Notes from the Janos Starker Masterclass

These are my notes from the Janos Starker Masterclass at the Hungarian Embassy in DC, in which which we watched Mr. Starker instruct two talented young students. No doubt I missed something, but I wrote down what I could.

All opinions expressed in these notes are Mr. Starker's alone. Both students were right-handed, so right-hand = bowing hand, left-hand = fretting hand.

The first set of notes are his comments directed at the two students (keep in mind both are advanced level, not beginners!):

- Beware of rigid thumbs. Thumbs need to be loose on both the fretting hand and the bowing hand.

- A practice to try with the bow: Hold bow in bowing hand with palm facing up and play with the balance.

- Beware of tension in non-playing fingers of the left hand

- In thumb position, "lean back" the index finger. I think he didn't want to see the index finger perpendicular to the fingerboard.

- "Hitchiker's Thumb" is not desirable in thumb position

- Practice slow vibrato technique. The demo of this slow vibrato practice looked similar to the latter half of the "Beginner 1" lesson on http://violinmasterclass.com/vibrato.php

- Less vibrato is preferable on notes with more natural overtones

- Tense right-hand thumb causes aggressive bowing

- Pressure on bow should come more from weight of arm, not the fingers. The forearm should "roll". Use knees to turn cello for more (volume? tone? I don't remember)

- Use less thumb pressure on bow. Arm should be suspended.

This set of notes are from Mr. Starker's responses to questions from the audience:

- To improve your intonation, work on double stops

- Use breath control to anticipate phrases

- "Accent" of cello playing is related to language (Russians play this way, French play that way, etc.)

- Two styles of vibrato: 1. Thumb is anchored 2. Thumb ??? (my note is unreadable, sorry) with arm

- There is nothing "natural" about playing the cello. The thumb opposes the 2nd finger because of the rotation of the arms to play the cello, not because of "nature".

- In thumb position, do not leave the thumb in the air ("Hitchhiker") or lying on the fingerboard if you are not using the thumb. Anchor it to the side of the fingerboard, from where it can be readily deployed when you need it.