Violin Technique Quotes

I wasn't making it with the violin because I was playing all of the 'long hair' stuff.

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'

I actually played violin on 'E.T.' I used to be a violinist.

I am playing the violin, that's all I know, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just practice every day.

When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

Of course the most difficult thing on the violin is always intonation. The second one is rhythm. If you play in tune, in time with a good sound that's already high level. Those three are the main things.

In concertos, I stand up, and I conduct with the bow when I'm not playing. During symphonies, I sit, but sometimes I stop playing to conduct. Being seated in a section allows me to feel more like we're playing chamber music, which is how I like to approach it.

I grew up playing classical violin and a lot of Bach and Mozart and the things that Einstein loved.

I learned, too, how it was possible with the help of the picture and action to transform an apparently insignificant violin passage into an incident, and to lift a simple horn call into a thing of stupendous significance by means of scenic emphasis.

Violin playing is a physical art with great traditions behind it.

Every violinist has a different style, so it's important to be able to recognise their styles. You don't have to like everyone's style but you have to know these styles.

It would be easier to say, what was the difference in style from many years ago. Many years ago, the old violinists, they also had a good technique, they were not tonally as good.

I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.

The violin - that most human of all instruments.

I'm really just a frustrated violinist.

There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.

My teacher, Josef Gingold, a student of the French school, always loved the music of Saint-Saens and Henri Vieuxtemps and all the French repertoire.

The only downside to playing the violin is that you never know when you're going to be asked to play. I could be out to dinner or having a drink at a bar, and someone could just give me a violin, and I've got to be ready to play.

A violin neck is much smaller than the guitar's, so it's much easier to play wide intervals on one violin string. On the guitar, you really have to stretch to play them.