details:

A) the "natural" instrument placement to bring it in unity with the violinist‘s body,

B) the proportion between the weight and bow speed, the angle of attack in comparison with the string and placement on the string. By thus reaching a total freedom in his movements, the violinist succeeds in finding an extraordinary palette of sounds and of bow strokes;

C) the technique of the left hand.

But above all, this School consists of making the violin sing, to produce a cantilena (song) even in the more virtuosic passages, while putting technical perfection in the service of musical expression.

The method presented in this video is the condensed synthesis of the Russian School of the violin. It is designed just as much for professors as for all violinists, small and large, beginning or advanced, desiring to find answers in their technical research