![]() His few recordings demonstrate his excessive use of portamento. Nikolaj Znaider, The Strad, November 2007Īt the turn of the 20th century early recordings of Sarasate, Kubelik and others give evidence of a preoccupation with technique it was Eugène Ysaÿe whose poetic approach to the gliding technique made the violin sing like the human voice. Today portamento is done in oblivion or it’s frowned upon, but if done tastefully it’s nothing other than a way of connecting notes organically, as a voice does. Listen to Milstein’s incredible use of it, or to Menuhin, who could apply five different types of portamento within one phrase. You have to know why you’re using portamento – it should never be just for effect. This is determined either by the tension of the interval or by the harmonic progressions involved. ![]() The word portamento comes from the Latin verb portare, ‘to carry’, which is a more apt description and forces you to think of which note you want to carry to which other note. We’ve got into a terrible habit of calling the connection of two notes in the left hand a ‘glissando’, which is something completely different, or a ‘slide’, a cheapened way of describing portamento. This music offers you abundant possibilities and freedom to use portamento. ![]() I have often heard the elegant Heifetz portamento between the first and second notes of Saint- Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso caricatured by players who could be great versions of themselves, but instead have become rather unconvincing Heifetzes. At its most benign, this may mean we copy a ‘magic moment’ that another performer has found in a note or a phrase but this can easily become unconvincing affectation. Recorded performances, captured in a moment of time, can inform our playing – but they can also become embedded in our minds and shape our sense of a piece. In portamento, vibrato, in the suspense at the climax and the low point of a phrase, in the variability of speed and dynamics, we are expressing a basic need in the human condition – a need to be free from the trap of classification and strict formal structurings. I have done that, tongue in cheek, in my writings. Again, though essentially indefinable, definition may be attempted. He could be a saint one moment, a sinner the next.Īnd what of feeling in music? Here lie the unpredictable elements, the ever-changing expressions of the yearning human heart – not the province of the ordering mind. I sometimes wish he could have stayed off the G string altogether, as he often made a horrible, smeary sound on it – he never entirely came to grips with the subtleties of vibrato. When his concentration lapsed, Huberman could create quite ugly effects, especially with his portamento. String playing has undeniably progressed since the dawn of recording, yet we should not throw out the connective-portamento baby with the expressive-portamento bathwater. The old-timers often avoided the even-numbered positions and worked on the principle of ‘one phrase, one colour, one string’, a maxim that still has validity. For my taste, Kreisler, Busch, Thibaud, Szigeti, Morini and Casals all managed it pretty well. Tertis at times went too far on the viola, Sammons on the violin – although I love them both dearly. I suppose it is this expressive portamento that attracts the most opprobrium today, and I have to concede that Huberman sometimes executed it in an ugly way. Why then object when a violinist does it?’ – Mischa ElmanĪs I see it, the great players of the past used downward portamento in three ways: for transport from one note to another for joining up the notes into a coherent phrase, as a singer would do (hence the expression ‘breath glide’) and for expressing spontaneous emotion. ‘When a singer slides beautifully from one note to another it is permissible.
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